Abstract: This article attempts to trace possible links between the ideas of Gaetano Filangieri (and his masterpiece, La Scienza della Legislazione) and eighteenth-century French philosophy, even in its clandestine forms. Although the Neapolitan philosopher— influential legal theorist, innovator, and also freemason—was not drawn to atheism and materialism, his legal theories are in keeping with the optimism of his era.
