Reprint

Republish after over sixty years the first monograph of Raffaele Ajello is a dutiful initiative for the new Association that takes its name from him and intends to operate in the field of cultural education and scientific knowledge, continuing and developing interests and methodologies. That book, which is one of the Italian classics of the History of Law, in 1961 represented the poster of an innovative and rigorous approach to research on the modern State. It was built with the fervent and productive conviction that a reasoned revision of the canons and interpretative guidelines prevailing in traditional legal and political historiography should be undertaken, because at the origin of a serious delay in the degree of acquisition of knowledge as of civilization. Of this pulsating critical awakening all the unfulfilled intensity was perceived, just when the young Neapolitan scholar, crossing the boundaries of the temporal and geographical context of reference, posed acute and substantial questions, to himself before others, to make it clear that, in relation to the routes previously covered, it was useful to follow further intellectual itineraries and to broaden the investigation plans at least in a European comparative perspective.