Emilio Di Somma
Journal of Economics, Theology and Religion, vol. 5, no. 1 (2025): 189-204
Abstract
Economics is a human activity. An understanding of such activity, therefore, cannot be achieved without an effort to understand the human person. As Bruni and Zamagni have affirmed, in their Dizionario di Economia Civile, social scientists and economists must take into account intersubjectivity within their own analysis. Economic relations are just another form of relation between persons. Therefore, an analysis should at least be aware of, if not able to analyze, the “unspoken” in said relations: emotions, beliefs, values, etc. As the theoretical foundation of this proposal, I wish to refer to the work of Antonio Genovesi who, in the eighteenth century, at the peak of Neapolitan Enlightenment, aimed to develop a conception of economic life focused on urban life, and the centrality of human relations for the civil life.
Keywords
Genovesi, Neapolitan Enlightenment, economics, friendship, happiness
Publication history
First view: 23 April 2025
Published: 20 May 2025
1. Introduction
Our societies are currently facing extremely harsh challenges that have been threatening the stability and flourishing of our communities and economies. These include the current wars, the past covid pandemic, the environmental problems, the current economic downward spiral and the political answers to such challenges, not all of which are accepted or approved of by the public and civic society. However, in turn, these challenges have inspired a growing philosophical and theological engagement with economics and politics, helping in shaping a public debate about the truthfulness of the assumptions of contemporary economic and political theories and practices. Christianity has not remained outside of such a debate and theologians, pastors, and faithful brothers and sisters of all Christian denominations are actively participating in the debate about the purposes, aims, and ethicality of our social systems.
There are various institutions, both secular and religious, that are actively working toward this attempt to re-frame and discuss economics approaches. For example, the Re-thinking Economics (RE) initiative is an international network of scholars at economics departments across universities, student associations, and academic societies and groups located on various continents. The Netzwerk Plural Ökonomik (NPO) is an initiative that focuses its activities on German-speaking countries, creating a network of students and young economists as part of the international movement for more diversity in economics. Or, from the religious/Catholic tradition, we could think of the “Economy of Francesco” (EoF), an initiative inspired by a letter written by Pope Francis in May 2019 and addressed to the “young economists and entrepreneurs of all the world,” in which the Pope invited his readers to “re-animate” the economy in a spiritual sense (Francis 2019). Something that all of these initiatives have in common is that they understand Economics as a human activity. Any understanding of such activity, therefore, comes with its own presupposition regarding the nature of the human person and, in any case, cannot be achieved without an effort to understand human nature.
Our current understanding, at a social and cultural level, is strongly shaped by the presupposition of the homo economicus, which, as Harry Hummels has argued in his foreword to the volume Relational Anthropology (van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022), is an interpretation in which the human being is thought to act in accordance with their own interests and aims for personal wealth and well-being (van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022, 1). However, like all attempts to schematize and frame human nature, the homo economicus reveals also the presuppositions and prejudices of those who adopt such a theoretical approach (i.e., contemporary neo-classical economics).
In addition, anthropological frameworks not only influence the way we understand human action; they also—indirectly—encourage a specific code of conduct.[1] One of the major causes of such a moral shift has been determined as the adoption of the homo economicus anthropological framework. As Kate Raworth argues in her Doughnut Economics, the idea of the “rational economic man” stands at the heart of contemporary mainstream economics (Raworth 2017, 81–3). She argues that this anthropological model is also one of the causes of the placement of “utility” at the heart of economic theory and social practices (Raworth 2017, 83–85). This anthropological model not only possesses an explanatory purpose—it also serves an educational one. Raworth argues that the model of the homo economicus not only is used to “explain” certain economic facts but also encourages people to “behave” in a certain way. The idea of the “rational economic man” can influence the way we act in financial markets and may influence the way we act outside of them as well (Raworth 2017, 85–8).
Instead, I believe that it is possible to develop alternative models of comprehension of economic factors through the concept of “community.” I believe this concept offers a crucial lens for understanding economic activity beyond the individual. Instead of focusing solely on individual flourishing, a community-centered approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals and their shared well-being. This perspective aligns with communitarian thought that posits that individual identities are shaped by, and dependent upon, social relationships (Etzioni 1996, 18–22). Furthermore, sociological studies of community highlight the importance of social capital—the networks of relationships and shared norms that enable cooperation and mutual benefit (Putnam 2000, 15–30). By prioritizing the strengthening of community bonds and fostering a sense of collective responsibility, economic practices can contribute to a more just and sustainable society.
This concept also resonates with the proposal advanced in the volume Relational Anthropology, in which the authors attempt to conceive the human being as a being that can “flourish” through the acknowledgment that there are some human tendencies beyond self-interest that should be fostered and encouraged (van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022, 4–5). The aim is not only to produce an alternative framework of understanding of economic problems, but also to encourage and foster positive action within society, understood as a web of complex relations that go beyond the individual, utilitarian, self-interest.
Mainstream economic models, rooted in the homo economicus paradigm, reduce happiness to a calculus of individual preferences satisfied through market transactions, neglecting the relational and moral foundations that sustain genuine well-being. By framing happiness as a private good rather than a collective achievement, these models perpetuate systems that prioritize efficiency over equity, competition over cooperation, and consumption over connection.
In fact, as argued also by Nullens and van Nes, overall human flourishing is hindered by the ongoing dominance of the homo economicus paradigm in contemporary economics, degenerating into problems that have not only personal but also social relevance, as they result in an unsustainable society (not just in environmental terms; van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022, 10−11). Their answer is to wholly rethink human nature and stop emphasizing the rational, desiring, subject that is the core of homo economicus. Thus, they take inspiration from Smith (van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022, 15) by considering the human person as
a conscious, reflexive, embodied, bodied, self-transcending center of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who—as the efficient cause of his or her own responsible actions and interactions—exercises complex capacities for agency and intersubjectivity in order to develop and sustain his or her own incommunicable self in loving relationships with other personal selves and with the nonpersonal world (Smith 2010).
Under these terms, the human person is not just a mix of components. Instead, it constitutes a distinct personal being. It focuses on the realization of the human “good” as a realization of our nature. It is a framework that tries to keep together, consistently, both personal agency and a social context of loving relationships, which become the ground for human flourishing (van Nes, Nullens, and van den Heuvel 2022, 15–16).
I propose this short literature review to add another interpretative layer to the anthropological framework at the foundation of economics by taking inspiration from the economic interpretation of the Scuola di Economia Civile, which focuses not only on the single human being as an economic actor, but locate this actor within a web of “personal” relations within a community.
2. A relational anthropology of civic duty
In the Italian tradition, criticism of the mainstream understanding in economics does not belong only to recent years. An example, dating back to the post-World War II era, can be found in the work of Federico Caffé, one of the most important Keynesian economists of the Italian tradition. According to Caffé, the so-called meritocracy, sustained by the ideology of free, non-responsible markets, is a conservative position that would invite the single individual to simply become rich, while being ignorant of the social and political causes that would make the process of becoming rich something open only to a minority of privileged citizens who would end up controlling the totality of political power within a community. In this sense, Caffè claims that affirmation of the actor’s lack of social responsibility in the markets, and the affirmation of the spontaneity of market processes are culturally regressive paradigms.
We read this, in fact, in his work In difesa del welfare state (in defense of welfare state):
There are serious reasons to believe that the contemporary neoliberal interpretation is a sign of cultural recession. I will briefly summarize these reasons. In the first place, historical experience teaches us that every re-establishment brings in itself the seeds of intolerant extremism. When we see in the recent idea of the rivalry between market and state the denial of the social consequences of the disparity in the “starting points” between individuals, believing them simply a matter of biology, genetics, or of talent, we slide toward inherently racist interpretations. In concrete terms, we end up with criticism of “equalitarianism,” defense of meritocracy and exaltation of “individuality.. However, in a world in which we have done so little to reduce the social causes of the disparity in starting points, I believe that we have more reason to sustain greater equalitarianism than meritocracy, the latter resulting, concretely, merely in the preservation of what already exists (Caffè 1986, 35, own translation).
The political and social spectrum of Italy, in the aftermath of world war II was imbued, then, by a strong sense of social responsibility and the willingness to achieve a redistribution of wealth. This would be driven by a political engine that would guarantee a higher level of political participation in the life of the new republic. This acknowledgement of the social relevance of economic action and its underlying motivations, the reasons for action, and the ethical implications and consequences of economic action has never disappeared from economics in Italian academia.
A contemporary approach to understanding the role of “community” within the economic framework has been offered by the “Scuola di Economia Civile” (School of Civic Economy, SEC). The school is an initiative born in 2012 from a collaboration of scholars and professors with the funding of private and religious institutions, such as “BancaEtica” and the “Associazione Cristiana Lavoratori Italiani.” The school aims to influence public and private entrepreneurship toward an understanding of economics based on people, relations, and places. According to the foundational values of the school, an economy should go beyond conflict and competition and, instead, focus on generative markets that are based on relationality and the gratuity of action between people (Scuola di Economia Civile 2019). The school aims to inspire a cultural and ethical transformation in our understanding of economics, based on virtue, citizenship, and common good. The theoretical framework of the school is rooted in catholic theology and the work of Antonio Genovesi, a writer and economist who lived in Naples in the eighteenth century.
The theoretical framework of the SEC can be traced most effectively by reading and examining the academic work of the scholars and economists involved in the project, one of the most important authors being Luigino Bruni. As Bruni and Zamagni have affirmed, in their Dizionario di Economia Civile, social scientists must take into account the value of intersubjectivity in economic analysis (Bruni and Zamagni 2009, 6). Bruni and Zamagni also make a distinction between “social relation” and “personal relation,” describing the second as more important and fundamental for the wellbeing of society. “Social relations” are, in fact, totally anonymous and can be abstracted by specific subjects, they can be “typified” and described in anonymous and impersonal forms. The second, instead, depends on and relies on the individual subjectivity of the people involved (Bruni and Zamagni 2009, 6–7). In this interpretation, economic relations are described as another form of relation between persons, between subjects. The market is not just the place where “contracts” and “interests” meet, but is also a place where friendships, relationships, and reciprocity are found. The market is another form of the common life, and shares the same fundamental principle—reciprocal assistance. Therefore, an analysis should at least be aware of, if not able to analyze, the “unspoken” in said relations: emotions, beliefs, values, etc. In fact, according to the authors, to reduce the complexity of motivations, drives, and interiority to the merely observable effects of the economic relation is a methodological fallacy (Bruni and Zamagni 2009, 8–9). For this reason, the “contract” and the “interest” cannot be the only theoretical foundation for understanding the market. Based on (not always) reciprocal advantage, it also needs love, agape, and to be a place of reciprocity and assistance. In the interpretation of the SEC, the human person is influenced by many factors that can be understood only when these motivations bring the actor into a relationship with another. According to the author, an economic framework based on this kind of anthropology would also be able to analyze and evaluate other ways of relating that do not immediately sit perfectly within economic action (such as gratuitous action or gift-giving; Bruni and Zamagni 2009, 9).
Bruni had already proposed this theoretical framework in his 2006 work, Civil Happiness, in which he described the market as a place in which it is possible to experience genuine interpersonal relations. According to Bruni, the current theoretical landscape in economics understands interpersonal relations only as “externalities,” something that is outside the boundary of economic studies (Bruni 2006, 1–2, 18–20, 108–11), moreover, it disregards non-instrumental relations (Bruni 2006, 40–2). According to Bruni, this disregard for non-instrumental relations has also had an influence on the way the principle of happiness is understood in economics where it has become a self-focusing, individualistic principle, quickly identified with the principle of pleasure, and further restricting ethical analysis in economic theory (Bruni 2006, 9–12, 43–5). The result, Bruni points out, is that a concept of happiness based on genuine sociality becomes estranged and excluded from a framework that considers only a dichotomy between happiness and sociality. The theoretical framework seems to have been limited, so far, in considering happiness either as absence of pain, or as pleasure. The ethical and interpersonal dimension of happiness has been overlooked by most academic economic reflection (Bruni 2006, 42–8).
Bruni’s critique of mainstream economics reveals a deeper lacuna: the absence of community both as a moral framework and as an operational structure for human flourishing. Whereas neoliberal models treat community as an incidental byproduct of individual transactions—a mere aggregation of self-interested actors—the Scuola di Economia Civile repositions it as the telos of economic life. Community, in this relational paradigm, emerges not from calculated exchanges but from the irreducible interdependence of persons who recognize their shared vulnerability and mutual responsibility. This aligns with Etzioni’s communitarian assertion that individual agency gains meaning only within a “moral ecology” of reciprocal obligations. In this way, prosperity becomes a communal project rather than a private metric, fostering what Putnam terms “bridging social capital”—trust networks that span diverse socioeconomic groups. Crucially, it can be argued that such models operationalize Genovesi’s eighteenth-century vision of the market as a piazza, a public square where economic activity strengthens civic bonds through “assistance without calculation.” Unlike transactional market relations, which anonymize participants, community-centered economies thrive on particularity: knowing the farmer who grows one’s food, the artisan who crafts one’s tools, and the neighbor whose welfare depends on collective fiscal choices. This epistemic shift—from anonymity to relational specificity—challenges the neoliberal separation of economic and ethical domains, insisting instead that markets, like all human institutions, are inherently moral spaces requiring intentional cultivation of solidarity.
As a critique of this interpretation, and to propose a re-discovery of the multi-faceted values of happiness within a community, I want to refer to the work of Antonio Genovesi who, in the eighteenth century, at the peak of Neapolitan Enlightenment, aimed to develop a conception of economic life revolving around the life of a urban community, and the centrality of human relations on which such life is built (Bruni 2006, 48–50).
3. Antonio Genovesi: friendship and community
Genovesi describes happiness as the “summum bonum” (Genovesi 2005) that comes from natural obligations between humans and from the subsequent pacts that provide the foundation for the life of a community (Bruni 2006, 51). This interpretation of the human’s role in society rests on a relational anthropology that focuses on the human capacity of “forming relations.” In this sense, it resonates with the proposal of the Homo Florens to the extent that it aims to consider, within economic studies, the human capacity for reciprocity and the necessity to establish authentic relations with other human persons. The human being is a creature that is eminently social and fully expresses its own individuality only in relation to the other. Happiness, then, can flourish only within genuine relationships that are not merely instrumental and that allow the human being to be “happy in a happy community” (Bruni 2006, 66–8).
Genovesi’s economic philosophy emerged from the vibrant intellectual milieu of mid-eighteenth-century Naples, a city grappling with the contradictions of Spanish Habsburg rule, agrarian crises, and the intellectual ferment of the European Enlightenment. Unlike the French Enlightenment’s radical individualism or the Scottish Enlightenment’s focus on commercial society, the Neapolitan tradition—led by thinkers such as Giambattista Vico and later Genovesi—emphasized the organic development of communities through shared cultural practices and moral reciprocity. This regional Enlightenment was deeply pragmatic, seeking not abstract universal principles but solutions to concrete problems of poverty, feudal exploitation, and civic disenfranchisement. Within Genovesi’s framework, natural law originates from God but manifests through human relations rather than dictatorial command. This represents a crucial departure from both scholastic natural law traditions and Enlightenment rationalism. For example, where Thomas Aquinas emphasized participation in eternal law through reason, and Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke stressed individual rights derived from nature, Genovesi locates natural law in the intersubjective space between persons. His catechism establishes that we discover divine intention, not through isolated contemplation but through engagement with others—a position that directly informs his economic thought.
Genovesi himself was highly aware of the value of pragmatic and reciprocal relationships born within the community. In fact, we can read, in his Lezioni
Every person has a natural and inherent obligation to study how to procure his/her happiness; but the political body is made of persons; therefore, the entire political body and each of its members is obligated to do his/her part, i.e. all that he/she knows and can do for common prosperity, as long as that which is done does not offend the rights of the other civil bodies. This obligation, from the civil body, with beautiful and divine ties, returns to each family and each person for the common pacts of the society. Each family and every person are under two obligations to do that which they can to procure public happiness: one comes from within nature, and the other comes from the subsequent pacts of communities. A third obligation can be added, that of one’s own utility. That which Shaftesbury (Inquiry of Virtue and Merit) said will be eternally true: he said that the true utility is the daughter of virtue; because it is eternally true that the great depth of every man is the love for those with whom he lives. This is the love that is the daughter of virtue (Genovesi 2005, 39).
According to Bruni, this passage illustrates the elements underlying the connection between civil life and Public Happiness, which is the foundation for the framework of the tradition of Civil Happiness (Bruni 2006, 51). However, we can also consider it as the acknowledgment of the value of mutua assistenza (mutual assistance) for the development of a positive economic system based on the idea that human survival and flourishing depend on cooperation rather than competition.
There is a continuity with the classic tradition, through the understanding of happiness as the summum bonum, the greatest good. But there is also a vision of a “happy citizens within happy society,” understanding, that is, the social reality of happiness. In addition, as Bruni points out, although Genovesi recognises that Public Happiness comes from a natural obligation, at the same time he acknowledges that Public Happiness also “comes from the subsequent original pacts of community living.” This is a clear reference to the contractualist tradition, which is not seen in opposition to the “natural law”: in Genovesi the two approaches go hand-in-hand, reinforcing each other (Bruni 2006, 51). In this sense, I agree with Bruni that Genovesi can be understood as a figure that embodies the theoretical connection between the classic traditional view and the modern view of society based on private interests and utility.
As Paola Zambella has also affirmed in her La Formazione Filosofica di Antonio Genovesi, which studies the education and philosophical influences that nourished Genovesi’s reflection, Genovesi was strongly influenced by the enlightenment; however, he was also strongly influenced by religious thinkers such as Ludovico Antonio Muratori, who still argued for a moderate enlightenment and a coherent integration with religious sensibilities. Together with this integration, there was also a strong consideration of science and knowledge in their pragmatic and social utility. Society as a whole had to benefit from the increased knowledge (Zambella 1972, 155–8). The economy does not escape this connection and has to be studied, learned, and conceived of in its connection with public culture and public education. Drawing from both Aristotelian conceptions of political animals and Christian theology’s emphasis on charity, Genovesi is a figure that shows us the importance of markets established on reciprocity rather than mere exchange. Because of this, we can use his work as an argument that economic relations are not just voluntary associations between autonomous agents but necessary expressions of human interdependence.
Vico’s historicism was another strong influence, inspiring Genovesi to address the actual reality of the human being in a community—the real social life, its contradictions and struggles, and how to overcome them (Zambella 1972, 261–2). In this respect, according to Zambelli, concepts that Vico presented in the Scienza Nuova will still be present also in Genovesi’s economic writings. Both thinkers rejected Descartes’ cogito as the foundation of knowledge, arguing instead that truth emerges through communal praxis. For Vico, human institutions—language, laws, myths—constitute “civil proofs” of our capacity to shape history. His tripartite historical cycles (divine, heroic, human) demonstrated that societies evolve through collective acts of meaning-making rather than individual reason alone. Their shared emphasis on cultural specificity challenged the universalizing pretensions of Franco-British Enlightenment thought. While Voltaire dismissed Naples as a feudal backwater, Vico and Genovesi showcased its unique capacity to synthesize classical, Christian, and commercial traditions—a theme later explored in Benedetto Croce’s History of the Kingdom of Naples (Croce 1925, bk 1, 1162–70).
Bruni also considers Vico’s influence on Genovesi’s work, especially in its consideration of the heterogenesis of the ends, in which human ends and aims end up contributing to the great plan of divine providence. In Vico’s approach it becomes clear that the mechanism of the heterogenesis of ends is subsidiary to civil virtues. In social life, through institutions, laws, and education, private interests canbe guided by providence towards the common good, with the aim of achieving Public Happiness. Genovesi adapted this framework but replaced Vico’s cyclical model with a teleological progression toward pubblica felicità (public happiness). We can see this in his work of 1766, Diceosina, where he reimagined providence as an immanent force driving communities toward cooperative economics (Genovesi 1795, 5–10). For this reason, Bruni interprets Genovesi’s philosophy in order to maintain that individual utility becomes (private and public) happiness only in civil society (Bruni 2006, 60).
The implications of Genovesi’s interpretation of economy become even more clear in his discussion of trust (fiducia). In his “Discorso sopra il vero fine delle lettere e delle scienze” (1754), Genovesi inquired on why Naples was not a developed nation like other States in Italy or in northern Europe. Naples had many geographic advantages, fostered a circle of gifted intellectuals, and was well placed for the development of commerce (Genovesi 1979,246). What had gone wrong? Genovesi’s answer, which comes at the end of his “Discorso,” is that Naples lacks buon costume, good customs, “the most efficacious … cause of the wealth, power and happiness of a people” (Genovesi 1979, 268). For Genovesi, then, trust is the civil virtue, and is an essential economic resource:
it is my opinion that nothing can be more certain than virtue, and only the virtue of citizens, is the greatest means for sovereigns to use in order to make the arts flourish, and multiply the productive action of goods and riches and increase the industry and income of the nations (Lezioni, I, chapter 14, §15). … Nothing is more true: good habits and virtues are the primary forces driving the arts, opulence, and the happiness of every nation (Genovesi 2005, ch. 14, 174).
Through trust, then, it becomes possible to establish a series of relations between members of the community. In his Diceosina, Genovesi distinguishes three types of relationships: utility-based exchanges (market transactions), pleasure-based inter-actions (social enjoyment), virtue-based friendships (shared commitment to common good.) While acknowledging the necessity of the first two, Genovesi argued that only virtue-based friendships could sustain long-term economic development. He observed that Neapolitan trade guilds, religious confraternities, and mutual aid societies often outperformed state-led initiatives because their members were united by philia (friendship-love) rather than mere profit motives (Genovesi 1795, Book I, 101–105, Book II, 75–81). Trade is a mutually beneficial activity and is the source of the wealth of nations, however, to understand this process, we must understand what prompts and encourages commerce itself (Bruni 2006, 62), because the relation of utility can be established only when the fundamentals for achieving a sense of “community” are are already in place in some way. Genovesi argues that the most important precondition for commerce is trust—for the economic and social development of a nation
nothing is more necessary than public trust [fede publica] in a wide and easy circulation. … Trust is for civil bodies what the law of gravity is for natural bodies. … From the life of primitive people it is possible to realise how important it is to keep increasing trade. There, because of lack of trust, there is no reciprocal reliability, no society, no industry and no trade among peoples (Genovesi 2005, ch. 10, 133; Bruni 2006, 62).[2]
Genovesi dedicates an entire chapter of the second volume of the Lezioni to the subject of public trust (Genovesi 2005, ch. 10 “Della Fede Pubblica,” that is “On Public Trust”). He includes in public trust ethical trust, economic trust, and political trust. Ethical trust is “the reciprocal confidence that every citizen has in the probity and justice of the other, that is, simple conventions and promises.” Economic trust, instead, is “the security which springs from the certainty of funds on which to ground debts.” Political trust is “finally [there is the trust which] comes from conventions and promises sustained by the civil law … [and] by the wisdom and strength of the state…” (Genovesi 2005, ch. 10, 135–6). Fede Pubblica is made of all these components, which are essential for commerce and development, resulting in the creation of prosperity and wealth (Bruni 2006, 63). For Genovesi, the solution to Naples’ problem was the cultivation of all forms of trust, but especially of ethical trust. As a true Enlightenment thinker, Genovesi believes that true virtue is recommended by correct reason. Thus, the way to make people virtuous is to give them a rational education. The interconnection between trust (fede pubblica) and natural law in Antonio Genovesi’s economic philosophy represents a sophisticated synthesis of Enlightenment rationalism, Thomistic theology, and Neapolitan civic humanism. For Genovesi, trust was not merely a pragmatic lubricant for market transactions but the sacramental expression of humanity’s divine vocation to build communities reflecting God’s providential design. For Genovesi, fede pubblica constituted an active virtue—a “spiritual currency” that gains value through circulation. Trust transcends social utility to become humanity’s participation in the Logos—the divine reason structuring creation.
Genovesi’s integration of fede pubblica with natural law creates a sacramental dimension to economic exchange. Just as sacraments in Catholic theology make visible an invisible grace, Genovesi suggests that trust-based economic relations make visible the invisible divine order structuring creation. This sacramental understanding distinguishes Genovesi from utilitarian approaches that reduce trust to calculated risk management. For Genovesi, the merchant who honors contracts, the artisan who crafts with integrity, and the buyer who pays fairly are not merely maximizing utility but participating in the divine economy of grace. This community-centric perspective emerges from Genovesi’s understanding of natural law as fundamentally relational rather than individualistic. To complete this argument, Genovesi must show how reason endorses ethical trust. He does this by way of what he calls the “little catechism of natural law” (Genovesi 2005, ch. 10, 145–7). The catechism, discussed in chapter 10 of the second volume of his Lezioni, can be summarized as follows:
- Nature and reason both push us to seek happiness.
- No human condition is more unhappy than that of being alone, separated from any relations with other people.
- Thus, we must try to be sociable with one another and to cultivate the virtues which enable us to live companionable and friendly lives.
- But sociability is not enough for human society; there is human society only when men are united by the will to be useful to one another.
- The peculiarity of human society is that it is based on friendship, based on rationality, not reciprocal pleasure.
- This kind of rational society cannot be achieved unless the people who compose it are reciprocally and sincerely friendly with one another.
- Men cannot be sincerely friendly with each other unless they have sincere confidence in one another.
- Only where everyone is persuaded of each other’s virtue and piety can there be this sincere confidence.
- As soon as any member of society is known to be ready to offend and deceive people, everyone sees him as one with whom it is impossible to deal or to communicate.
- Such a person is excluded from all social relationships, and can get none of the comforts that make life pleasurable.
- It is impossible that such a situation can last for long; the community will soon send that person away from civil and natural society.
Genovesi’s catechism establishes that the community—bound together by trust—constitutes the basic structure through which natural law operates. Economic activity becomes not merely about satisfying individual preferences but about cultivating communities that reflect divine intention. His catechism establishes that God’s commands address communities before they address individuals, making economic prosperity inseparable from civic flourishing. Trust becomes not merely a means to facilitate exchange but the glue binding together communities in their collective vocation. For Genovesi, fede pubblica allows communities to transcend mere contractual association and become living embodiments of natural law’s demands. This vision directly challenges contemporary economic paradigms that position trust as either an emergent property of self-interested exchange or an externality to be managed. For Genovesi, trust constitutes the very foundation of economic life precisely because it expresses natural law’s divine imprint. His catechism establishes that God has designed human nature for trustworthiness, making fede pubblica not merely a social convention but the fulfilment of humanity’s created purpose. Economic institutions that foster trust are not merely efficient but faithful to divine intention.
Bruni also notices how this catechism develops a strong association between friendship and trust. To a contemporary scholar in economics, this may require something akin to a theoretical leap. In fact, today, we tend to interpret friendship as a private matter, a relation between single persons based on emotions, while the activity of the market is described as rather impersonal, based on more objective matters of common interest. However, Bruni notes that Genovesi would not agree with such a distinction. As the first propositions in the catechism make clear, he believes in a universal human desire for social relationships and understands this desire as the first motivation for social cooperation (Bruni 2006, 65).
The ultimate connection between fede pubblica and natural law in Genovesi’s thought emerges in his conception of happiness (pubblica felicità; Genovesi 2005, ch. 10, 155–7). Unlike utilitarian frameworks that reduce happiness to preference satisfaction, Genovesi’s catechism establishes that true happiness lies in alignment with natural law through trust-based community. Economic prosperity serves not merely material comfort but spiritual fulfillment through participation in divine purpose.
This conception transforms Genovesi’s economic vision from mere material management to spiritual formation. His catechism establishes that God intends economic activity not merely for subsistence but for communion—making trust the vehicle through which economic relations become spiritually meaningful. Fede pubblica enables markets to fulfill their divine purpose as spaces where humanity experiences not merely exchange but mutual recognition of dignity grounded in natural law.
4. Conclusion: from friendship to prosperity
The exploration of Bruni’s analyses of mainstream economics has revealed a fundamental lacuna: the absence of authentic human relationality within economic theory and practice. This oversight has reduced economic activity to a mechanistic interplay of rational actors pursuing individual utility maximization, thereby stripping economics of its inherently social and moral dimensions. By revisiting Genovesi’s vision of civil economy, we discover a paradigm in which happiness—pubblica felicità—emerges not as an individualistic pursuit but as the flourishing of communities bound together by reciprocal care and mutual assistance.
I argue, through the short intellectual journey through Genovesi’s economic philosophy, that our contemporary economic crisis is, at its core, anthropological in nature. The homo economicus model has not merely described economic behavior; it has prescribed a mode of being that systematically undermines the relational foundations upon which human flourishing depends. The atomistic, utility-maximizing individual of neoclassical economics exists in stark contrast to Genovesi’s vision of persons embedded within webs of reciprocity, whose economic activities simultaneously strengthen communal bonds and advance material well-being.
However, how can we understand this disposition towards friendship? Bruni suggests that we should interpret the logic of Genovesi’s argument as an attempt to embed reciprocity within our social relations, reciprocity that is understood, however, in a non instrumental way. If we describe friendship as a “disposition,” then we are not simply talking about an expectation based on interest. I do not help others expecting an immediate, obligatory, return for my assistance; at the same time, a disposition is not an act of pure benevolence, it still bases itself on a certain awareness that there will be reciprocity, at some point, within the social relation. As Bruni affirms, the friendly person wants to be useful to others, having confidence in their wanting to be useful to him or her (Bruni 2006, 66). This revisioning of economics through the lens of community and relationality opens several pathways for theoretical development and practical application. First, it demands a methodological shift away from mathematical abstractions of individual behavior toward empirical studies of economic relations as they actually occur within communities. Genovesi’s approach suggests that we must study economics not merely as the aggregation of individual choices but as the expression of communal values and shared commitments.
The question, then, becomes: what is a rational expectation of reciprocity, an expectation involving individual persons or a collective, or perhaps both? Here Bruni notices that Genovesi’s aphorisms reveal a fundamental ambiguity that he resolves by assuming the best answer to be “for both”(Bruni 2006, 66). Bruni interprets the content of the first eight propositions as:
We, that is, human beings collectively, can achieve happiness only in societies; societies are possible only among people who are disposed to be useful to one another; within any putative society, everyone’s having that disposition is possible only if everyone is disposed towards sincere friendship, and confident that the others are so disposed. It would be a natural continuation to say: So let us all cultivate the disposition of friendship(Bruni 2006, 66).
Moreover, the community-centered paradigm fundamentally transforms our understanding of market interactions. Rather than viewing markets as morally neutral mechanisms for resource allocation, we can recognize them as social institutions whose structures either nurture or undermine the conditions for genuine human flourishing. Markets, in Genovesi’s view, serve not merely economic functions but civic purposes—they create spaces for the exercise of virtues like trust, reciprocity, and mutual concern. This perspective challenges the sharp dichotomy between market and non-market spheres that characterizes much contemporary economic thought, suggesting instead that all economic activity is embedded within moral communities.
The last propositions of Genovesi’s catechism warn everyone that when we fail to care for the virtues of friendship, then there will be heavy consequences for everyone’s happiness, including the one that breaches the pact of friendship. These consequences are paid in the form of societal dues, more than material self-interest. The implications of this shift extend beyond academic discourse to questions of economic policy and institutional design. If we accept that human flourishing depends on the quality of communal relationships, then policies aimed solely at maximizing growth or efficiency—without regard for their impact on community bonds—may ultimately undermine the very well-being they purport to advance. Instead, policymakers should evaluate economic interventions based on their capacity to strengthen social ties, foster reciprocity, and promote civic virtue. This might entail, for instance, privileging local production networks over globalized supply chains when the latter erode community resilience, or designing tax policies that reward cooperative rather than extractive business models.
Genovesi, then, speaks to both individuals and communities. As persons, we can form relationships of friendships, thus achieving happiness with others. As communities, when we found our own social structures on ties of honest friendship, we can achieve prosperity and happiness not just for our own, but for our fellows as well. The path forward requires not abandoning markets but reimagining them as spaces where communities enact their shared commitments to reciprocity, care, and mutual assistance. In this vision, the economy becomes not a domain separate from community life but an integral expression of our fundamental interdependence—a venue for realizing the pubblica felicità that emerges when we recognize that true happiness lies not in isolated consumption but in relationships characterized by mutual recognition and care.
References
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Notes
[1] There are studies that indicate that economics professors and students have a diminished tendency toward prosocial behavior and a general disregard for altruistic values and behavior. See, among other studies, Frank, Gilovich, and Regan (1993); Frank and Schulze (2000); Wang, Malhotra, and Murnighan (2011); Molinsky, Grant, and Margolis (2012).
[2] In addition, Bruni notes how Genovesi, in a footnote, adds an interesting point: “The [Latin] word fides means rope that ties and unites. Public faith (fede pubblica) is therefore the bond of families united in companionship.”
