**This meetup is hosted by Wisdom and Woe. For more details and to sign up for this event, go to: [https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/302912974](https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/302912974)**

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) ranks among the most influential public intellectuals of the 19th century. Although today he is mostly remembered as a spiritual father of Italian unification, he saw his patriotic goals as part of a larger struggle for the emancipation of all oppressed people--notably, slaves and women--inspiring revolutionary movements around the world, for which he had been called "the Apostle of Modern Democracy."

Individualism and nationalism had emerged as the twin mandates of 19th century European history. But the French Revolution and Napoleonic expansionism, respectively, had become emblematic of their excesses. Mazzini held a Hegelian view of progress and human history that sought a synthesis of the two.

For Mazzini, freedom is not the absence of restraint, but the opportunity to choose good. He rejects the Enlightenment notion of political rights as inalienable entitlements, arguing instead that "the sole origin of every right" is duty. Thus, he prophesies a perfection of freedom and necessity, secularism and Christianity, thought and action. Only by a proper dedication to family, country, humanity, and God, can society achieve "the progress of all through all" and defeat (as he sees it) the "two lies" menacing the world: Machiavellianism and materialism.

[Wisdom and Woe](https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe) is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."

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Chad Beck

The Chicago Philosophy Meetup

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The Duties of Man - Giuseppe Mazzini

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The Duties of Man - Giuseppe Mazzini

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