Abstract

Sebastiano Franci (1715–1772), who belonged to the circle around Pietro Verri and to the authors of the Milanese journal ‘Il Caffè’, is one of the forgotten Enlightenment thinkers. He was influenced by the Physiocrats and put forward proposals for agricultural reform. As an alternative to the bloody war of expansion fought with weapons, he pleaded for a ‘war of industry’ to defeat humanity’s worst enemy, poverty, and to promote general prosperity, ‘public happiness’, which for him was the central purpose of the state. Neither luxury nor trade were morally reprehensible, he said, because they precisely served this purpose. Trade, he argued, connected people, had a peacemaking function, and made people citizens of the world. On all these points, he was not a pioneer, but he was undoubtedly a typical enlightener whose ideas were inspired by the European Enlightenment. But as the author of the ‘Difesa delle donne’ he is – and this is his lasting merit – one of the early feminist thinkers.