The aim of this article is to show the particular place of the Lettere accademiche within the corpus of Antonio Genovesi. Far from being a simple pamphlet, these letters offer, on the contrary, the conditions of possibility of a science of man based on the history and the human making, and that without having recourse to a hypothetical golden age. This positioning, resolutely in favour of civilization, gives Genovesi an original place in the history of ideas, notably in relation to Rousseau, Hobbes, but also Diderot