Public Finance Scholar and Militant Intellectual: Carlo Angelo Conigliani’s Lezioni di scienza delle finanze

The scientific literature has examined both Carlo Angelo Conigliani’s scholarly trajectory and, more rarely, his translation into the tax reform proposals he put forward. One of the most convinced backers of the dual nature of the financial phenomenon, economic and political at once, Conigliani was also, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an indefatigable advocate of progressive taxation. The reasons for this scientific and political commitment can be illuminated by reading his courses in Scienza delle finanze, taught at the University of Modena and, to date, insufficiently studied. In those lectures, Conigliani framed public finance as both a theoretical and an applied (‘practical’) science, presenting himself to the student of yesterday and the reader of today as a ‘militant’ intellectual.