Gio Maria Tessarolo

Biography

Gio Maria Tessarolo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Humanities. 

Tessarolo works on the History of Political Thought, with particular interests in the early modern origins of constitutionalism, liberalism, and republicanism. His work has appeared in journals including The Historical Journal, the American Political Science Review, History of Political Thought, Rinascimento, and Studi storici, as well as in a number of edited volumes. 

He is currently working on a monograph on the politics of vice, tracing its history from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Other ongoing research interests include the history of the concept of ‘society’ and the intellectual biography of the Renaissance statesman and historian Francesco Guiccardini (1483-1540).

After studying Philosophy and Intellectual History at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa (2016-2021), Tessarolo received his Ph.D. in Political Theory (with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies) from UC Berkeley (2026).

Current Projects

Tessarolo’s current book project, based on his doctoral dissertation, reconstructs an intellectual tradition centered around the idea that political institutions must harness negative passions for the common good. The book argues that the emergence of this tradition can be traced to a synthesis of Machiavellian constitutionalism and Augustinian moralism, prompted by the pervasive concern with immorality that characterized British political discourse during the six decades following the Glorious Revolution (1688). Best exemplified by Mandeville’s scandalous assertion that politics can turn vices into benefits, this synthesis received its most sophisticated philosophical formulations in the 1740s by Hume and Montesquieu. They transformed the politics of vice from a polemical tool into one of the theoretical foundations of late-eighteenth-century constitutionalism and of the modern social sciences. Challenging conventional narratives that interpret early modern political thought as a confrontation between a virtue-centric republican constitutionalism and an interest-centric commercial society, the book demonstrates that the constitutional version of the politics of vice has an independent history, which overlaps with but largely predates the birth of political economy and the application of economic tools to politics. Appreciating its distinctiveness can help us rethink both the intellectual origins and the conceptual features of modern constitutionalism.

Publications

Articles & Book Chapters
 

“Jean Bodin’s Demonic Constitutionalism: Sovereignty, Natural Law, and Political Theology.” American Political Science Review, CXX/2 (2026), pp. 490-503. (with Eero Arum) 

“Il pensiero politico della Storia d’Italia.” Rinascimento, Serie II, LXV (2025), pp. 155-87. 

“The Politics of societas and the Early Modern State.” The Historical Journal, LXVIII/2 (2025), pp. 308-328.

“Per un’interpretazione evolutiva del pensiero di Guicciardini. A partire da una nuova edizione dei Ricordi.” Rinascimento, Serie II, LXIV (2024), pp. 105-27. 

“‘Full of contradictions, of confusion, or both’. Rethinking the Political Thought of Robert Filmer.” History of Political Thought, XLV/2 (2024), pp. 257-81. 

“Economia e medicina dei «corpi misti»: sei tesi sulla corruzione in Machiavelli.” in Laura Carotti (ed.), Machiavelli oggi, Edizioni della Normale, Pisa, 2024, pp. 131-50. 

“Tra tradizione e mito. Limiti e prospettive del paradigma repubblicano.” Studi storici, LXIV/4 (2023), pp. 781-812. 

“«Un uomo eccezionale nello Stato»: la figura del legislatore tra Rousseau e Machiavelli.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Serie V, XIII/2 (2021), pp. 477-502. 

“Politica ed esistenza. Rousseau in Germania tra Thomas Mann e Carl Schmitt.” Rivista di storia della filosofia, II (2021), pp. 281-308. 

“Machiavelli, Rousseau e l’«età umanistica»: appunti per un confronto.” Rinascimento, Serie II, LX (2020), pp. 253-271. 

“Ordini e virtù. Gli «uomini eccellenti» in Machiavelli.” Rinascimento, Serie II, LVIII (2018), pp. 257-282.