The city as ideal principle of history according to Carlo Cattaneo

For Cattaneo no European is a native of Europe because civilization springs from the contamination between different cultures. According to Cattaneo, agriculture is an act of civilization that has transformed the land into an “agricultural machine”, within which the territory must be perceived as a collective work heritage, determined by the overlapping of the results achieved by the different generations. Within this context, cities can and must be considered as ideal principles that clearly differentiate Asian cities from European and Western ones. Speaking, in particular, of Italian cities, Cattaneo underlines the historical role of Italian municipalities for the genesis of modern science which created the historical-social premises for the construction of our own contemporary modernity.