Brano tratto dal libro di Guido del Giudice “Io dirò la verità”. Intervista a Giordano Bruno.

Non fu Bellarmino il vero carnefice del Nolano.

Bellarmino was not the actual executioner of the Nolan.

By reconstructing the eighteenth-century movement of the Italian Enlightenment, I show that Italy’s political fragmentation notwithstanding, there was a constant circulation of ideas, whether on philosophical, ethical, political, religious, social, economic or scientific questions—among different groups in various states. This exchange was made possible by the shared language of its leading illuministi— Cesare Beccaria, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Francesco Maria Zanotti, Antonio Genovesi, Mario Pagano, Pietro Verri, Marco Antonio Vogli, and Giammaria Ortes—and resulted in four common traits. First, the absence (...) of a radical trend, such as the French materialist-atheist trend and British Deism, or religious reformation. Second, the rejection of inhumane laws and institutions, capital punishment, torture, war and slavery. Third, the idea of public happiness as the goal of good government and legislation. And fourth, the conception of the economy as a constellation where social capital, consisting of education, morality, and civility, plays a decisive role. I conclude that the Italian Enlightenment, not unlike the Scottish Enlightenment, was both cosmopolitan and local, which allowed its leading writers to develop a keen awareness of the complexity of society alongside a degree of prudence regarding the possibility and desirability of its modernization. (shrink)

It is clear enough that utilitarianism contributed to the softening of many penal systems in the world by arguing that very cruel punishments should be excluded every time a less cruel one would be just as effective. But does utilitarianism as such oppose the death penalty ? It is well known that Beccaria and Bentham criticized capital punishment on utilitarian grounds. But the fact that John Stuart Mill held a speech in favour of the death penalty at the House (...) of Commons in 1868 suggests that there is no necessity for a utilitarian thinker to oppose it. Otherwise, it would be possible to claim that John Stuart Mill betrayed, so to speak, the principle of utility by defending such a punishment. But nothing, it seems, allows us to say so. On the contrary, we would like to suggest that Mill’s disagreement with Bentham and Beccaria originates from his own empirical judgement on the following question : is death penalty the most cruel punishment for murder ? In other words, whether we like it or not, there is no way we can hold that Mill was less faithful than Beccaria and Bentham to the principle of utility when supporting the death penalty. (shrink)

The volume includes an extensive introductory essay and an Italian translation of the treatise On Man, His Mortality or Immortality by Aleksandr Nikolaevič Radiščev, written in Siberia between 1792 and 1796, published several years after the author’s death. The treatise begins with an exploration of the paths and achievements of the different sciences that offer knowledge of the various aspects of the human world, but do not penetrate its essence. At the foundation of the manifold and the changeable, there remains, (...) unknown and indefinable, the unitary substance. Behind the Leibniz of the epigraph, behind Herder and Mendelssohn, there appears, unspoken, the dangerous, and perhaps most beloved, Spinoza. Radiščev is an emblematic figure of 18th-century Russia, considered the theorist of equality and by some critics, wrongly, a precursor of the Russian Revolution. Radiščev’s thought in this regard is clear and matures through the readings of Beccaria, Filangieri and Dragonetti: equality of nature (natural law) is utopian if it does not become equality before the law. (shrink)

This is a presentation of the utilitarian approach to punishment. It is meant for students. A note added in July, 2022 advises the reader about the author's current views on some topics in the paper. The first section discusses Bentham's psychological hedonism. The second briefly criticizes it. The third section explains abstractly how utilitarianism would determine of the right amount of punishment. The fourth section applies the theory to some cases, and brings out how utilitarianism could favor punishments more or (...) less severe than the lex talionis. (shrink)