Tras las huellas perdidas de Filangieri: nuevas perspectivas sobre la cultura política constitucional en el Atlántico hispánico

Abstract

Since the extraordinary circulation and reception of Gaetano Filangieri's work and Neapolitan Enlightenment in the Hispanic world, this article suggests some reflections about the origin and the formation of the Hispanic American constitutionalism. Through the vehicles of the diffusion of Filangieri's main work, La Scienza della legislazione, factors like the projects to reform the Monarchy, the innovations of the University curricula, the spread of Political Economy are reconsidered under a new perspective, different from the one proposed by the traditional Historia Patria. In a second time, we study the way the method proposed by Filangieri to build a good constitution assumes the forms of a constitutional model, alternative to the ones that historiography normally presents as dominants. Thus the cultural relations between Naples, Spain and Hispanic America, result much more important than the historiography has generally stressed.