Lorenzo Bianchi is professor of history and philosophy at the “Orientale” university of Naples. He devotes his research to Italian and European philosophical political culture from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, particularly to naturalism and scepticism in the Italian Renaissance, and the influence exerted by these traditions on seventeenth-century French thought, especially among the representatives of erudite libertinage. He has also studied the thought of Pierre Bayle, Voltaire and Montesquieu. He is a collaborator in the critical edition of the works of Gabriel Naudé and the complete works of Montesquieu. He is a member of the scientific direction of this latter edition, the scientific direction of the Società italiana di studi sul secolo XVIII, of the executive committee of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, as well as several other learned societies (Renaissance Society of America, Société française d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, Société Montesquieu, Société Voltaire, Société des études voltairiennes, Association Pierre Bayle). He is on the editorial board of Studi filosofici (Naples: Bibliopolis), co-director of the collection “Relox” at Bibliopolis and of Cahiers Montesquieu (Naples).
He is responsible for the Italian edition of Pierre Bayle’s Projet d’un Dictionnaire critique (Naples, 1987) and the translation of the works of Voltaire published in Milan by Feltrinelli (1994-2003), five volumes of which he has edited. He is the author of Tradizione libertina e critica storica (Milan, 1988) and Rinascimento e libertinismo (Naples, 1996). He was coordinator of the volumes entitled Pierre Bayle e l’Italia (Naples, 1996), Voltair : religione e politica (in collaboration with Alberto Postigliola, Naples, 1999), Un “progetto filosofico” della modernità. “Per la pace perpetua”di Immanuel Kant (in collaboration with A. Postigliola, Naples, 2000), L’idea di cosmpolitismo: circolazione e metamorfosi (Naples, 2002), Natura e storia (Naples, 2005) and Etica e progresso (Naples, 2007); Dopo Machiavelli / Après Machiavel (in collaboration with Alberto Postigliola, Naples: Liguori, 2008) ; Kant et les Lumières européennes (in collaboration with Jean Ferrari and Alberto Postigliola, Naples-Paris: Liguori-Vrin, 2009) ; L’umanesimo scientifico dal Rinascimento all’Illuminismo (in collaboration with Gianni Paganini, Naples: Liguori, 2010) ; Critica e ragione / Critique et raison (in collaboration with Alberto Postigliola, Naples: Liguori, 2011).