ABSTRACT
The European Enlightenment proposed an ideal compact between princely heads of state and public intellectuals that would vanquish the darkness of ignorance and superstition of the past with the light of reason and the practical application of modern philosophical principles. Citizen subjects would be educated in the useful, empirical truths of nature and the nature of themselves. The relentlessly declared aim in the Italian context was the pubblica felicità and the bene comune, public happiness and the common good, ideals defined in essential ways in terms of the corporeal body and physical wellbeing of the enlightened citizen. Although pervasively neglected as a subject of historical analysis, Tuscany during the reign of the Habsburg Grand Duke Peter Leopold represents an unparalleled attempt at creating an ideal Enlightenment State predicated on the revision and reform of the human body.
