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Amid the growing literature in English on the work of the Neapolitan political economist Antonio Genovesi (1713-1769), this paper focuses on his conception of civil economy (economia civile) as a theory of government. By contrast with existing interpretations, the argument is that for Genovesi virtue is a significant ordering device of the polity: virtue mediates between passions and reason, and the human capacity for virtue helps individuals better to realise their different talents. This, in turn, means that virtue is central to the division of labour and the right proportions between different activities, including the balance between consumption and trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renewed interest in studies of Italian Enlightenment after the Second World War has enabled a complex new understanding of the Italian contribution to political economy. In particular, a new line of research that brings together the analysis of commercial society developed by Italian economists, and the canon of « civil life » elaborated within classical civic humanism and the natural legal tradition, has explained the deep ethical and social concerns inherent in the Italian approach to economic studies. This collection of articles takes stock of some of these achievements in scholarship and, at the same time, offers some new elements about the hermeneutical role played by these fundamental relationships between economics and ethics in identifying a more complex and multidimensional structure of scientific discourse. The articles are a selection of those presented at three conferences held in 2013, thanks to the support of the Luigi Sturzo Institute and Milan-Bicocca University, in Naples (Banco di Roma Foundation), Rome (Lumsa University) and Milan (Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere), and they explore the thought of Antonio Genovesi as well as Eighteenth-Century Italian economic thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]