L’opera di Salvatore Majorana Calatabiano (1825-1897) tra politica ed economia: per una nuova scienza «della conservazione e del perfezionamento sociale» (Salvatore Majorana Calatabiano (1825-1897) on politics and economics: towards a new science «of social preservation and improvement»)

The paper provides a reconstruction of Salvatore Majorana’s scienti?c biography and outlines the main features of his liberal and democratic approach. It examines the evolution of Majorana’s economic thought – highlighting both its sociological aspects and its political commitment – in order to suggest a coherent reconstruction of his scientific and political activities and to understand the function of the notion of ‘civilisation’ the author propounded since his early work, Ricchezza e miseria (1847). Moving from the results of recent historiography on the outcomes of the revolutions of 1848 in Italy, the paper examines Majorana’s contributions before and after the Sicilian revolution, as well as his Trattato di economia politica and the works in which he expounded his legal and sociological doctrines, aiming at combining economics, law and ethics, and refuting both Francesco Ferrara’s intransigent laissez-faire and the ‘extreme’ socialist theories. The paper outlines the basic features of Majorana’s liberal and democratic thought and his effort to build up a new science «of social preservation and improvement». This all-comprehensive science should preserve and improve civil society, studying how human beings can harmonically coexist. His writings and political, parliamentary and government activities are interpreted in the light of his conception of «civilisation».