SCIENCE OF LEGISLATION
The man who wrote the US Constitution?
It is certainly an overstatement that the Constitution of the United States of America was written in a beautiful old building—still called "the castle"—in Vico Equense, a small town on the Bay of Naples about halfway out the Sorrentine peninsula, but that's what citizens of that hamlet delight in telling visitors.
[...] "The Science of Legislation" was among the earliest works on constitutional law and government. It presented an enlightened code of justice that was based on reason and that did not favor royalty and the wealthy. Filangieri called for equal justice for all citizens, proportionality between crime and punishment, freedom of the press, universal public education and unlimited free trade. Franklin praised Filangieri for his "invaluable work." Many of the ideas championed in "The Science of Legislation" are found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
[...] The Revolutionary era reached its peak in Continental Europe in the period in which Gaetano Filangieri wrote his La scienza della legislazione, 1780-1785 (Science of Legislation). The friendship that grew between the Neapolitan philosopher and Benjamin Franklin, and the wish of the first to follow the statesman and secular moralist by emigrating to the New World, were signs of a profound belief in reason. The horizons and values that today characterize western civilization were already clear to the two brilliant men of the Enlightenment. Indeed, they have ennobled our civilization.
It is certainly an overstatement that the Constitution of the United States of America was written in a beautiful old building—still called "the castle"—in Vico Equense, a small town on the Bay of Naples about halfway out the Sorrentine peninsula, but that's what citizens of that hamlet delight in telling visitors.
[...] "The Science of Legislation" was among the earliest works on constitutional law and government. It presented an enlightened code of justice that was based on reason and that did not favor royalty and the wealthy. Filangieri called for equal justice for all citizens, proportionality between crime and punishment, freedom of the press, universal public education and unlimited free trade. Franklin praised Filangieri for his "invaluable work." Many of the ideas championed in "The Science of Legislation" are found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
[...] The Revolutionary era reached its peak in Continental Europe in the period in which Gaetano Filangieri wrote his La scienza della legislazione, 1780-1785 (Science of Legislation). The friendship that grew between the Neapolitan philosopher and Benjamin Franklin, and the wish of the first to follow the statesman and secular moralist by emigrating to the New World, were signs of a profound belief in reason. The horizons and values that today characterize western civilization were already clear to the two brilliant men of the Enlightenment. Indeed, they have ennobled our civilization.
[ http://www.napoli.com/english/blog22.php ]
ReplyDelete[ http://www.columbuscitizensfd.org/press/decofind.html ]
[ http://www.castellogiusso.info/Filangieri & Franklin.htm ]