Adam Smith and Gaetano Filangieri

This chapter proposes a comparison between the thought and works of Adam Smith and Gaetano Filangieri, two of the greatest exponents of European Enlightenment. It connects the profiles of Smith and Filangieri to the most relevant historiographic categories that are usually employed to study the Scottish and Neapolitan schools. The representation of natural law both in Smith and Filangieri is in accordance with the mechanical philosophy of the age. Their works share the intellectual effort of the century to extend the scientific revolution from the field of physics to that of the moral studies. The human and intellectual profiles of Smith and Filangieri share more than one common trait. The chapter shows that the alternative approaches of the Scottish and Italian Enlightenment represent methodological positions still present within political economy, an unsolved dialectical which runs through the history of economic thought.