Ferdinando Galiani - Wikipedia Ferdinando Galiani From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Ferdinando Galiani. Ferdinando Galiani (2 December 1728, Chieti, Kingdom of Naples – 30 October 1787, Naples, Kingdom of Naples) was an Italian economist, a leading Italian figure of the Enlightenment. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to him as "a most fastidious and refined intelligence" [1] as well as "... the most profound, sharp-sighted and perhaps also the foulest man of his century." [2] Contents 1 Biography 2 Published works 2.1 Della moneta 2.2 Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds 3 Attitude to physiocrats 4 Works 5 References 6 Sources 7 External links Biography[edit] Della moneta, 1780 Born in Chieti, he was carefully educated by his uncle, Monsignor Celestino Galiani,[3] in Naples and Rome with a view to entering the church. Galiani showed early promise as an economist, and even more as a wit. By the age of twenty-two, after he took orders,[4] he had produced two works by which his name became widely known far beyond the bounds of Naples. The first, Della Moneta, a disquisition on coinage in which he shows himself a strong supporter of mercantilism, deals with many aspects of the question of exchange, but always with a special reference to the state of confusion then presented by the monetary system of the Neapolitan government. The other, Raccolta in Morte del Boia, established his fame as a humorist, and was highly popular in Italian literary circles at the end of the 18th century. In this volume Galiani parodied, in a series of discourses on the death of the public hangman, the styles of Neapolitan writers of the day.[5] Galiani's political knowledge and social qualities brought him to the attention of King Charles of Naples and Sicily (afterwards Charles III of Spain) and his liberal minister Bernardo Tanucci, and in 1759 Galiani was appointed secretary to the Neapolitan embassy in Paris. He held this post for ten years, when he returned to Naples and was made a councillor of the tribunal of commerce, and in 1777 administrator of the royal domains. Galiani's published works focus on the area of humanities as well as social sciences. He left a large number of letters which are not only of biographical interest but are also important for the light they cast on the social, economic, and political characteristics of eighteenth-century Europe. His economic reputation was mainly due to his book written in French and published 1769 in Paris, namely, his Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds, "Dialogues on the commerce in wheat". This work, by its light and pleasing style, and its vivacious wit, delighted Voltaire, who described it as a cross between Plato and Molière. The author, says Giuseppe Pecchio,[6] treated his arid subject as Fontenelle did the vortices of Descartes, or Algarotti the Newtonian system of the world. The question at issue was that of the freedom of the corn trade, then much agitated, and, in particular, the policy of the royal edict of 1764, which permitted the exportation of grain so long as the price had not reached a certain level. The general principle he maintains is that the best system in regard to this trade is to have no system — countries in different circumstances requiring, according to him, different modes of treatment. Similarly to Voltaire and even Pietro Verri, he held that one country cannot gain without another losing, and in his earlier treatise defended the action of governments in debasing the currency. Until his death in Naples, Galiani kept up a correspondence with his old Parisian friends, notably Louise d'Épinay;[7] this was published in 1818. See L'abate Galiani, by Alberto Marghieri (1878), and his correspondence with Tanucci in Giampietro Vieusseux's L'Archivio storico (Florence, 1878). Published works[edit] Della moneta[edit] Main article: Della Moneta In 1751, while still a student, Galiani wrote a book entitled Della moneta which intervened in the Neapolitan debate on economic reform. In this book, he discussed financial politics and gave opinions on how to develop the Neapolitan economy. At the same time, he proposed a theory of value based on utility and scarcity; this depth of thinking on economic value would not be seen again until discussions of marginal utility developed in the 1870s. In addition, Galiani's tract exhibited conventional Mercantilist ideas and some of his recommendations were adopted by the Neapolitan government. Chapter 1 of Book I introduces the history of money as well as the rise and fall of states in antiquity and modern times. By using historical examples, Galiani illustrated his idea that commerce was neglected by political rulers throughout the whole history of humankind. States could become rich and grew through the conquest; however, they could not enhance their power, territory and wealth without commerce. In the core chapter of the book, Galiani explained that the value of money at any point in time derived from principles that were part of human nature itself; money was definitely not a human invention by which people deliberately changed the societies they lived in. Money generated naturally from the gradual modification of people's loves into social ideas of value that inspired commercial interaction. Money exists without relying on promises, trust, or another moral capacity of self-restraint and money is not created by an agreement. If this situation was changed, commerce could not be the centre of modern societies. In Della moneta, Galiani constantly described the effects of human actions in terms of providential rewards and punishments. He used the term "providence" to reconcile the historical dynamic of commercial progress with a set of fixed moral rules that lay at the core of successful human interaction. Galiani presented any moralistic dismissals of natural price formation and self-interested profit-seeking as reproaches to the way God intended human societies to function. Providential mechanisms were also involved in the history of money, the rise and fall of states in both antiquity and modernity and regulated the development of cultural characteristics of the dominant societies in the course of time. Throughout history man constantly reshaped the fictional moral beliefs, thereby creating the mental preconditions for commercial society. Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds[edit] During the period of being a diplomat in Paris, Galiani wrote Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds, which emphasized the importance for the regulation of commerce — an argument that opposed the physiocrats, who advocated complete freedom. This book was published in 1770 and Galiani indicated in this book that there are increasing returns to manufacturing, and diminishing returns to agriculture and the wealth of a nation depends on manufacturing and trade. Although approving of the edict of 1764 liberalizing the grain trade, Galiani rejected much of the physiocratic analysis, notably its "land theory of value". His 1770 piece also provided a quite modern analysis of the balance of payments. In the Dialogues, Galiani described that wheat can be seen in two different aspects. The distinctions between two different aspects are important: as a product of the earth, wheat can be considered both commerce and economic legislation. As a product of first necessity, wheat is a symbol of social order and belongs to administration. As Galiani put it in an illuminating way, ‘As soon as supplying [wheat] is the concern of administration, it is no longer an object of commerce’. Correspondingly, ‘It is certain that what is sensible and useful from one standpoint, becomes absurd and harmful from another’. Galiani believed that there are many shocks to the economy, which can cause disequilibrium and it takes long time for the restoration of equilibrium. He thanked that something instead of the natural law needed to face the challenge and shocks. Administration dealt with the ‘sudden movements’ of the economy, such as shortages in the wheat supply. In other words, the legislator could not but consider the down-to-earth constraints of subsistence. In this respect, the physiocratic enlightened despot consistently and independently ruling economic matters according to natural laws was not enough to maintain social order. Attitude to physiocrats[edit] Galiani not only has theoretical brilliance with his idea of “natural” laws in economics, but also was a practical man, skeptical about the reach of abstract theory, particularly when action was necessary and urgent. He was repelled by the wide-eyed policies called for by the physiocrats, which he believed were, unrealistic, impractical and, in times of crisis, downright dangerous. Galiani disagreed with the physiocratic argument which is said that in order to provide a sufficient supply of grain, it suffices to establish a completely free trade. In fact, the foreign trade agreed with the physiocrats that internal free trade can benefit the economy. However, Galiani used the case of exportation to challenge the physiocrats. At one point in the Dialogues, he even stated: ‘Here I am not talking about the internal liberty of trade… Let us talk foreign trade’ (Galiani 1770, 224-5). Whereas the physiocrats advocated total liberty both domestically and internationally, Galiani believed internal liberty was the first priority. Even though he was not totally opposed to grain exportation, Galiani often condemned the physiocratic liberty to export grain. Precisely, he argued that the foreign trade can threaten domestic liberty, for the frontier provinces of the kingdom may find foreign markets more attractive than domestic ones. Therefore, as long as there is no certainty as to the existence of a permanent surplus, Galiani claimed, the nation must concentrate its efforts on the internal circulation of grain. For him, the physiocrats were a dangerous group of impractical men with wrong ideas. In 1768, as France collapsed in a near-famine, the physiocrats still called for "non-action", muttering on their ordre naturel and the glorious wisdom of Quesnay, which galvanized of making their own remarkable contributions in opposition. Works[edit] Della moneta, 1750 Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds, 1770 Doveri dei prìncipi neutrali, 1782 References[edit] ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (1996). Christopher Middleton (ed.). Selected letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Translated by Middleton. Hackett Publishing. p. 274. ISBN 0-87220-358-1. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (1886). "II 26". Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil). Ian Johnston (trans.). ^ See Fausto Nicolini, Un grande educatore italiano, Celestino Galiani (Naples, 1951) ^ He is usually referred to, in French contexts, as the "abbé Galiani". ^ Acton, Harold (1957). The Bourbons of Naples (1731-1825). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571249015. ^ Pecchio, Storia della economia pubblica in Italia: ossia epilogo critico 1829. ^ This correspondence furnished the material for Francis Steegmuller, A Woman, A Man and Two Kingdoms: The story of Mme d'Épinay and the Abbé Galiani, 1991. Sources[edit]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Galiani, Ferdinando". Encyclopædia Britannica. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 401. External links[edit] Works by or about Ferdinando Galiani in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Edward Howland (1873). "The Abbé Galiani". Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art and Politics. March 1873. pp. 299–308. Retrieved 4 September 2016. S. G. Tallentyre (1905). "The Fellow-Workers of Voltaire - Galiani". Macmillan's Magazine. May 1905. pp. 68–80. Retrieved 4 September 2016. v t e Mercantilists Antonio Serra Gerard de Malynes Edward Misselden Thomas Mun Jean Bodin Jean-Baptiste Colbert Josiah Child William Petty Charles Davenant Ferdinando Galiani James Denham-Steuart Philipp Wilhelm von Hornick Authority control BIBSYS: 90568133 BNE: XX1654807 BNF: cb12319544b (data) CANTIC: a11510687 CiNii: DA02054678 GND: 118689258 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\046954 ISNI: 0000 0001 0881 8489 LCCN: n50017358 LNB: 000165353 NKC: ola2011667225 NLG: 117932 NLI: 000599802 NTA: 06838050X PLWABN: 9810700703705606 SELIBR: 313587 SNAC: w6f77zb0 SUDOC: 032100094 VcBA: 495/21831 VIAF: 27135717 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50017358 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferdinando_Galiani&oldid=995735787" Categories: 1728 births 1787 deaths People from Chieti Italian scientists Italian economists Italian writers in French Honorary Members of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences Mercantilists Enlightenment philosophers Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ICCU identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource Languages Azərbaycanca Deutsch Español Français Ido Italiano Македонски Napulitano Norsk bokmål Polski Русский Svenska Українська Edit links This page was last edited on 22 December 2020, at 16:40 (UTC). 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