Uploaded September 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Recording of the talk “The Filangieri-Franklin Correspondence: a 240-year long discourse between Italy and the US”, held at the Institute of European Studies at University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday, September 27, 2022: https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ies/?event_ID=146884
This talk was sponsored by the
Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, the American Philosophical Society, The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), and the University of Naples Federico II.
00:00 Jeroen Dewulf (IES, UC Berkeley)
04:19 Patrick Spero (American Philosophical Society)
09:00 Sergio Strozzi (Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco)
11:05 Annamaria Di Giorgio (Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco)
14:05 Jeroen Dewulf (IES, UC Berkeley)
14:33 Antonio Giordano (National Italian American Foundation)
19:00 Amedeo Arena (University of Naples Federico II)
Abstract:
On August 24, 1782, the Neapolitan Enlightenment philosopher Gaetano Filangieri sent his first letter to Benjamin Franklin, who had already received two volumes of Filangieri's treatise on good government,The Science of Legislation, from a mutual acquaintance, the Neapolitan diplomat Luigi Pio. A lively correspondence ensued and lasted until 1788, the year of Filangieri’s untimely death, just a few days short of his 35th birthday. With his last letter to Filangieri, dated October 14, 1787, Franklin enclosed a copy of the US Constitution as a token of his gratitude for Filangieri’s “invaluable work” on legislation. While the extent of Filangieri’s influence on Franklin and, through him, on the making of the US Constitution is still being assessed by scholars from several countries, the Filangieri-Franklin correspondence certainly marks the starting point of a discourse on certain values shared by many Italians and Americans, values that are still relevant nowadays and that are central to the identity of both nations. This talk by Prof. Amedeo Arena will examine some of those shared values as well as their most relevant historical concretizations.
Recording of the talk “The Filangieri-Franklin Correspondence: a 240-year long discourse between Italy and the US”, held at the Institute of European Studies at University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday, September 27, 2022: https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ies/?event_ID=146884
This talk was sponsored by the
Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, the American Philosophical Society, The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), and the University of Naples Federico II.
00:00 Jeroen Dewulf (IES, UC Berkeley)
04:19 Patrick Spero (American Philosophical Society)
09:00 Sergio Strozzi (Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco)
11:05 Annamaria Di Giorgio (Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco)
14:05 Jeroen Dewulf (IES, UC Berkeley)
14:33 Antonio Giordano (National Italian American Foundation)
19:00 Amedeo Arena (University of Naples Federico II)
Abstract:
On August 24, 1782, the Neapolitan Enlightenment philosopher Gaetano Filangieri sent his first letter to Benjamin Franklin, who had already received two volumes of Filangieri's treatise on good government,The Science of Legislation, from a mutual acquaintance, the Neapolitan diplomat Luigi Pio. A lively correspondence ensued and lasted until 1788, the year of Filangieri’s untimely death, just a few days short of his 35th birthday. With his last letter to Filangieri, dated October 14, 1787, Franklin enclosed a copy of the US Constitution as a token of his gratitude for Filangieri’s “invaluable work” on legislation. While the extent of Filangieri’s influence on Franklin and, through him, on the making of the US Constitution is still being assessed by scholars from several countries, the Filangieri-Franklin correspondence certainly marks the starting point of a discourse on certain values shared by many Italians and Americans, values that are still relevant nowadays and that are central to the identity of both nations. This talk by Prof. Amedeo Arena will examine some of those shared values as well as their most relevant historical concretizations.
