Antonio Genovesi taught in Naples Political Economy, the first chair of this discipline in the world. His text Business lessons or both of civil economy is one of the first to discipline the economy as an autonomous science.
1713
1769
Economist, philosopher
Antonio Genovesi (1713-1769) was a great innovator of culture and science, perfect exponent of that generation of scholars who opened the streets of modernity with moderation and decision.
A moderate illuminator, we could define it, first in the world to hold a chair of economics, first to teach in Italian and not in Latin, lived between Salerno and Naples and helped to establish a discipline that, according to the dictates of Adam Smith, had to bring wealth and well-being in the kingdoms.
Born in Castiglione in the province of Salerno, he devoted himself very young to studies, after a private apprenticeship in the province, he arrived at the seminary of Salerno where he graduated and took priestly vows.
He moved to Naples, contacted the innovative ferments particularly linked to Gian Battista Vico, from which he inherited the chair of Etica at the University. But of metaphysical and philosophic problems he soon settled and spent teaching in that chair of Political Economics which, as said, was the first in Europe.
His writings, collected under the title “Lections of Commerce or Civil Economy” was published in 1765, one of the first texts in which the wealth of nations was discussed through investment in education, reform of agricultural property and protectionism in trade and industry.
