Naples as a Philosophical Frontier, 1799–1959: On Modernization, Idealism, and Non-History

This essay focuses on the ways in which the reception of German Idealism in Naples, throughout the nineteenth century, fed into the struggle between modernization and Southern Italian culture that culminated in the failure of the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799. By drawing on a variety of texts, ranging from Vincenzo Cuoco’s 1801 Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799 to Ernesto de Martino’s 1959 Sud e magia, I trace the reception and reinvention of German Idealism in Southern Italy, and particularly how it was used to justify and strengthen the idealist solution to the problem of the region’s modernization. I conclude that the conflict that was played out in Naples as a frontier city was between history, understood as progress towards idealization, and what Italian philosopher Ernesto de Martino called the “non-history of the Kingdom of Naples.”