The other invisible hand. The social and economic effects of theodicy in Vico and Genovesi

Abstract

This paper explores the implications for modern economic thought of the debate on Theodicy, i.e., the coexistence of a good, almighty God and worldly evils. In the 17th century, this problem was raised by Pierre Bayle. The analysis focuses on the 18th century Italian school of Civil economy represented by Antonio Genovesi. Our argument is that Genovesi, and Giambattista Vico before him, reacted to Bayle’s Manichaean and Atheistic view on theodicy, and that Genovesi’s reaction influenced his view of the market as a place of mutual assistance where the invisible hand holds a secondary and subsidiary role compared to virtues in promoting the common good.

Keywords:

• Civil economy
• Vico
• Genovesi
• Bayle
• Theodicy

JEL CODES:

• B 11
• B 12
• Z 12

“The rational need for a theodicy of suffering and dying has had extremely strong effects […] The majority, however, referred to the “injustice” of the order of this world—to be sure, essentially because they believed in a revolutionary compensation in this world” (Weber 2005a, 275–6).

1. Introduction and thesis

In his essay entitled Politics as Vocation (1919), Max Weber asked, “How could a power that is said to be both omnipotent and good create such an irrational world of unmerited suffering, unpunished injustice and incorrigible stupidity?” (Weber, 2004, 86). Through these few words, Weber summarised the question of theodicy, namely, theos dike (God’s justice), the relationship between God’s justice and worldly evils. So far underemphasised, theodicy is one of the sources of the history of economic ideas, in particularly important for the emergence of the modern schools of economic thought.

The term theodicy was coined by Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646–1716) in response to Pierre Bayle’s (1647–1706) challenge to the Christian belief in divine providence. Weber’s question resembles the ones Hume attributed to Epicurus: “Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (Hume 2007, p. 74). The debate regarding theodicy has far more ancient roots, but it is also widely recognised as having shaped intellectual modernity in Europe (Viner 1972; Hirschman 1977; Kremer and Latzer 2001; Moriarty 2006; Neiman 2015). Hence, we present our first research question by drawing on Weber’s and Hume’s questions: How is the problem of theodicy related to the birth of economic science in the 18^th century?

We are not the first to examine the relationship between theology and Political economy (Weber [1904–1905] 2005b; Sombart 1911; Fanfani 1934 – to mention some pioneers of the field) or between theodicy and Political economy¹. The examination becomes relevant because, as Viner argued, “almost every learned Englishman and still more every learned Scotsman, it would seem, at some stage of his career felt impelled to publish his views on ‘The Origin of Evil’” (Viner 1972, 58). This is related not only to natural evils (e.g., earthquakes, illness, human inclinations) but also to moral evils, the ones related to human behaviour resulting from free will (Waterman 2017), including market behaviours. Our analysis leaves aside natural evils as natural events, focussing on the consequences of human inclinations and the use of free will in the social sphere. We maintain the term theodicy without an adjective, even if our usage recalls what Waterman defined as “social theodicy” (Waterman 2017, 63).

To contribute to the many analyses in the extant literature, we advance the second and main research question: How is theodicy related to the emergence of the Italian Civil economy tradition of 18th century? In the last twenty years, scholars have focussed on the comparison between Political and Civil economy, stressing similarities and differences between the two modern schools of economic thought². If Smith’s and Malthus’s economic accounts have been scrutinised under theological lenses³, it might be worthwhile to understand the impact of theodicy on the civil economists. This is because the authors of Italian Civil economy tradition, rooted in a Catholic social atmosphere and exponents of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, were influenced by different traditions from the authors of Political economy, the latter grew in a Protestant social atmosphere, and members of Scottish Enlightenment—Smith, at least. Hence, we might expect to observe differences in the way in which theodicy impacted different economic traditions.

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of theodicy on the social and economic views of Italian civil economists. The Civil economy tradition can be seen as the modern landing of that vision of the market that began first with Roman civilisation, passed through monasticism, Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan of the late Middle Ages, a tradition that flourished in civil humanism in the first half of the 15th century, and then, after almost three centuries of eclipse or sinking like a karst river (Bruni and Zamagni 2016), exploded during the great season of the Italian Enlightenment. In the second half of the 18th century, the Civil economy flourished in Naples, and then throughout Italy. Its cornerstone is Antonio Genovesi⁴ (1713–1769), and its specificity lies in the usage of some ideas as public happiness (pubblica felicità)—something close to the notion of common good—public trust (fede pubblica), civic virtues, and mutual assistance, to describe the economic sphere alongside much more known elements as self-interest, luxury, and trades balance. Therefore, we should look at the theological background of the first half of 18th century Naples to see how this influenced Genovesi’s thought and its economic ideas.

There are two authors who are fundamental to the story we are telling. On the one hand is the aforementioned Bayle, whose Manichaean and atheist ideas on theodicy and society were condemned by the Catholic Church. Genovesi was accused of being close to Bayle’s atheism, and his reply to the charges unveils his position on theodicy. On the other hand, it lies Giambattista Vico, who reacted to the social consequences of Bayle’s atheism and who was a reference point for the Neapolitean intellectual context of 18th century.⁵ Therefore, this paper will first consider Bayle’s views on theodicy and, latu sensu, society and economy. Then, we will move to Vico’s New Science to see how he refused Bayle’s ideas. Having settled the bases, we move to Genovesi to show how his theodicy is rooted in a Christian tradition build on the reflections of the Dominican theologian of 13th century Thomas Aquinas. Final remarks on the implications for the comparison between Political and Civil economies will end the manuscript.

The broader aim of this manuscript is to retrace the history of the Latin Invisible Hand. In Genovesi’s Civil economy, in fact, the invisible hand mechanism has a secondary role in the promotion of the common good. This latter is provided first and foremost by the virtuous action of the parties involved in a market transaction. The invisible hand is, at most, a subsidiary tool to promote the good of society when human virtuous behaviour fails.

2. The strawman: Pierre Bayle’s theodicy

In the 17th century, Europe was devastated by the wars of religion. Bayle experienced persecution by religious authority on himself, being forced to move from his home-country to Dutch Republic.⁶ In his works, like the Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet (1682) and the Historical and Critical Dictionary (1687), he gave two answers to the problem of theodicy: God cannot be accounted for worldly evils because (a) there are two Gods, as told in the dualistic Manichaean tradition, or (b) God does not exist, as in the atheistic view of the world. According to the French philosopher, these two options give a much more accurate account of the essence of reality than any rational alternative offered within the Christian tradition. Both Catholic and Protestant theologians could refuse this dichotomy, appealing to matters of faith, but when it comes to rational arguments, Bayle saw no room for Christian thought, even in its highest intellectual expression as the Church Fathers or the Scholastics. While Genovesi had to defend himself from the charges to be close to Bayle’s option (a), Vico’s opposed option (b) so strongly that some authors claimed that his New Science was a direct answer to it. In this section, we explore Bayle’s options and describe their consequences for his social and economic views. We start with option (a), i.e., the Manichaean–Dualistic hypotheses.

Preliminarily, it is essential to distinguish the historical Manichaean from the Manichaean dualism adopted by Bayle. In the aforementioned Dictionary, Bayle considered the thesis of historical Manichaean. The adherents of Mani’s sect believed that our human condition was the result of the fight of two principles: God and the Prince of Darkness. The Prince of Darkness would have entrapped the former in the matter, so that the human soul made a lifelong attempt to escape his bodily prison. This is an old doctrine rooted in Zoroastrianism, Pythagoreanism—Bayle affirmed that it is attributable to Persian and Egyptian philosophers (Bayle 1991. Remark C to Manicheans), which also finds space in Plato’s philosophy. However, Bayle believed that what really characterised all these doctrines was the belief in two principles (Good and Bad) and not in the dichotomy material-immaterial. He recalled Maximus of Tyre’s belief asserting that the human soul is also bad and corrupted, and he described it as a variant of Manicheism (Bayle 1991. Remark L to Paulicians). Bayle was interested in the hypothesis sustained by Plato in his tenth book of Laws, in which he presented a fight between two intellectual principles (good soul vs evil soul). This is the very core of Manichaean dualism, not linked exclusively to the historical Manichaean.

As emerged from the remarks (remarques) to “Manicheans” and “Paulicians” and from his article on “Evil”, Bayle considered a priori absurd the Manichaean dualistic hypothesis: “Thus by consulting these ideas, one finds that there is nothing more absurd than the hypothesis of two principles, eternal and independent each other, one of which has no goodness and can stop the plans of the other. These are what I call the a priori arguments” (Bayle 1991, 145). God is one and almighty, despite the presence of some evil in the world. Nonetheless, in the empirical perspective (the observation of reality), in which every theory must account for experience, there is an element apparently contradictory to the one-God belief. It is not the physical evil, the “variations, disorders, irregularities of nature”, but, rather, what a posteriori seems to confirm Manichaean dualistic thesis, namely moral evil. In Bayle’s words:

Man is wicked and miserable. Everybody is aware of this from what goes on within himself, and from the commerce he is obliged to carry on with his neighbour. It suffices to have been alive for five or six years to be completely convinced of these two truths. Those who live long and who are much involved in worldly affairs know this still more clearly. Travel gives continual lesson of this. (Bayle 1991, 146. Our italics.)

Bayle was imbued in the French and Dutch religious climate of his time. There, a transversal “Augustinian” tradition occupied the theological scene. Jansenist and Calvinist authors⁷ overemphasised Augustine’s vision of fallen humanity as radically corrupted by sin, blinded by an uncontrolled concupiscent self-love and thus incapable of virtue without Gods’ grace (Force 2003). What related a quasi-Catholic doctrine (Jansenism) to a Protestant one (Calvinism) was their negative account of human nature after the Fall. Without the help of divine grace, a human being is not capable of goodness: he is an evil, perverted, and uncivil agent, as in Hobbes’ view. From this perspective, there is no space for virtue in worldly conduct or, at least, too little to explain social life. Some authoritative interpreters emphasised Bayle’s intellectual proximity to Calvinist (Force 2003, 53) and Jansenist (Viner 2014, 186) anthropological pessimism.

Starting from this Augustinian perspective, Bayle approached Manichaean dualistic theodicy. If there has to be a reason for the presence of evil, and if evil has to be connected somehow to goodness, then the good obtained from moral evil can be explained as a deal between the Good and the Bad principle. The Manichaean dualistic theodicy emerged from a Hobbesian state of nature:

Zoroaster would go back to the time of chaos: this is a state with regard to his two principles much like what Thomas Hobbes calls the state of nature […] man was a wolf to man everything belonged to the first who had it; no one was the master of anything except by force. In order to get out of this abyss, each agreed to give up his rights to the whole so that he would be given the ownership of some part. They entered into agreements; war ceased. (Bayle 1991, 150)

“Each” stands for the two principles that came into agreement. From this perspective, God (good principle) can be truly justified since he is not responsible for world’s evil: “We clear him of any guilt on this score. We explain it without impeaching his goodness […] He could not obtain a better agreement from his adversary. His goodness went as far as it could. If he does not give us more good, it is because he cannot. Thus we have nothing to complain about” (Bayle 1991, 173). The circle is closed: explanation and then justification.

Theodicy has deep consequences for the social and economic sphere. Human being moral evil brings to good consequences:

And yet it must be acknowledged that they […] were in the right in some respects: what is there, for instance, more useful thank luxury for the support of a great many families, who would starve, if great Lord and Ladies spent but little? Our Paulicians might argue this in order to prove this system of two principles. The bad, would they say, produced luxury; the good principle consented to it as a compensation for something good, which his adversary suffered him to produce, and besides, he kept to himself the right to make some advantage of the evil production. But if he had been alone, neither luxury nor any other vice had ever existed among men (Bayle 1739, 222)

This is not an economic theory, but it constitutes an economic idea that emerged from a theological issue. The market sphere, where vices are connected to virtues, is the mean of the good principle to direct the corrupted individual actions of human beings towards desirable outcomes. In this respect, the market is a form of theodicy. Bayle is not the source of the invisible hand, but his theological reflections brought him very close towards the view of unintended consequences, as envisaged by authors as Mandeville⁸ or Hume⁹.

A growing taste for luxury commodities played—according to Hume’s History of England—a key role in both England’s economic development and in the fall of the feudal landlords, aristocracy and clergy. Luxury was, according to both Hume and Smith, the main tool for a “secret revolution” (Hume 1983, IV). The unequal and hierarchical feudal society collapsed thanks to an unintended consequence of the desire for luxury from the upper classes. In Hume’s philosophy of history, luxury played this providential role:

The new methods of expenses gave subsistence to mechanics and merchants, who lived in an independent manner on the fruits of their own industry […] By all these means the cities increased; the middle rank of men began to become rich and powerful. (Hume 1983, 384)

But this is not just an issue that concerned Northern Europe. Genovesi quoted many times in his Lezioni from Hume’s History of England; in fact, in Genovesi’s theory of luxury, we find an extraordinary similarity to Hume. He held that a certain degree of luxury:

…not only is useful but also necessary to culture, diligence, politeness and virtue of nations; necessary for fostering some arts that are essential for not being uncivil or indebted to foreigners. For that I can conclude that a certain degree of luxury not only is not a vice, but is actually a virtue. (Lezioni, I, chapter 10, §3)

Below, we will show that Genovesi held a very different view on theodicy and that his view on luxury is different from Bayle’s and Hume’s ones. Nonetheless, this passage proves that he was touched by the arguments and discussions we are considering here. Before considering Genovesi’s solution to the problem of theodicy, we move to another of his possible sources, Vico’s thought, which, in turn, reacted to the atheistic position adopted by Bayle.

3. Rational civil theology of divine providence: Giambattista Vico

Side by side with the dualistic Manichaean theodicy, Bayle advanced an atheistic answer to the problem concerning God’s justice: there is no need to justify God because there is simply no God to account for. Again, there are strong social and economic implications. As mentioned above, in 1682 Bayle’s published his masterpiece Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet (Bayle 2000a). When comets appeared in 1680 Europe, people believed that God’ was sending a sign that bad things would have happened, bad things which were the right punishment against few European thinkers who were endorsing atheism. To state the falsity of this superstition was the chance, for Bayle, to argue once more on the falsity of revealed religion. He expressed the idea that a society made of atheists could be equally virtuous as one in which the belief in God is widespread (Bayle 2000a, 200). The counterproof was that “men can be at the same time unregulated in their morals and very much convinced of the truth of religion, and even of the truth of Christian religion” (Bayle 2000a, 178). The wars of religion were the sign that the unity of Christianity as a source of morality in Europe was fading (Taylor 1992). Bayle’s hypothesis of a society made of atheists is just one of the options imagined to substitute the political model based on virtues (Greek and Roman society) and corroborated by theological sources. It parallels Hobbes’ contractarianism and Hume’s conventionalism. By no chance, the latter, studying Bayleian texts in his youth, will ask: “Atheists plainly make a distinction between good reasoning & bad. Why not between vice and virtue?” (Hume in Force 2003, 315).

Vico knew Pierre Bayle’s work very well (Garin 1959; Addante 1972, 1982; Robertson 2005), and he knew well that leaving Bayle’s question unanswered would have meant leaving his thesis unchallenged. Therefore, the first edition of The New Science (Vico [1725] 2002) started unequivocally with the statement that “the natural law of nations was certainly born with the common customs of nations; nor was there ever a nation of atheists in the world, because all nations began with some religion” (Vico in Robertson 2005, 226). The reference to his interlocutor in the third edition is even more explicit: “Bayle affirms in his treatise on comets that peoples can live in justice without the light of God” (Vico [1744] 1948, 86). This issue concerns the whole society, market sphere included. In this respect, Appiano Buonadfede, an Italian philosopher very influenced by Vico and equally concerned by Bayle’s heresies, defined the society of atheists as a form of “market” (Garin 1959, 218), leaving little room to doubt the connection between theological and economic issues. Vico’s “rational civil theology of divine providence” was directed precisely to the problem of theodicy and the atheistic outcome envisaged by Bayle. How did Vico confute Bayle’s thesis?

He needed to show that God’s providence operates in society, accounting for the presence of moral evils. He did so with a double argumentative move. On the first level, he brought into play the heterogenesis of ends mechanism. Today, among economists, Vico’s perspective of the heterogenesis of ends contained in The New Science is well known, owing to the work of Hirschman (1977), who first put Vico among the founders of the invisible hand theory:

Legislation considers man as he is in order to turn him to good uses in human society. Out of ferocity, avarice and ambition, the three vices which run throughout the human race, it creates the military, merchant and governing classes, and thus the strength, riches and wisdom of commonwealths. Out of these three vices […]. It makes civil happiness. This axiom proves that there is divine providence. (Vico [1744] 1948, 56)

Vico moved the field of civil legislation away from metaphysics because it considers the human person “as he or she should be” and therefore “cannot help but those very few who want to live in Plato’s Republic rather than grovel in Romolo’s riff-raff” (1948 [1744], chapter II, §7). He was more interested in real people than ideal ones. Thus, according to Vico, providence has designed the world, putting in civil dynamics mechanisms that convert ferociousness into the army and strength, avarice into commerce and opulence, and ambition into politics and the art of good government. So far, to our knowledge, no one has noticed that this passage constitutes a direct reference to the triad “ambition, avarice, and cruelty” set forth in the article Ovid of Bayle’s Dictionary:

In some countries, men follow the same course, and everywhere they are great exterminators. I do not speak of the slaughter arising from ambition, avarice, or cruelty, or from the other passions that give rise to war. I speak only of the consequences of the efforts we make to nourish our bodies. Upon this score, man is a principle so injurious and so destructive that if all other animals did as much in proportion, the earth would not be able to furnish them with sufficient sustenance. When we see in the streets and in the market places of the great cities that prodigious bulk of vegetables, fruits, and the infinite number of other things destined for the feeding of its inhabitants, is one not apt to exclaim: here is enough for the week? (Bayle 2000b, 224; emphasis added)

To state that Vico’s account of unintended consequences was a reply to Bayle’s does not say much of the origin of this idea. Whereas in France and the Netherlands this was connected to Calvinist and Jansenist ideas, Italian authors were also influenced by other sources. Vico was decisively influenced by Machiavelli’s account of “man as he is” (l’uomo qual è). The same can be argued for the Roman historian Tacitus, who, as significantly stated in Bayle’s dictionary, first painted “the disguises and cheats of politicians, and the weakness of the passions […] inquiring into the secret motives of actions” (Bayle 1738, 288). In his autobiography, Vico clearly recognised Tacitus as his master in discovering the real behaviour of human beings out of any archetypal platonic motive:

Up to this time, Vico had admired two only above all other learned men: Plato and Tacitus; for with an incomparable metaphysical mind, Tacitus contemplates man as he is, Plato as he should be. And as Plato with his universal knowledge explores the parts of nobility which constitutes the man of intellectual wisdom, Tacitus descends into all the counsels of utility whereby, among the infinite irregular chances of malice and fortune, the man of practical wisdom brings these things to good issue. (Vico 1975, 138)

This is probably because, since the 16th century, Tacitus’ works were used to advance the Machiavellian thesis, the latter being strongly contrasted by Catholic hierarchies (Toffanin 1921).

Machiavelli analysed human weaknesses to turn them towards positive outcomes through the mean of legislation. Machiavelli anticipated a heterogenesis of ends process in his Discourses of Livy (Pedullà 2018). There, describing the “tumults” of the plebs, that is, “their own ways of giving expression to their wishes” (Machiavelli in Barcenas 2015, 125)¹⁰, Machiavelli commented:

I affirm that those who condemn these dissension […] give more heed to the tumult and uproar wherewith these dissensions were attended, than to the good results which followed from them […] virtuous actions have their origin in right training, right training in wise laws, and wise laws in these tumults which many would thoughtlessly condemn. (Machiavelli in Barcenas 2015, 124)

This process is also described by Machiavelli in other works. In a poem dedicated to Luigi Guicciardini, Francesco’s brother, significantly entitled Capitolo dell’Ambizione (On Ambition), Machiavelli further describes the good unintended consequences that can derive when ambition passes through civil dynamics (Macchiavelli 1843, 699). Very relevant for our purpose is the reference to “grace” at the end of the poem:

Dovunche gli occhi tu rivolti e giri,

Di lacrime la terra, e sangue è pregna;

e l’aria d’urli singulti e sospiri.

Se d’altrui imparare alcun si sdegna,

Come si debba Ambizione usarla.

Lo esempio di costo lo ‘nsegna.

Da poi che l’uomo non può cacciarla

Debbe il giudizio dell’intelletto sano

Con ordine e ferocia accompagnarla […]

E seminato ha già tante faville,

tra quelle genti si d’invidia pregne,

ch’arderà le sue terre e le sue ville

se grazia o miglior ordin non la spegne.

Still, what emerges from Tacitus—less from Machiavelli—is the nostalgy of the time in which virtue was spread. After all, both Tacitus and Machiavelli had great esteem for Roman civic virtue. That is to say, people “as they are” not irremediably corrupted agents; they are still capable of virtue and good actions to care about the common good of society, although in a weak form. Vico read Tacitus’ Annalia by means of the translations and comment made by the Neo-Stoic author Justus Lipsius (Lanza 1966), who strongly emphasised the role of virtue.¹¹

Here, we meet the second level of Vico’s confutation of Bayle’s heresy. Vico’s passage on the heterogenesis of ends, in fact, continues, stating that “that man has free choice, however weak, to make virtues of his passions” (Vico [1744] 1948, 56). The problem of theodicy does not need to be solved by unintended consequences mechanisms, at least not only through them. From the Stoic and Catholic traditions, there has been another explanation to justify God for the presence of moral evils: human beings have been endowed with enough strength to overcome their bad instincts or evil passion. To put it differently, people’s inclination towards virtue is stronger than their inclination towards vice.

In Vico’s approach, it is clear that the heterogenesis of ends mechanism is subsidiary, not in opposition, to civil virtues: given human failure to search intentionally and directly for the common good, God’s providence helps us by sketching into human nature and civil cohabitation a providential social dynamic that orients our self-interested passions towards the common good. In the next section, we show that Genovesi also drew on this double level of justification. Differently from Vico, Genovesi gave precedence to the “intentional” (virtues) over the unintentional (invisible hand) contribution to the common good. Moreover, he will be much more explicit in the Catholic sources of his theodicy, his accusers being mostly clericals and abbots. Civil economy’s way to the market was also born from these theological issues.

4. Market after theodicy: Antonio Genovesi

Like many Italian theologians and philosophers during the first half of the 18th century, Genovesi was involved in the debate on theodicy. Bayle’s theses were so radical and absolute that we can say, paraphrasing Viner, every learned Italian man of the 18th century was impelled to publish dissertations addressing the topic of the origin of evil. Italian Catholic theologians felt the necessity of proposing a coherent and strong confutation of Bayle’s heresy (Addante 1872, p. 1982). They did so by invoking patristic tradition, Aquinas’ theology, and Counter-Reformation authors (Garin 1959).

Genovesi, born in 1713, completed his first studies in Castiglione and then in Salerno, where he embarked on ecclesiastical life and was ordained a priest in 1736.¹² The following year, he moved to Naples. For some years, he gave private lessons in philosophy and ethics and followed the lessons of the philosopher Giambattista Vico, although, the influence of Vico on Genovesi is a controversial issue. In those years, Genovesi met and attended Celestino Galiani—the uncle of the famous economist Ferdinando Galiani, whose ideas will be considered below—an important ecclesiastical figure representative of the Vatican in Naples, from whom he obtained his first university position as professor of metaphysics in November 1741, in Naples. The freedom of thought with which the young Genovesi discussed pantheism, reason, and faith was felt to be too innovative for the time. In particular, his interest in Locke, Lockean empiricism, and the doctrine of the origin of ideas, not uncommon among his contemporaries, appeared to be too marked and so too far from the neo-scholastic teaching typical of his time. To save himself from excommunication, in 1744 he had to write, advised by Galiani, an Appendix to his Elementa Metaphysicae ([1743] 1763), which became, as a matter of fact, a profession of the Catholic faith. His theological-philosophical work was, however, harshly attacked by ecclesiastical circles to the point that the Elementa came out without the ecclesiastical approval (imprimatur) of the archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Spinelli, for the refusal of Genovesi to eliminate some passages from the text.

Having lost the chair of metaphysics, Genovesi began in 1745 to teach the newly reconstituted chair of ethics, which he sees as a makeshift solution that embitters him a lot. This is where the turning point comes for his academic career and for the Italian Civil economy tradition. For Genovesi, marginalised as a philosopher and theologian, he transformed himself “from a metaphysician to a merchant”, as he liked to say (Bellamy 1987; Di Liso 2016). An unprecedent chair was created for him at the Royal University of Naples in “commerce and mechanics”, among the very first to be traced in Europe (even if Genovesi himself recognises the one erected in Upssala as the first chair of economics, in 1741). It was commissioned and financed by the Tuscan Bartolomeo Intieri, administrator in Campania, of the properties of Tuscan families. Genovesi started teaching and, after more than ten years and some pre-editions, his book in two volumes, Lezioni di Commercio o sia di Economia Civile (Lessons of Civil economy; [1765–1767] 2013)¹³ saw the light. This book can be considered the manifesto of the Italian Civil economy tradition (Marcialis 1999; Bruni and Zamagni 2016).

The controversial relationship with the ecclesiastical authorities of the time remained a constant note in all of Genovesi’s activity, to the point that even his Lezioni di Economia Civile were put on the index of prohibited books in 1817. For our purposes here, one of the polemics in which he was involved is of the utmost interest. As we saw, Genovesi’s first book on metaphysics, Elementa Metaphysicae, began in 1743 and concluded in 1752¹⁴, was the object of a great deal of criticism. The first “round” of critiques ended when Genovesi was prevented from teaching metaphysics or theology in Naples. But another “round” emerged when he was already teaching (Civil) economy in the chair given to him by Bartolomeo Interi in 1754. The Neapolitan philosopher was accused of having endorsed dangerous positions on the matter of theodicy that would have opened the way to heresies (Addante 1972, 1982). The charge was extremely grave, as it came from some of his friends, such as the abbot Pasquale Magli and Father Francesco Antonio Piro. The former published a volume on the flaws in Genovesi’s Theodicy (1759), while the latter criticised Genovesi in his volume dated 1764, Antimanicheismo (Antimanicheism. Piro [1764] 1777).

Genovesi was accused of embracing Bayle’s arguments on theodicy, driving this theological problem towards Manichaean or atheistic solutions. Piro refused three theses from Genovesi’s Elementa Metaphysicae. First, Genovesi would have argued that human history testifies to the cold, hard truth that virtuous people are rarely rewarded, whereas many kinds of vices remain unpunished (Genovesi 1763, 463). There is no God’s justice or providence operating in this world nor a reason why God would have created evil. To the Catholic theologians who taught that evil is an obstacle for testing and developing virtue, Genovesi would have replied that virtue does not need evil to flourish (Genovesi 1763, 441–442). Together with this second theses came the third, criticised by Piro in Genovesi, namely that vices are more numerous than virtue: “At nunc, aiunt, vitia multo plura et maiora, sineque ulla comparatione, esse virtutibus” (Genovesi 1763, 452). Given the Newtonian and scientific climate of that time (Zambelli 1978; Bruni and Porta 2003), it is not surprising to see Genovesi numerically counting the vices over the virtues to prove his point.

Genovesi integrally refused these charges and accused his accusers of having misunderstood his ideas. In setting up his defense, Genovesi exposed his own view on theodicy. He wrote and published a reply to Magli (1759), in which he listed himself within a millennial tradition that started with Stoicism, continued in the Christian world from the Church Fathers (Origen and Irenaeus; Hick 1966) to late middle age Scholastics (Aquinas and Bonaventure) and then up to Counter-Reformation (Bellarmino) and Modernity (Leibniz). All of these authors, from very different ages, shared one common understanding regarding theodicy: God allows moral evil because God endows human beings with enough strength to resist these evils, which are only obstacles in the path of virtue and eternal life. One author stands out from this fellowship of Christian theologians: Thomas Aquinas.

Genovesi built upon Aquinas’ thought of his theodicy: “Genovesi often recalls Thomas Aquinas, and thus sometimes he was defined a Thomist” (Zambelli 1972, 219). Despite having an aversion to most of the Scholastic tradition, Genovesi had in fact a great appreciation for Doctor Angelicus: “St. Thomas was a great Theologian, but above all, an invaluable Metaphysician; he read the Fathers, he read the history […] surely, he was the best philosopher of his time” (Genovesi 1769, 92). In Genovesi’s manual of Logic for Young People (Logica per I giovinetti), Aquinas is described as “always capable of teaching and always brilliant” (Genovesi 1818, 238). In his works on morals, La Diceosina (Genovesi 1973), Aquinas is among the most quoted authors.

Following Aquinas, Genovesi stated that God’s will is not bounded by reason, but it does not nothing without reason or against reason: “To rule pertains essentially to reason, even if the exercise of ruling it presupposes the act of the will, as affirmed by Saint Thomas. How can you affirm, then, that the ruling of the world is totally other than a reasonable plan?” (Genovesi 1759, 105). Each element of the creation occupies its right place. Nothing has been done without a reason; God’s wisdom is the ratio of creation. Again quoting Aquinas, Genovesi recollected each secondary cause to God: “God is omnipotent, and the second causes stand to Him as the tools stands to the First Cause” (Genovesi 1759, 41). The order of creation is sustained and secured by God’s providence: “Providence is the concatenation, the government of the things that are and that will be; blending Saint Thomas’s definition, providence is the ratio of the relation of the parts with the whole, and of the whole with its end” (Genovesi 1775, 135).

All these things considered, Genovesi explained that the order of the universe required the possibility for man to fail, but also that man had been furnished with enough strength to overcome moral evils and become virtuous. Genovesi particularly emphasised Aquinas’ connection between man’s freedom and moral evils in a passage that should have left little room for doubt, even for his accuser Magli:

Our freedom belongs to the order of this world. Ut sit ordo in rebus ad complementum Universi. S. Th. p. 2., quest. 9, art. 8, in corpore. Moral evils are in the order of the universe. S. Th. 1. 49, a. 2 Ordo autem universi requirit, ut supra dictum est, quod quaedam sint quae deficere possint, et interdum deficiant. […] Here, my sources of my miserable theory regarding the origin of evils. Have you seen? You should see once more; it could be you will see more clearly. (Genovesi 1759, 83)

Within such a structure, the problem of moral evil finds a proper solution: “God forbids evil, God commands good: we ought to believe that He always bestows us with enough strength to escape one and follow the other. Is there anyone who does not feel any strength to maintain his passions, even the most ardent?” (Genovesi 1833, 178). Following this path, Genovesi went beyond Vico’s vision of ambition, avarice, and cruelty: man can overcome these three vices with his own effort:

Virtue is a habit. To obtain it, one requires strict, long and constant discipline: one wants to challenge the vices of nature: one has to bargain daily and win gluttony, incontinence, avarice, self-love, vainglory, ambition, disdain, ferocity […] and the stronger and better armed those enemies are, as in the case of erudite people/scholars, the more these fights are courageous. (Genovesi 1772, 26–27; emphasis added)

It goes without saying that, in Genovesi’s view, as in Aquinas’ one, affirming that the human being is inclined to virtue does not exclude that virtue may require significant efforts to be obtained; rather, virtue needs “strict, long and constant discipline” (Genovesi 1772, 26–27). Yet, among civil economists was the strong consciousness that moral evil, an expression of human weakness, is not the core element of human beings.

What are the consequences of the social and economic views of Genovesi and, by side, the Civil economy tradition? The first consequence is that the invisible hand is present and operating in the market sphere, but that the common good is provided first and foremost by the virtuous behaviour of economic actors. This is not equal to affirming the total absence of the invisible hand in Genovesi’s thought. Recalling the example of luxury mentioned above (Section 2), Genovesi argued, “One cannot fool nature for long. Luxury comes in order to compel rich people to restore the poorer of what they took dishonestly from the common wealth: and to make slaves free, and the free slaves. (Lezioni, I, chapter 10, §§16–18. Our translation)”. Invisible mechanisms that bring intentional actions towards unintentional outcomes always operate in the market sphere (and in society as a whole). In the society depicted by Genovesi, there is still space for the operation of God’s providence. However, as Genovesi implicitly argues (through Newtonian lexicon) in the following passage, the operations of the invisible hand are not the basic economic driver of the common good of society. They are just the accidental restoration of the order between means (individual actions) and ends (common good):

Each force of the universe is supposed to perpetually follow the end to which it was ordered. However, the individual actions of the forces often deflect off the wire, leading to the highest Good. Sometimes, in order not to roam without order, they ought to aim towards a certain end, not the one established by the First Cause with antecedent and absolute will, but rather an end that necessarily originates from that aberration, and by which such actions abide without contradicting the first cause. (Elementa Metaphysicae, Pars Prior, Propositiones, CLXXXI. Our translation)

Genovesi thus recognised the role of the invisible hand; nevertheless, he gave more weight to the visible fabric of civil virtues. Virtue means a habit acquired through intentional, repeated exercise. Civil virtues means that the habit acquired through intentional exercise is directed towards the common good of society. The intentional research for the common good in the market is what for Genovesi constitutes the essence of the economic sphere. For Genovesi, the fundamental economic principle is “mutual assistance” (or reciprocal assistance), which is a synonymous of civil virtues, meaning that each party involved in a market transaction intentionally wants the interest of the other in addition to their own interests. This economic side of mutual assistance is in line with the general mutual assistance which characterise social life: “friendship and reciprocal trust between citizens foster mutual assistance in life’s troubles” (Lezioni, Chapter 10, our translation). Common good is part of everyone’s intentions alongside their self-interest. For Civil economy humanism, there is no common good without intentionally seeking it. This means that the market is not a space extraneous to other places of common life, a realm of greed to be contained, if not banished, within the city (civitas), while elsewhere (family, civil society, politics) the common good is pursued. Conversely, the fundamental law of the market is mutual benefit, but that law asks us to go beyond itself to the point of recognising a substratum of gratuitousness and trust at the basis of every economic transaction. The civil economists knew that women and men can pursue their own interests while intentionally caring for the interests of the party with whom they are trading or producing and, in so doing, contribute to the good of the society in which they live.

In the first paragraphs of the Lesson of Civil economy (1765–1767), Genovesi clearly adopted the Aristotelian and Thomistic thesis of the social nature of human beings (Bruni and Zamagni 2016; Bruni and Santori 2018). The market is not only the realm of self-interest; there is a form of sociality in the market, a “qualified” sociality, which is a constitutive part of commerce:

Man is a naturally sociable animal: goes the common saying. But not every man will believe there is no other sociable animal on earth […] How is man more sociable than other animals? […] [it is] in his reciprocal right to be assisted and consequently in his reciprocal obligation to help us in our needs. (Lezioni, I, chapter 1, § 1)

The attention to the common good of society and the dimension of public trust (fede pubblica) are all prerequisites for the virtuousness of market transactions (Bruni and Sugden 2008). As clearly expressed from an anthropological point of view, Genovesi believed that neither self-interest nor concern for the good of others was negative (Guasti 2006). The market itself is conceived as an expression of the general law of civil society, reciprocity (which is another name of mutual assistance). Genovesi’s theory of reciprocity, seen as the fundamental law of human relations, also derives from a sort of moral Newtonianism to which he inspired his scientific vision. Like Ferdinando Galiani, Genovesi employed Newtonian terminology to express his views, yet while Galiani¹⁵ wrote that the sole primitive force is “love of money”¹⁶, for Genovesi there are two forces that drive human action: forza concentriva (self-love) and forza diffusiva (love of the others). These two drives are both primitive, and the disequilibrium between the two corresponds to vice (Bruni and Santori 2018).

In a commercial society, this equilibrium can be found and maintained, scilicet the two forces converge towards a common end: mutual benefit. The market is a place in which, through the medium of price mechanisms, human beings are mutually useful and thus assist one another in their respective needs. This is not a naïve interpretation of the market; it is how Genovesi, theoretically and empirically, saw commercial society: as a large-scale effort of cooperation and mutual benefits. To trade is to do a civil activity; for Genovesi, the market means civilisation—this is a point in common with all the “enlightened schools of economic thought”. The great Italian poet (early 19^th century), Giacomo Leopardi wrote in his Zibaldone on this subject, “What if Genovesi had entitled his Lessons of Commerce, Lessons of Trading?” (no. 1423).

How Genovesi described the market coheres with his theodicy, inspired by Aquinas and the whole Christian Catholic tradition. Although “people as they are” are always behind the door, and sometimes invisible hands have to conduce human vices towards the common good, the core of human flourishing lies in his/her ability to overcome evil and find a balance between the two forces that move him. Reciprocity finds in the market sphere one of its more authentic expression, i.e., mutual assistance. This is the reason why, before being the science of the “Wealth of Nations”, Genovesi defined Civil economy as the science of public happiness.¹⁷ The economy is “civil” when it considers the good of the civitas as a determining element of the actions and choices of economic actors, and it is “uncivil” when it promotes economic activities that damage the civitas in all its expressions.

5. Conclusion: the theodicies of political economy and civil economy

The history of the “other” Invisible Hand, the Latin one which we have tried to sketch here via theodicy, is somehow different from the story of the Northern Invisible Hand. It could be argued that Political economy came from the very same “Augustinian” tradition—Calvinism and Jansenism—that influenced the Manichaean theodicy of Bayle. The authors of the Augustinian tradition distanced themselves from Augustine’s views while maintaining an Augustinian framework. They believed that a good political and, consequently, economic order could result from self-love and the individual virtue of prudence. It could be argued that these ideas influenced, to an important extent, Smith’s (Waterman 2002; Pabst 2011) and, later, Malthus’s economic theories. If we adopt this interpretation, Smith’s invisible hand would be the result of the Protestant-Augustinian theodicy as well as Genovesi’s emphasis on mutual assistance sustained by the invisible hand, the result of the Catholic-Thomistic tradition.

However, this is a very controversial thesis, because it begins with a very controversial interpretation of Smith. Not only does it bring back the Chicago Smith (Hühn & Dierksmeier 2016), overemphasising the role of self-interest and the invisible hand for his economic theory, it also seems to ignore other theological sources to which Smith was exposed, namely, natural theology (Oslington 2017), Stoicism (Clarke 2000), and so on. While we found textual evidence of the influence of a Christian tradition in Genovesi, the very same attempt on Smith seems to bring circumstantial rather than unconfutable proofs. Much more analysis is needed to understand the differences between Political and Civil economy and whether they derive from the different philosophical and religious backgrounds from which they emerge.

To conclude, Civil economy seems to add different terms to those recurring in Political economy: common good, reciprocity, virtue, public trust, mutual assistance, and public happiness. These words can be generative only if we go in depth into the history of economics, as the most robust and fruitful trees are the ones with the deepest roots. If we do so, then our comprehension of Civil and Political economy will flourish like the trees of the forest described by Immanuel Kant, which rise high, competing in their efforts to benefit from the sun’s rays.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their comments and feedback. The quality and clarity of the argumentation improved after the peer-review process. About this, we would like to express our gratitude also to the editor Richard Sturn for his competence and accuracy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Due to the amount of literature on the topic, we list in this footnote some of the works without pretense of exhaustiveness: Viner 1972; Davis 1990; Evensky 1993; Waterman, 2002, 2017; Hill 2004; Long 2006; Kennedy 2013; Schwarze and Scott 2015; Oslington 2017; Hengstmengel 2019).

2 The literature is growing: Porta and Scazzieri 2002; Bruni and Sugden 2008; Milbank and Pabst 2016; Bruni and Zamagni 2016; Dal Degan 2018; Pabst 2018; Martino 2020, Santori 2020).

3 On Smith, see Viner 1972; Hill 2001, 2004; Waterman 2002; Oslington 2011, 2017. On Malthus’s, see Santurri 1982; Waterman 2002, 2017; Cremaschi 2014; Oslington 2017.

4 We take Genovesi as representative of civil economy tradition. In doing so, we limit our analysis to the 18th century, and we do not consider later receptions and interpretations of Genovesi’s thought.

5 Even if Genovesi claims the ‘illustrious’ Vico as his “master, a man of everlasting fame” (Lezioni, II, chapter 1. S5, footnote “e”), it remains unclear to what extent he was influenced by Vico’s thought. This does not constitute a problem for our argumentation: we stress some similarities between Vico and Genovesi, but it is the latter who developed the economic view we classify as Civil economy.

6 Bayle is often defined as a Huguenot (French Calvinist), but we only received information on the persecution he suffered against Protestantism and Calvinism, since he was born in a Calvinist family.

7 Jansenism originated in 17th century France, as “a radical reform movement within French Catholicism based on Augustine’s views of the relation between free will and the efficacy of grace” (Buroker 1996, X). The movement was founded by the Dutch C.O. Jansen (1585–1638), who wrote an important work entitled Augustinus. There, we find ‘Augustinian’ theses very close to those of Luther and Reformers. The convergence is also explainable based on their common enemies like the Molinists and Jesuits. French Jansenism flourished in the abbey of Port-Royal, also thanks to its female monastic community. The abbey was later destroyed because of the accusation of ‘heresy’ (1710).

8 Unsurprisingly, Mandeville was highly influenced by Bayle’s ideas. In Mandeville’s Free Thoughts, ‘some 70 references to Bayle have now been identified’ (Van Bunge and Bots 2008, 203).

9 Not only was Bayle quoted in Hume’s Treatise, but ‘from a letter written when he was twenty-one (1732), we have evidence that he—Hume—was reading the French great sceptic Pierre Bayle’ (Wright 2009, 11).

10 “Modi con i quali il popolo possa sfogare l’ambizione sua”. We reported the Italian text because some English translations (Barcenas 2015) translate the word ambizione (ambition) with ‘wishes’, missing the point which Machiavelli was trying to make.

11 Pierre Bayle will highlight ‘some faults in Justus Lipsisus’ translation and comment on Tacitus (Bayle 1738, 281).

12 The following biographical information on Genovesi are taken by Galanti 1772, Racioppi 1871, Genovesi 1963, Zambelli 1972.

13 So far, Genovesi’s works have been not translated in English. Therefore, the reader must acknowledge that all the translations in this chapter have been made by the authors of this paper.

14 This dating is reported in Arata 1978.

15 Galiani was probably the most famous Italian economist of that period. In his treatise Della Moneta (1750), we find presence of the unintended consequences mechanism: “this equilibrium marvelously suits the right abundance of life’s comforts and earthly happiness, although it does not derive from human prudence or virtue, but rather from the vile stimulus for blind profit: Providence, with her infinite love for humankind, conceived of the order of everything so well that those vile passions of ours, often as if to spite us, are ordered towards the good of all.” (Galliani [1750] 1803, 89–90. Our translation). The comment of the Neapolitan economist leaves little room for doubt to be in presence of something close to the Invisible Hand: “I bless the Supreme hand every time I contemplate the order with which everything is constituted to our utility” (Galiani [1750] 1803, 92. Our translation).

16 Galiani had explicit recourse to Newtonian gravitational theory: as, in Newton’s mechanics, planets remain in their orbits because of the action of gravitational law, the same is true in economic transactions, where “love of money, namely the desire of living happy, is in the man exactly what gravity is to physics” (Galiani [1750] 1803, 91). In Galiani’s methodological approach, there is the conviction that love for money is as exact and scientific as the law of gravity. In particular, love of money is the equivalent to the desire of being happy.

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17 Again, there are also Aquinas and the Latin tradition of the ethics of virtue behind this view (Bruni 2006; Santori 2020).