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Cesare Beccaria

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Educator

The Resume

    (March 15, 1738-November 28, 1794)
    Born in Milan, Italy
    Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco e Villareggio
    Law degree at University of Pavia
    Co-Founder of ‘l’Accademia del pugni’ (‘Academy of Fists’) literary society
    Author of ‘Dei delitti e delle pene’ (‘On Crimes & Punishments,’ 1764)
    Century of Philosophy: Age of Enlightenment

Why he might be annoying:

    He loathed his early Jesuit school education.
    Perhaps not surprisingly, his father objected heavily to his engagement to a 16-year-old girl. (They eloped a year later.)
    The Academy of Fists, which he formed with two brothers in the Milan aristocracy, was named in honor of the countless stodgy – and sometimes scrappy – academies abundant in Italy at the time.
    He opposed capital punishment as neither useful nor necessary.
    Lest the views of the legal system trigger intense controversy and lead to government backlash, he published most of his early ideas anonymously. (Thanks to Catherine the Great, it proved not to matter.)

Why he might not be annoying:

    While born to an aristocrat of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, he himself was not especially affluent.
    His math grades indicated his early education didn’t go to waste.
    He was instrumental in creating a cultural reformist movement based around Il Caffe (‘the Coffee House,’ a journal he had a hand in running).
    Rather than the death penalty, he was a firm believer in contrappasso (having the punishment fit the crime).
    While on the supreme economic council – and later the board of reform – he was instrumental in the standardization of weights and measurements.
    The Founding Fathers of the United States regarded his works as a core inspiration.
    A Pennsylvania township and piazza in Florence were named in his honor.

Credit: Cool It All Right?


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying