Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869), Lombard Philosopher and Economist, Liberal Beyond Federalism

Abstract Carlo Cattaneo is a prominent character of Italian Risorgimento, that is the political process that built Italy in the 19th century. According to him, the economic development depends on the same principles which the progress of civilization and ideas is founded on: freedom, will, intelligence. With his deep humanist animus, he is enlightened, because he believes in the human intelligence as spring of progress; is positivist, thanks to his trust in applied science; is liberal, since he thinks that only freedom can feed human intelligence. At the same time, he is a man of Romanticism, with his confidence in the possibility of overcoming all hindrances through liberty and will. As a true liberal, Cattaneo can hardly be classified in just one stream of thinking. The paper is organised as follows: after the Introduction, the second and the third paragraph give information about the historical and economic context of his activity. The fourth paragraph deals with his political vision and the fifth with his approach to political economy. The link between federalism and freedom, and the original idea of collective intelligence (psicologia delle menti associate) emerge. Finally, in the sixth paragraph a few concluding remarks are proposed.