CUOCO, VINCENZO. — Born at Civitacampomarano in Molise on 1 October 1770 and died at Naples on 14 December 1823, he was one of the most representative figures of Italian culture in the Napoleonic era. He was a political writer, historian, and educationalist. He took part in the Neapolitan events of 1799; after the brief interlude of the Parthenopean Republic, he was arrested and sent into exile. He was in Marseille, Paris, and then Milan (1800), where he formed a friendship with Manzoni. There he directed the «Nuovo giornale italiano», in which, seeking a common meeting point for the consciousness of Italians, he pursued the noble aim of popular education.
Reflecting on the Neapolitan events of 1799, C. wrote the Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli (Milan 1801), in which he saw the deficient and negative aspect of the Neapolitan revolution above all in the fact that it had arisen abstractly, from a wholly intellectualist impulse on the part of a handful of generous young men. Good institutions—he warns in the letter to Vincenzo Russo on the constitution of Mario Pagano—are those that arise and live in the consciousness of the people. C. felt the need for education deeply, whether he sought in his philosophical novel Platone in Italia, in an ancient wisdom of the Italic peoples, a sense of balance and harmony in the national, and particularly southern, consciousness, or whether he deliberately outlined a plan of studies for the State of Naples. After C. returned to Naples, following the Napoleonic conquest, he held high offices in the administration of the State. In 1809 King Joachim called him to serve on the Commission charged with preparing a draft law on public education. In an extensive report, C. expounded the principles by which the radical reform of studies in Naples was to be guided. There is no doubt that current pedagogical ideas were taken into account in the Rapporto, particularly those of G. G. Rousseau and G. E. Pestalozzi; the view of education held by C. was distinctly Vichian. Starting from the well-known Vichian dignity relating to the spiritual process, C. held that the child is first and foremost sensation and imagination, then memory, and finally reason. «If you», he warns, «disturb this order, you will weary the intellect with a premature effort and stifle the other faculties, preventing their development. You will think that you have formed a man of letters, but you will have destroyed a human being». For him, education was the exclusive task of the State, which, although it was to direct opinions, was not to profess any of them. Education was to be universal and embrace the sciences and the arts; it was to be public insofar as all citizens, without distinction, had a right to II. In C.’s conception, the school was to be: for all (primary and free), for many (secondary), and for the few (higher or sublime), the latter being necessary for promoting the sciences. Elementary education comprised reading, writing, arithmetic, and morality, but not religion, which he wished to be taught by the ministers of the Church. C. also wanted women to receive an education more properly suited to their nature. The Progetto likewise contains the vision of a school founded on work that would promote an improvement in the people’s arts and trades. University education, as that which was to promote the sciences, is held in the Progetto in the highest regard; to this end C. planned the establishment of four universities (Naples, Chieti, Altamura, Catanzaro), each with five faculties, ranging from letters and philosophy to the physical and mathematical sciences, medicine, law, and theology.
Works in 5 vols.: Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799 seguito dal rapporto al cittadino Carnot di F. Lomonaco, edited by F. Nicolini, Bari 1929; Platone in Italia, edited by F. Nicolini, 2 vols., ibid. 1924–28 (vol. I, 2nd ed., 1924); Scritti vari e carteggio, edited by N. Cortese and F. Nicolini, 2 vols., ibid. 1924.