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Abstract: Cesare Beccaria's pamphlet, On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene) of 1764, takes us back to the School of Milan, the core of the Lombard Enlightenment during the latter half of the eighteenth century. This is the only work of the whole School of Milan that almost immediately achieved worldwide fame. Its treatment of the fundamental issues of penal law is one of the main pillars of the age of rights from the Enlightenment down to the present day. To understand the work properly it must be set in context within the utilitarian view of public happiness which was the key element of the whole Italian School at the time.
1 Introduction
The 250th anniversary of Cesare Beccaria's pamphlet, On Crimes and Punishments ('Dei delitti e delle pene'), published anonymously in 1764, is an event that takes us back to the School of Milan, the core of Lombard Enlightenment during the latter half of the eighteenth century. This is the only work of Beccaria and, indeed, of the whole School of Milan, which almost immediately achieved worldwide fame. A proper understanding of Beccaria's thought must start with the Lombard Enlightenment as the prime movement for promoting and spreading scientific knowledge. It is characteristic of the Lombard Enlightenment that public economics occupies centre stage at a time of social and political reform aimed at public happiness.
Pietro Verri was the founder of the Milanese School and its chief economic writer. Bom in Milan in 1728 into a noble family, Verri was convinced that economic science was at the centre of all serious social and political study. At the same time he conceived that economics was part of a more elaborate and multilevel scientific enterprise which had been called economía civile, or civil economy, by the leader of the whole Italian School, Antonio Genovesi (1713-1769). Genovesi in fact held the first Chair in Economics, established at the University of Naples, in 1754.
Pietro Verri established the Accademia dei Pugni ('The Punching Academy') in Milan in 1761. He also launched the periodical II Caffe ('The Coffee House') that is sometimes aptly described as the Italian Spectator. These initiatives served the purpose of gathering together a number of intellectual friends who shared a common...