AMARI, Emerico. — Politician and thinker, born in Palermo in 1810, died there in 1870. A complex personality, he was a scholar, patriot, and believer. In 1848 he was entrusted with a mission and went into exile; he returned to Palermo in 1860. After participating in parliamentary life, and seeing that his synthesis of national unity and regional autonomy, of liberalism and Catholicism, was not realized, he acted independently. Moving from legal, statistical, and economic studies, he advanced to Vichian views, critically renewed, on the philosophy of history and was called to teach this subject in Florence in December 1859.
He published a *Teoria del Progresso* (1843) as «a continuous reform indicated by science and accomplished by freedom through tradition.» His *Critica di una Scienza delle Legislazioni comparate* (1857) earned him fame and deserves thorough reconsideration; it defines the concept, discusses methods, outlines the system, and indicates the auxiliary sciences of this «new science.» Notable also is his Florentine inaugural lecture *Del concetto generale e dei sommi principi della filosofia della storia* (with a stance taken regarding St. Augustine, Dante, Machiavelli, Bossuet, Vico, Lessing, Hegel, Romagnosi, Guizot, etc.).