On Cultural Transmission. A Case Study: Condillac and Italy

The period that Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-80) spent in Parma at the court of Philip and Louise Elizabeth (1758-67), as tutor to their son Ferdinand 1 , offers an interesting model for inquiring under what specific assumptions the concept of “cultural migrations”, or intellectual transmission, between different philosophical cultures should be considered. The difficulties for the historian of ideas in formulating hypotheses about the relevance and modes of cultural transmission are evident even in a case such as Condillac’s, whose actual presence in Parma and Italy seems to support the obvious belief that such transmission necessarily occurred through the philosophers direct action: his conversations with local scholars, contacts with other philosophers, intellectual exchanges and so on. However, one may legitimately question this sort of easy conclusion. For the philosophical novelties that the French philosopher introduced and which met with favor in the rest of Europe were sometimes dismissed or neglected in the Duchy of Parma and throughout Italy, even by scholars less conservative and orthodox in their philosophical positions who were more open to novelty. Moreover, the migration of authors does not entail the migration of their ideas. Given such questions, a preliminary analysis of some of the methodological assumptions underlying this type of inquiry is worthwhile.