Ferrari, Giuseppe

Ferrari, Giuseppe

(jo͞ozĕp`pā fār-rä`rē), 1812–76, Italian philosopher and politician. A thorough skeptic in metaphysics, he devoted himself to the more active aspects of social, political, and historical philosophy. From his self-imposed exile in France (1837–59), he exerted influence on the RisorgimentoRisorgimento
[Ital.,=resurgence], in 19th-century Italian history, period of cultural nationalism and of political activism, leading to unification of Italy. Roots of the Risorgimento
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. His development of a philosophy of revolution in La filosofia della rivoluzione (1851) and Histoire des révolutions (1858) encouraged the radical and liberal elements in Italy to act. Returning to Italy in 1859 he strove for a federalized state, described in his La federazione repubblicana (1851), opposing the unitarian, monarchical plan of Cavour.

Ferrari, Giuseppe

 

Born Mar. 7, 1811, in Milan; died July 2, 1876, in Rome. Italian revolutionary democrat and writer.

Ferrari lived in France intermittently from 1838 to 1859. His articles between 1845 and 1848, published in French journals, were sharply critical of the neo-Guelfic positions of the Italian liberals—namely, their advocacy of an alliance between the national liberation movement and the Catholic Church and the establishment of a federation of Italian states to be headed by the pope. Ferrari advocated revolution as the means to Italian redemption; however, on the assumption that a united Italy was still in the distant future, he called for local revolutions and the proclamation of a republic in each of the various states, to be followed by the establishment of a federation of Italian states.

After the defeat of the Revolution of 1848–49, Ferrari joined the Italian democrats’ polemical discussions and advanced his idea of an Italian national revolution. He held that the revolution must be social as well as political and that it must have the means to carry out a progressive agrarian law and liberate the Italian people from oppression in any form. Ferrari called for revolution in the name of socialism—which he interpreted, however, in the spirit of the social utopias of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1851, Ferrari tried to organize the left democrats into a party with a more radical orientation than the national committee of G. Mazzini.