It is a challenging task to provide a clear, concise, and easily understandable definition of the concept of modernity. At first, modernity is the social, economic, political, and cultural context we are living in. However, as it surrounds us and shapes our daily lives, our way of seeing the world and defining it, and our way of shaping it and imagining it, this definition does not satisfactorily provide clues to define modernity. We are so embedded in it that we hardly manage to understand what it is that we are embedded in.

As with many issues, a historical inquiry may help and provide notions, facts, and accounts that could make this work of definition and clarification easier.

First of all, one may wonder where to find the roots, or parts of it, of our modern world, considering two aspects of modernity—or, in that case, the modern worldview: science and politics. In order to carry the discussion, these lines will focus on the thoughts and oeuvres of Galileo Galilei, Niccolò Machiavelli, Giambattista Vico, and Cesare Beccaria. The main argument that will be developed is that the Italian contribution to the advent of scientific and political modernity is often undervalued; yet, it is crucial and ought to be studied more in depth.

Galileo and the rise of the ‘scientific’ spirit

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564. Initially studying medicine, Galileo shifted his focus to mathematics and natural philosophy. He is known for having championed heliocentrism, as he held that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun, after his observation of the Moon, Venus, and the other then-known planets of our solar system. His observations with the telescope greatly advanced astronomy and challenged traditional cosmology. Despite facing Church opposition and serving house arrest, it is very arguable that Galileo’s work established a foundation for modern science. Before Galileo, many scholars who inherited their knowledge from the scholastic philosophy of the medieval period relied on the teachings of ancient philosophers—mostly Aristotle—to explain how nature worked. Ideas with direct observation, experiment, or calculation.

Galileo introduced systematic experiments into the study of physics. He did so practicing what is known as a ‘thought experiment. Imagining that objects of different weights were dropped into the void (which, in Nature, does not exist), he showed that all objects accelerate at the same rate, challenging long-held beliefs and proving that Aristotle was evidently wrong. In 1602/04, Galileo thus enunciated the law of free fall, also known by his name. Galileo’s discoveries clashed with Church teachings that the Earth was at the center of the universe. This led to his famous trial and house arrest. Indeed, what was Galileo's first contribution to the advent of modern views of the world was his rupture, though implicit, with the dogma of the Catholic Church. Without being able to measure it, Galileo paved the way, after Copernicus and Bruno, for philosophers and scientists like Isaac Newton, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and many others.

Galileo Galilei is best remembered for his contribution to the advancement of astronomy. Galileo perfected and used one of the first telescopes for astronomical observation. He observed mountains on the Moon, four moons orbiting Jupiter, and phases of Venus. These key findings showed that not everything in the heavens orbited the Earth. This supported and proved the “heliocentric” theory, which was one of the reasons that cost Fra Giordano Bruno his life. With this instrument, he made groundbreaking discoveries that changed our view of the cosmos. What is most important is how Galileo laid down the foundations for the scientific method in using mathematics to interpret nature.

Modern physics, astronomy, and engineering all rely on careful measurements and calculations. These were the core methods Galileo championed. From then onward, expressing the laws of physics (meaning how nature works) required mathematical expressions. Therefore, the world was then becoming a set of mathematical rules and equations. This was probably the major break made by Galileo: the use of data set an example for future scientists: test, measure, and observe, then conclude. Galileo broke from the religious and magical views of the world: there were no more sub- and supralunar worlds, one corruptible and the other not.

Despite these personal challenges, his insistence on truth determined by evidence inspired future generations to question authority and keep searching for better explanations. Today’s critical thinking and emphasis on evidence-based reasoning owe much to Galileo’s influence. Modern science, technology, and our general understanding of the universe stand on the foundations he helped lay.

By insisting on observation, mathematical analysis, and open-minded inquiry, Galileo set the stage for the remarkable scientific progress of the last four centuries. His work continues to inspire scientists and thinkers worldwide, reminding us that modernity hinges on our willingness to seek evidence, challenge assumptions, and keep pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. What Galileo realized in the domain of natural philosophy has impacted the world of ‘moral philosophy’ (that is, the realm of political theory and historical knowledge).

Niccolò Machiavelli, the governance of the modern state

The ‘modern state’ was very likely born in Florence during the 1500s and the Medici dynasty. In the realm of theory, this statement is epitomised in the oeuvre by Niccolò Machiavelli, the noted author of The Prince. During the late Middle Ages, Florence was an influential city-state known for its wealth due to its performance in European trade and its political dynamism. Competition among leading cities in Italy—like Venice, Milan, and Florence—spurred new models of governance, which mostly reproduced medieval nobiliary and feudal structures, however. Florence was rather singular, and so is its legacy. Florence’s mix of republican traditions, mercantile power, and constant struggle for stable leadership created conditions for innovative political thought.

Machiavelli’s role in modern statecraft

A Florentine diplomat and thinker, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), served in various government positions during the city’s tumultuous power shifts. During the sixteenth century, Florence went through troubled times again. The City was already divided in the time of Dante Alighieri, between the Guelphs and Ghibellines factions. In the times of Machiavelli, Florence experienced the uprising and struggles between Republicans and supporters of the Medici family. Still nowadays, Florentines can recall the Congiura de’ Pazzi (Pazzi Conspiracy, 1478), which failed to oust the Medici and ended in a blood bath: eighty people were hanged on the window of the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signora, and the Pazzi family was banished from Florence.

The civil unrest in Florence profoundly influenced the young Niccolò Machiavelli. These experiences were heavily at the basis of his writings. In ‘The Prince (Il Principe),’ Machiavelli proposed that effective governance might require actions motivated by pragmatism rather than purely moral or religious considerations. Machiavelli argued that rulers should focus on stability, power consolidation, and the common good, sometimes using force or cunning. Machiavelli inaugurated a more “realist” tradition in political science: the recognition that states must be firmly grounded in power structures and strategic governance to survive. Taking factions into account and maneuvering to keep them under control. This view led many to view Florence—and Machiavelli’s works—as a cradle of modern political thought. The Prince is rather well known, but his ‘The Art of War’ is also very instructive.

Machiavelli was a Republican. His ideal for Florence was that the city remain a republic, and it is in this perspective that he devised the institution of his ideal state. This is quite evident in his ‘Art of War’ (L’Arte della Guerra, 1521), in which he considered it necessary to maintain a permanent army of citizen-soldiers not only as a better deterrence but also to maintain the people (the most indispensable force to count on) united. His argument anticipated Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767-1794), who argued in ‘L’Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution en France’ (‘The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution in France,’ 1791) that military conscription would unite the French and bind them to the Nation.

This idea would be carried all over the nineteenth century while the Nation-State emerged as the main form of political existence in Europe, and the abolition of conscription on the Old Continent took place between the 1990s and 2000s. In short, “The Art of War” extends Machiavelli’s analysis of power to the question of effective military organization, considering war as being the prerogative of the Prince, meaning the State. The idea was to maintain a Roman-inspired army of soldier-citizens. Instead of hiring potentially seditious mercenaries who may reveal dreadful enemies, a situation that happened to many Northern and Central Italian city-states who hired a condottiero who ended up seizing the city’s power. Therefore, Machiavelli opted for a professionally trained citizen army devoted to the defense of the Republic and its interests.

The figure of the prince was arguably groundbreaking, as it argued that the exercise of power should be free from moral concerns and focus on the conservation of the state. Machiavelli’s Prince is no more a figure of chivalry or knighthood. The Prince is a ‘pragmatic’ ruler whose action is not guided by Christian morals and courteousness. In the humanist tendency to draw inspiration from figures from Antiquity, the Prince may well have been one Julius Caesar, or—even more relevant—Augustus. Historically speaking, Machiavelli’s reference was to another Caesar: Cesare Borgia, ‘Il Valentino’ (1475-1507).

The Prince was indeed a more abstract figure or model. It inspired Antonio Gramsci in his essay on the ‘New Prince’ (‘Il Nuovo Principe’). To him, the Prince should then become the Party itself. It had to maintain itself in power. The Communist Party should conquer power and maintain its hegemony (one of Gramsci’s most famous and productive ideological legacies) over the working class. In a few words, Machiavelli was thus the precursor of a novel view of the world, which may have anticipated Galileo’s empiricism, a view that considers that facts and experimentation must prevail over idealistic fantasies and unquestioned ‘idées reçues.’ However, Machiavelli’s concept of the State’s purposes (seeking and maintaining power) is rather an absolute that leaves nothing to moralities and ethical norms whatsoever. Giambattista Vico’s historiography somehow amends Machiavelli’s brutal view of human societies.

Giambattista Vico and the rise of historiography

History has not always been what people think it is nowadays: a truthful account and a reflection about the past. Historiography as we know it is the result of many processes of change and evolution linked to the rise of early modern and modern European views of the world. The gradual separation of history from legend and myth knew a dramatic and radical turn between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and the radical transformation of this subject owes much to the ‘New Science’ (Scienza Nuova) by Giambattista Vico. Galileo established the scientific method for understanding physical reality, and Machiavelli developed a realistic approach to political power. Vico created foundations for understanding human culture, history, and social institutions.

Thinkers, theorists, and intellectual figures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found Vico deeply influential and thus based their approach on his thought to elaborate their own vision of the world. It is the case of figures like Marx, for instance. In fact, the Marxist tradition of historical materialism would probably not be the same without Giambattista Vico. Vico’s view was apparently similar to the ancient Greeks’: he considered that history was a succession of ages and was rather cyclical. Yet, his method was influential for many historians. Think about the famous British historian Eric J. Hobsbawm. Even though his narrative construction follows the succession of centuries, it is constructed as a succession of ages. His long nineteenth century starts with the Age of Revolution, is followed by the Age of Capital, and culminates finally with the Age of Empires.

At the base of Vico’s theory is the premise that understanding humans implies studying their societies, the way they organize themselves, their basis, how they manage production and consumption, their daily life, and on what basis their cohabitation holds together and is stable in time—what Cornelius Castoriadis later dubbed the ‘social-historical’ institutions of society, which result from imaginary categories that cement a society (the Roman Law, the Mosaic Law, and the Shari’a, to give but a few examples). In counterpoint to Descartes, Vico argues that human societies were not reducible to mathematical equations that leave nothing to human imagination and language. A similar counterargument was eventually raised by Castoriadis against Marx and historical determinism more generally in his ‘The Imaginary Institution of Society’. Vico examined in his ‘New Science’ (Scienza Nuova, 1725) how societies develop through their myths, languages, and customs.

In a nutshell, it can be argued that Vico is one of the most undervalued thinkers of Modernity. Vico was also a vanguard of the rule of law. HIs vision of history, if well understood, leads to this conclusion: if history is a succession of an Age (of the gods, one of the Heroes and one of Men, each with their own law), then Human law must be rational, given that, for him, Humans are gifted with Reason, be this either a gift to cherish or a burden to bear. Thus, reason ought to be the sole basis of the law that rules human societies. In the wake of Fray Bartolome de Las Casas and the theorists of natural law, Vico considered this law as being intrinsic to human nature. Given that humans are all creatures of God, Natural Law is God’s to every human being, and none ought to be treated unfairly as though they were ‘outside’ humankind. This may sound like a truism, but it was an ongoing debate among lettered and religious circles in Early Modern Europe since, at least, the Junta de Valladolid (1550-51).

His contribution to the advent of modern worldviews was no less radical than Galileo's. Vico's recognition that different types of knowledge require different methods and that understanding human affairs demands approaches distinct from those used in natural science represents a sophisticated contribution to modern thought. It would be mistaken to think Galileo’s or Vico’s views are radically anti-Catholic or atheist. Both were pious men devoted to the church, and whose intents were indeed aimed at understanding God’s designs more deeply. As modern as it could be, Vico’s ‘Nuova Scienza’ was mostly an attempt to reinstate the authority of the Catholic Church on the ground of its most humanist theological currents.

Yet, it is interesting to notice that he was most influential on figures who leaned on the radical left, like K. Marx, J. Hobsbawm, or E.W. Said. This was perhaps so because leftist ideologues and theorists have, most of the time, been the ones who took genuine interest in reflecting on the relationship between history and society since the nineteenth century.

Cesare Beccaria, on punishment

Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) was a criminologist, jurist, and philosopher. Born in Milan and educated in Parma and Pavia, he remains a leading figure of the Enlightenment, and his ideas on crime and punishment significantly shaped the modern legal and penal system. Above all, Beccaria was one of the first to advocate the abolishment of capital punishment, which he considered useless and unnecessary.

A theoretical heir of Montesquieu, Beccaria’s oeuvre is an attempt to imagine a non-despotic rule or, at least, an enlightened one. His view was summed up in his most famous book: ‘On Crime and Punishment’ (Dei Delitti e delle Pene). Beccaria’s main point was that true justice should not inflict disproportionate punishment, and sanctions should be measured according to the gravity of the crime. In line with the Habeas Corpus, a suspect should not be forced to confess to alleged crimes under acts of torture. What was really revolutionary for these times is that Beccaria argued for the concept of equality before the law, against statutory justice. It is probably to Beccaria that Italy’s court has for motto Law is Equal for Everyone (La Legge è uguale per Tutti).

In short, modern justice owes many of its principles to Cesare Beccaria. Many actions could be justified based on Machiavelli’s considerations on the prerogatives of the State. But Beccaria outlines principles that amend and balance the author of The Prince. There is, in Beccaria, a universalism that—together with Vico’s—lays the bases that are crucial to offering us a fairer international order through an international morality transposed in international law. In such troubled times, it is necessary to rediscover these philosophers and carry on a reflection, a renewal of our vision of humanity. Beccaria’s idea is modern in that he proposes a set of abiding rules and norms that do not depend on the ‘Fait du Prince’; in his theory, law is the actual prince—the physical ruler of a country, being in place only to execute it.

This is, in the line of Montesquieu, the separation of powers. Beccaria lived long enough to witness the application of his ideas in the United States’ system of checks and balances and witnessed the French abolition of the royal arbitrary when the people of Paris stormed the Bastille on July 14th, 1789. Thus, Beccaria was one of the vanguard theorists whose thought pioneered the advent of the modern state, being already one foot in what Eric J. Hobsbawm named the long nineteenth century, during the Age of Revolutions.

Conclusion

This modest contribution may not offer a definitive definition of modernity. However, these examples offer elements to outline some key features of modern life: the mathematical and experimental vision of the world laid down by Galileo Galilei, the advent of a state ruled by an abstract figure—The Prince—freed from moral/religious ethics drawn by Machiavelli, the view that people are the agents of their own history, that historiography requires the study of societies and cultures, as stated by Giambattista Vico, and, last but not least, the institution of procedural justice together with the (wishable) abolition of torture, capital punishment, and the State of Exception. Four examples that underline Italy’s undervalued, yet original, contribution to what we generally name modernity.