The Enlightenment and the rights of man / Vincenzo Ferrone ; translated by Elisabetta Tarantino.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ferrone, Vincenzo, author.

Contributor:

Tarantino, Elisabetta, translator.

Series:

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 0435-2866 2019:11.

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment, 0435-2866 ; 2019:11

Standardized Title:

Storia dei diritti dell'uomo. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Enlightenment.

Human rights--History.

Human rights.

History.

Justice.

Natural law.

Physical Description:

xii, 564 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

[Liverpool, England] : Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, [2019]

Language Note:

Translated from the Italian.

Summary:

The Enlightenment redefined the ethics of the rights of man as part of an outlook that was based on reason, the equality of all nations and races, and man's self-determination. This led to the rise of a new language: the political language of the moderns, which spread throughout the world its message of the universality and inalienability of the rights of man, transforming previous references to subjective rights in the state of nature into an actual programme for the emancipation of man. Ranging from the Italy of Filangieri and Beccaria to the France of Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, from the Scotland of Hume, Ferguson and Smith to the Germany of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, and as far as the America of Franklin and Jefferson, Vincenzo Ferrone deals with a crucial theme of modern historiography: one that addresses the great contemporary debate on the problematic relationship between human rights and the economy, politics and justice, the rights of the individual and the rights of the community, state and religious despotism and freedom of conscience.

Contents:

Preface to the English translation

Introduction: why did the Enlightenment in the Western world discover the rights of man, and what are those rights?

I. From natural law to the natural rights of the individualChapter 1: The historiographical debate and the discontinuity of the EnlightenmentChapter 2: The metamorphosis of ancient natural lawChapter 3: Modern natural law as the 'science of morality'Chapter 4: Natural law and 'the crisis of the European mind': Jean BarbeyracChapter 5: The return of Antigone: freedom of conscience and the limits of sovereigntyChapter 6: The person as autonomous and conscious individual: John LockeChapter 7: From duties to rights: the Enlightenment discovery of the natural right to the pursuit of happiness

II. From natural rights to the rights of man as moral and political rightsChapter 8: The epistemological break: Diderot and HumeChapter 9: The question of RousseauChapter 10: The politicisation of natural rights: legislation and reform in Montesquieu, Helvétius and BeccariaChapter 11: The political neutralisation of rights: Wolff, Hume, Ferguson, Smith, BlackstoneChapter 12: The Neapolitan school of natural law and the rights of man: Vico and GenovesiChapter 13: The new 'science of legislation' of the rights of man: Filangieri and Pagano

III. The Late Enlightenment: the rights of man and the political struggle against the Ancien regimeChapter 14: Public opinion and the defence of man: Voltaire, Diderot and physiocracyChapter 15: The 'performance' of the rights of man in France between art and politicsChapter 16: The politicisation of the Republic of Letters in Germany: freemasonry and the rights of manChapter 17: The Bavaria Illuminati, the rights of man and the end of the Late Enlightenment

Conclusion: towards a history of the Enlightenment and the rights of man as an unfinished project and a laboratory of modernity

Notes:

Originally published as Storia dei diritti dell'uomo: L'Illuminismo e la costruzione del linguaggio politico dei moderni; Bari ; Rome : Laterza & Figli, ©2014.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 499-539) and index.

Translated from the Italian.

ISBN:

1789620368

9781789620368

OCLC:

1089432896