Antonio Genovesi, an Italian philosopher and political economist, born at Castiglione, near Salerno, Nov. 1, 1712, died in Naples, Sept. 22, 1709. He received priest's orders in Salerno in 1730, and held in succession the chair of rhetoric in the seminary of Salerno, and that of metaphysics in the university of Naples. He substituted the scientific doubt of Descartes and the Baconian laws of induction for the traditional belief in authority. He was threatened with persecution, but explained his views in a satisfactory manner, and was protected by Benedict XIV. In 1754 a chair of public economy was established in the university for Genovesi, by his friend Interi, a wealthy Florentine, who prescribed as one of the conditions of his endowment that no monk should ever be appointed professor. This chair was the first of the kind in Europe. On the expulsion of the Jesuits from Naples in 1767, he was requested by the government to propose a plan of university education. He advised the establishment of chairs of physical science and history, the substitution of mathematics for scholastic philosophy, and a chair for the interpretation of Cicero's Be Officiis. His favorite masters in philosophy, after Bacon and Descartes, were Leibnitz, Locke, and Vico. As an economist Genovesi advocated the abolition of the usury laws and of convents and monasteries, inculcated the doctrines of free trade, and proclaimed before Adam Smith the supremacy of labor in the creation of the wealth of nations.

As early as 1764 he predicted the emancipation of the American colonies, the foundation of the United States, and the total failure of the colonial system. He died as his friends were reading to him the Phaedo of Plato. His works include Elementa Metaphysices; Lezioni di commercio o di economia civile; Dioccsina, relating to the rights and duties of man; Logica pel giovanetti; Instutizioni delle seienze meta-fisiche; Meditazioni filosqfiche; Elementi di fisica sperimentale; Lettere ad un amicoprovinciate; and Lettere accademiche sulla ques-tione se sieno piu felici gli ignoranti che gli scienziati His life has been written in Latin by Fabroni. G. M. Galanti, one of his best pupils, published in 1771 Elogio storico dell abate Genovesi; and Racciopi's Genovesi appeared in 1871.