Happiness as Reciprocity

After the analysis of the general framework of Genovesi’s Civil Economy, in this chapter we consider directly the peculiarity of his vision of Civil Happiness. Genovesi’s main reference point is Aristotle, as in his Diceosina, his book of ethics where his anthropology (theory of the human person) is fully presented. In all his works, we find an Aristotelian approach to happiness: “No man could work for anything other than his own happiness or he would be less than a man . . .” (Autobiografia e Lettere, p. 449). We also find: “God . . . could not give men any attribute that was not ordered to their end, that is to their happiness” (Lezioni, I, chapter 1, §15). And, a few pages later: “Every person has a natural and inherent obligation to study and procure his/her happiness” (chapter 1, §39, p. 29). In the Diceosina, he writes: “There is no one so foolish or crazy . . . not to seek the happiness of all his life, but of just a part” (p. 34). Therefore, goods, wealth, and economic development are useful to the measure in which they are ways to happiness, they are means to that end.121