In the inaugural lecture of the series of Pavia lectures, Dell’origine e dell’ufficio della letteratura (On the origin and role of the literature), Foscolo took inspiration from Giambattista Vico to retrace the various phases of the history of humanity, giving literature an essential role in the process of civilization. In highly oratorical prose, which revealed the "truth" to those present in a prophetic way, Foscolo gave literary figures a pedagogical role and a social function in teaching civil harmony to the people; furthermore, he identified historical memory (“O italiani, io vi esorto alle storie” - "Oh Italians, I exhort you to histories") as an important instrument for the formation of a national and civil conscience. Foscolo distanced himself from more extreme political positions, showing a conciliatory attitude towards established power and rejecting all hypothesis of revolution; yet he opposed in a resolute way any servile subordination of literature to the world of power. 

After the first two lessons on more specific subjects [De’ principj della letteratura (On the principles of the literature), and Della lingua italiana considerata storicamente e letterariamente (The Italian language considered in literary and historical terms)], Foscolo devoted the final three lectures to Della morale letteraria (Literary morality); all three lectures [La letteratura rivolta unicamente al lucro (Literature Aimed Solely at Lucre), La letteratura rivolta unicamente alla gloria (Literature aimed solely at glory), and La letteratura rivolta all’esercizio delle facoltà intellettuali (Literature aimed solely at the exercise of intellectual faculty)], condemned, albeit without explicitly polemical tones, a literary figure extremely widespread in the Napoleonic age, who made literature a mercenary object, who created political consensus and who, in short, directed his work to the "secondary passions and opinions" of the powerful. At the end of his period in Pavia, Foscolo gave an oration Sull’origine e i limiti della giustizia (On the origins and limits of the justice), which, based on the thought of Machiavelli and Hobbes, rejected any hypothesis of innate universal justice in man and conceives justice as a social product linked to the existence of a country in which solid relations between men can lead to moments of equilibrium and peaceful coexistence.

E. Delacroix, Justice, 1833-1837, Paris, Palais Bourbon