Flights of Fancy and the Ideal Society
GIORDANO, Vito.
Il giudice di se stesso. Naples, Gaetano Tardano, 1793.
[bound with:]
—. Il conoscitore del mondo … Naples, Gioacchino Milo, 1796.
Two works in one volume, 8vo, pp. x, 80; iii–xvi, 160; second work bound without initial blank; both works with woodcut headpieces and printers’ devices; some foxing and dust-soiling throughout, especially to second work; bound in contemporary vellum, spine lettered in gilt, blue speckled edges; headcap gnawed with small loss, but otherwise good.
Second edition of the first work (first 1792) and first edition of the second, both very rare, containing philosophical, theological, and legal meditations by the Neapolitan lawyer and judge Vito Giordano, featuring abstract, dreamlike ‘flights of fancy’ set both on earth and in heaven.
The first work offers a series of reflections on the qualities required of a judge, inspired by the recently imposed Codice leuciano of 1789, which established a legal code for the workers’ village established around the new silk factory at San Leucio in Caserta. Giordano divides his work into sections on self-knowledge, knowledge of God, and the knowledge of individuals, and then the judge’s duties to these three, and how these duties should be acted upon. After each section, Giordano offers a short ‘flight of fancy’ to illustrate his arguments and to act as a transition between one portion and the next, the last line of each volo di fantasia unusually cut off mid-sentence and continued in the following section.
In the first volo, the author situates the soul in the Garden of Eden as a spectator of the creation of Man, and it subsequently travels to Paradise and to Mount Sinai, as well as through time, cycling rapidly through childhood and adolescence to adulthood and to the discovery of divine love. Giordano’s flight following the knowledge of individuals is set abstractly in the mortal realm, in which he envisions true love as two points generated by the soul, which orbit and dance around each other, sharing days, nights, senses, and sorrows, forming one heart from two.
In the second work, Giordano expands on the themes of the first in more general terms, reflecting on the nature of political progress, the role of monarchy and government, theories of education, and the place of education, religion, and philosophy in a properly functioning society and state. Both works are dedicated to Francesco Pignatelli, prince of Strongoli.
Giudice: OPAC SBN finds a single copy of the present edition in Italy (Montecassino). OCLC records a single copy of the first edition in the US (Library of Congress), and no copies of the present edition. Conoscitore: we find only two copies, both in Italy (BNC Roma, Trani).