Speakers
Description
The aim of the Italian economist Francesco Ferrara was the academic and social affirmation of a political economy that would show people the right path for material and civil progress. The latter was conceived as the conquest of ever more and greater freedom for the individual, in the belief that only freedom could guarantee advancement. Among the various initiatives that Ferrara undertook to institutionalize economics in Italy during the Risorgimento, the Biblioteca dell’Economista (BE) was the most successful and of the highest value due to its scientific completeness and divulgation. With his collection and translation of foreign literature, which he presented critically in the prefaces to volumes, the editor not only succeeded in constructing, refining and disseminating a doctrinal paradigm, but also in developing a language of political economy that resulted comprehensible and attractive to a large audience. Bearing in mind that in his life attempt to institutionalize the economic science of progress and liberty, Ferrara expressed and indicated through rhetoric and new terms what liberty and progress were.
The study analyses how Adam Smith inspired the “language of liberty” of Ferrara, both fixing the theoretical meaning of the key terms of political economy lexicon and building an effective and persuasive discourse to spread and affirm a liberal view of society. The paper focuses on the extended and in-depth reading of Smith’s work by Francesco Ferrara -from his youth until his tenure in the University of Turin- and examines prefaces and translation of the BE. The results will provide a complete overview -from an economic and linguistic standpoint- of the language of liberty developed by Ferrara, showing Smith’s ideological, theoretical and lexical influences on him.
| Organization | Università di Palermo |
|---|
