Project

Introduction

Studying the philosophical literature located in private libraries of philosophers, scientists and scholars in the modern era means entering a field of research which has long been overlooked, but is now of ever-increasing interest, as the recent publications of important libraries — for example those of Schelling and Nietzsche — demonstrates.

Once the catalogues and inventories of libraries have been chosen and made available to scholars, they can be profitably used not only to reconstruct the “material” history of the institutions, but also from a broader perspective to look at the cultural profile of individual authors or of entire periods of intellectual history.

The following institutions contributed to the project Private Libraries of Philosophers from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century for specific groups of catalogues:
 

• Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce, Naples;
• Istituto italiano per gli studi storici, Naples;
• Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle idee (ILIESI), Rome;
• Philosophy Faculty Library, University of Rome "La Sapienza";
• University Library of Naples;
• University Library of Padua.