Ferdinando Galiani

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Abbé Galiani, engraving by Jacob Gillberg after Robert Lefèvre

Ferdinando Galiani - also called Abbé Galiani - (born December 2, 1728 in Chieti , Kingdom of Naples , † October 30, 1787 in Naples , Kingdom of Naples) was an Italian diplomat , economist and writer during the Enlightenment .

Live and act

Della Moneta , 1780

Galiani was born as one of seven children of Marchese Matteo Galiani , district administrator of Chieti, and his wife Maria Ciaburra . The Galianis family came from the old nobility of officials in the Kingdom of Naples. From 1735 on, he and his older brother were tutored in Naples by their uncle, Archbishop Celestino Galiani (1681–1753), one of the most influential men in the kingdom. At that time Naples was the third largest metropolis in Europe and the house of the uncle, the Casa Galiani , the intellectual center. From 1740 to 1742 the brothers attended the Cölestiner monastery school in Rome because their uncle was there on a diplomatic mission. His teachers included Giambattista Vico , Appiano Buonafede and Antonio Genovesi, and Bartolomeo Intieri (1678–1757) among his supporters . In 1744 he was accepted into the Accademia degli Emuli (Academy of the Eager). In these academies the youth of Naples presented their academic knowledge in treatises. A parodic satire on academic adulation entitled Componimenti [...] made Galiani known outside of Naples for the first time.

At the age of 22 he published his main work Della Moneta - Libri Cinque (About money - five books); it appeared anonymously. This work also shows his masterly ability to adapt his style to the intended audience at will. As a reward for his work as an economic theorist, he received the benefices of the Diocese of Centola and the Abbey of San Lorenzo . In order to be able to dispose of the money from these benefices, the young economist, who had never studied theology, had to accept the minor priestly ordinations . A papal dispensation has now allowed him to use the title of monsignor and to consider himself as having been infulfilled . The free spirit went down in history as Abbé Galiani .

A trip through Northern Italy was a triumphal procession for him as a writer. In Rome he was received by Pope Benedict XIV . In 1755 King Charles IV of Naples appointed him a member of the Academy of Herculanum , which had the task of directing the excavation work in the ancient Herculaneum and describing the finds.

From 1759 to 1769 Galiani was secretary of the Neapolitan legation in Paris; the short and perhaps all-too-witty man did not at first make an impression in court society. However, through diplomatic circles he came into contact with personalities of the French Enlightenment (including Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert , Denis Diderot , Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach , Claude Adrien Helvétius and Friedrich Melchior Grimm ) and soon became the favorite of the salons . Diderot put it this way: “The Abbé is inexhaustible in clever turns and features; a gem for rainy days […] “His long-lasting correspondence with Louise d'Épinay became famous . His writings have received praise from Denis Diderot, Voltaire, and the other encyclopedists .

In 1769 his sponsor, the Minister Tanucci, had to recall him from Paris on the orders of the Neapolitan king. The following passage from a letter to Frau von Epinay shows the feelings with which he left France and the friends there: “I was torn out of Paris and my heart was torn out of my chest!” Galiani left his book Dialogues sur le commerce des blés (dialogues about the grain trade), which became a bestseller in Paris. Through Mrs. von Epinay, he had his lover pay a fixed pension. As a consolation for the fact that he had become a victim of global political intrigues , he was appointed secretary of the Supreme Commercial Court in Naples in the same year - with doubled salary. In addition to other literary works, he wrote a pamphlet on the Neapolitan dialect . In 1777 he became chairman of the domain administration ; his advice was much appreciated at court. In 1782 he became the first assessor of the Supreme Finance Council in the Kingdom of Naples. Galiani was famous now. In 1782 he also became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

After his friends d'Alembert, Diderot and wife von Epinay passed away, he slowly said goodbye to the old dream of returning to Paris. He limited himself to his constant correspondence with like-minded comrades of the Enlightenment, with Frederick the Great , Catherine II and many other European princes. While planning extensive canal projects in the Kingdom of Naples, he suffered a severe stroke in 1785. Although he recovered, his health was in poor health. Almost two years later he visited Venice , Modena and Padua , where he was received with great honors everywhere.

In early October of the same year his doctor found incurable dropsy ; Galiani died a few weeks later at the age of 58. He was buried in the Assumption Church of the Cölestines, in Naples-Chiaia, at the side of his uncle, Archbishop Celestino Galiani. He was considered one of the most witty people of his century.

In Germany, Galiani was mainly noticed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Jean Paul , Leopold Mozart and Friedrich Nietzsche . Goethe met him as an old man and was astonished at his fooling around; he paid tribute to his work as a translator with a detailed quote:

“Galiani, a brilliant Latinist, had been fascinated by Horace all his life . He was considered an expert, was consulted by friends like Diderot on contentious questions about Horace's poems and liked to spice up his writings with quotes from his favorite writer. His biographer Diodoti (Vita del Abate Ferdinando Galiani, Napoli 1788) writes: 'As long as the Abbé Galiani was in France, he never failed to practice the beautiful sciences. There he began to write notes on Horace, in which he examined the causes and causes of every poem in order to enable the reader to understand the dark allusions and allegories. Not only did he explain many passages in an entirely new way, but he also gave the poems a new order according to the times and places in which they were written, and laid out for the reader the advances that Horace made in poetry until he reached inimitable perfection reached, in mind. He also corrected many mistakes that had crept into these poems over the years […] Galiani's book of Horace, which he began in 1778, was never printed. Unfortunately, the "entire commentary" that was still preserved in 1788 has disappeared; only the fragments that were published in advance in the Gazette litteraire d'Europe in 1780 have survived. And we read them less because of the z. Some of Galiani's theses on Horace were refuted by philology, but because of his general considerations on philology and translation work. '"

- Goethe to Melchior Grimm , September 19, 1780

Even Nietzsche had heard of Galiani as buffoons and interpreted the philosophical:

“ Cynicism is the only form in which common souls touch what is righteousness; and the higher man has to open his ears to every coarser and finer cynicism and to wish himself luck every time the buffoon without shame or the scientific satyr are loud before him . There are even cases where the enchantment is mixed up to disgust: namely, where genius is bound to such an indiscreet goat and monkey, by a whim of nature, as in the case of the Abbé Galiani, the deepest, most astute and perhaps also the dirtiest People of his century - he was much deeper than Voltaire and consequently also a good deal more silent. "

- Beyond good and bad. The free spirit. Works in 3 vol., Munich 1954 : vol. 2, pp. 589-596, no. 26

When Nietzsche finally got rid of an unwanted visit from home in Rome, he wrote in a letter:

“Oh, about the moral tartifery of all these dear Germans! If you could promise me an Abbé Galiani in Rome! This is a person to my liking. Likewise Stendhal . "

- Letter to Malwida von Meysenbug , March 13, 1885

Nietzsche calls him his friend; elsewhere he reports on his Galiani reading:

"The Abbé Galiani once said:" La prévoyance est la cause des guerres actuelles de l'Europe. Si l'on voulait se donner la peine de ne rien prévoir, tout le monde serait tranquille, et je ne crois pas qu'on serait plus malheureux parce qu'on ne ferait pas la guerre. " Since I do not at all share the non-warlike views of my late friend Galiani, I am not afraid of predicting some things and thus possibly conjuring up the cause of wars. A tremendous reflection after the most terrible earthquake: with new questions. "

- Works in 3 vol. Munich 1954 : vol. 3, from the estate of the eighties, chap. 24, p. 844 ff.

Works

  • De la Monnaie (1751) , Paris, Librairie M. Rivière, 1955 (German translation: About money , Düsseldorf: Verl. Wirtschaft undfinanz, 1999).
  • Dialogues sur le commerce des blés , Paris, Fayard, 1984 ISBN 978-2-213-01479-1 (German translation: Galiani's dialogues on the grain trade 1770 , with a biography of Galiani / edited by Franz Blei, Bern: Wyss, 1895) .
  • L'Art de conserver les grains , Paris, 1770.
  • De la Monnaie , Paris, Economica, 2005 ISBN 978-2-7178-4998-1 .

reception

Della moneta is considered a classic work of Italian political economy . Karl Marx interpreted Galiani's economic analyzes primarily in terms of labor theory : prosperity is understood as a relationship between two people. Effort ( fatica ) is the only thing that gives the thing value. “Money is of two kinds, ideal and real; and it is used in two different ways in order to appreciate things and to buy them. Ideal money is suitable for estimating, as is real and perhaps better. The other use of money consists in buying the things it values ​​[...] The prices and the contracts are estimated in ideal money and realized in real money. "
" It is the rapidity of the circulation of money and not the quantity of the metal, what makes that much or little money seems to be available. "
" Metals have the peculiarity and peculiarity that in them all relationships are attributed to one thing, that is their quantity, that they have received no different quality from nature, neither in the internal structure nor in the external form and processing. "

Vladimir Karpowitsch Dmitrijew , on the other hand, saw Galiani as the discoverer of marginal utility theory . Because for him the exchange relation of goods depends on the subjective valuation of the individual. He has the primary usefulness (utilità primaria) , i.e. H. the importance of the needs that the thing fulfills, distinguished from its specific usefulness, which depends on the degree to which the need has been satisfied.

  • In Dialogues sur le commerce des blés , Galiani analyzed the famine in Naples (1763–1766) and came to the conclusion that ensuring basic services should not only be viewed from an economic point of view, but that the state was obliged to provide “public goods” to guarantee production. In all of his economic work he pointed out that the well-being of a country depends on the democratic, market-based safeguarding of monetary value, on well-functioning state institutions and an alert social conscience.
  • The Abbé Galiani's letters (with an introduction and comments by Wilhelm Weigand, Munich and Leipzig 1914; a selection can be found in Galiani, Helle Briefe, Die Andere Bibliothek , edited by HM Enzensberger ) After his return from Paris, Galiani corresponded with his Parisians Friends from the circle of encyclopedists and salons (including Madame Necker, Madame d'Epinay). These letters are among the most interesting and ingenious reflections of European intellectual life on the eve of the French Revolution.

literature

  • Ferdinando Galiani: News from Vesuvius . Galiani-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86971-000-6 .
  • Werner Tabarelli: Ferdinando Galiani - About money . Publishing house economy and finance, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-87881-132-2 .
  • Thomas Markwart: The Invention of Shape. Abbé Galiani and the utopian Rococo , in: Die theatralische Moderne. Peter Altenberg, Karl Kraus, Franz Blei and Robert Musil in Vienna , Hamburg 2004, pp. 143–154.
  • Gottfried Eisermann : Galiani: economist, sociologist, philosopher , Frankfurt am Main; Berlin ; Bern; New York ; Paris; Vienna: Lang 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-31041-0 .
  • Hellebriefe / Ferdinando Galiani and Louise d'Epinay (Correspondence), translated from the French by Heinrich Conrad. With an introduction and remarks by Wilhelm Weigand , supplemented by Friedhelm Kemp , Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn 1992, ISBN 978-3-8218-4096-3 , Die Andere Bibliothek series
  • Silvio De Majo:  GALIANI. In: Fiorella Bartoccini (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 51:  Gabbiani-Gamba. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1998.

Web links

Commons : Ferdinando Galiani  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Ferdinando Galiani  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Ferdinando Galiani, Abbé. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 13, 2015 (Russian).
  2. ↑ La ricchezza è una ragione tra due persone. Galiani, Della Moneta , p. 221. In Vol. III of Custodia Collection of the Scrittori classici Italiani di Economia Politica. Part Moderna. Milano 1803. Quoted from Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Franz Duncker, 1859; MEW vol. 13, p. 21. For Marx ricchezza is best represented with exchange value .
  3. ↑ Galiani, p. 74, cited above. according to MEW 13, p. 43, note
  4. ↑ Galiani, p. 112 f., Quoted in according to MEW 13, p. 71.
  5. ↑ Galiani, p. 99, cited above. according to MEW 13, p. 85.
  6. ↑ Galiani, p. 126 f., Quoted in according to MEW 13, p. 129, note.
  7. ^ VK Dmitriev: Economic Essays on Value, Competition and Utility. Translated by D. Fry and edited with an Introduction by DM Nuti. Cambridge University Press 1974. ISBN 0-521-20253-1 . P. 186 f.
personal data
SURNAME Galiani, Ferdinando
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abbé Galiani
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian economist
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1728
PLACE OF BIRTH Chieti
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1787
Place of death Naples