Erik W. MatsonGeorge Mason University | GMU · Mercatus Center
Erik W. Matson
PhD in economics
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Introduction
I'm a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and deputy director of the Adam Smith Program at George Mason University. My research interests include eighteenth-century British moral philosophy and economics, the role of theology in economic thought, and economic methodology.
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Publications
Publications (65)
This paper treats Smith's writings on patriotism and universal benevolence in the final edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by placing them in some broader contexts. Smith affirmed proper patriotism as virtuous and consistent with the Christian ethic of universal benevolence. Proper patriotism, however, subsists in contrast to two vicious pat...
This chapter surveys some intellectual influences of religion--especially Protestantism--and early modern discourses in natural law on the formation of classical liberal thought. A brief historical account is given of the rise of the first mode of political thinking to be called "liberal" in English, followed by a sketch of classical liberal sensib...
In this chapter, Erik W. Matson describes how Hume’s international theory derives from his understanding of commerce and international trade as sources of moral improvement. Drawing on Hume's ideas of technical progress and innovation, Hume’s writings are shown to convey a nascent theory of comparative advantage.Trade benefitstrich and poor countri...
This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England . Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilitie...
History has largely neglected John Witherspoon (1723-1794). The neglect is unwarranted, for Witherspoon played important roles in the Scottish Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and the formation of the American republic. This article provides a short sketch of Witherspoon’s life and career before introducing and then reproducing the full text...
There has been debate over the coherence of Hutcheson’s writings. Hutcheson’s writings on ethics have been taken as inconsistent with his work on jurisprudence and economics. This article argues that Hutcheson’s works are coherent when situated in theological context. We find across Hutcheson’s works a belief that God has benevolently designed the...
This paper elaborates the coherence of Hutcheson's ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy by analyzing his views on the role of self-love in God's plan for furthering the happiness of humankind. God's benevolent order is such that we serve the good of all even as we tend to our local parts. That concord is facilitated by institutions of prope...
This essay uses concepts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop ideas about choice and welfare. I use those ideas to offer several challenges to common approaches to behavioral welfare economics and new paternalist policy making. Drawing on Smith’s dialectical concept of practical reason, which he develops in expositing ideas a...
This paper discusses how in the British tradition, political economy, which partly emerged out of discourses in natural theology, ethics, and jurisprudence, casts some light on the content of our moral obligations. Drawing on Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, I illustrate how commerce came to be depicted as a mode of cooperation-either literally with God...
Carl Menger advanced a narrow definition of exact or theoretical economics. Theoretical economics is the study of the self-interested aspect of human efforts made to meet needs. One implication of this definition, Menger argues, is a strict demarcation between ethics and economics. Menger advances this demarcation against what he calls the “ethical...
This chapter revisits some of Hume's pathbreaking arguments about international trade and connects them with his ideas about economic growth, refinement in consumption, and moral improvement. Hume appreciates that free trade leads to interregional and international specialization. Both rich countries and poorer countries, Hume believed, benefit fro...
This is the introduction to a symposium on religion, the Scottish Enlightenment, and liberalism forthcoming in 'Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology.'
By the middle of the eighteenth century the word “liberal” had had multiple non‐political meanings. Adam Smith famously advances “the liberal plan” of political economy. In The Wealth of Nations he indicates several ways that his liberal plan is “liberal” in a non‐political sense. The liberal plan leads to economic growth, which leads to a rise in...
By the middle of the eighteenth century the word “liberal” had had multiple non-political meanings. Adam Smith famously advances “the liberal plan” of political economy. In The Wealth of Nations he indicates several ways that his liberal plan is “liberal” in a non-political sense. The liberal plan leads to economic growth, which leads to a rise in...
This essay uses concepts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop ideas about choice and welfare. Those ideas are used to offer several challenges to common approaches to behavioral welfare economics and new paternalist policy making. Drawing on Smith’s dialectical concept of practical reason, which he develops in expositing idea...
Carl Menger advanced a narrow definition of exact or theoretical economics. Theoretical economics is the study of the self-interested aspect of human efforts made to meet needs. One implication of this definition, Menger argues, is a strict demarcation between ethics and economics. Menger advances this demarcation against what he calls the “ethical...
Adam Smith’s discourses aim to encourage mores, practices, and public policies in service to the common good, or that which a universally benevolent spectator would approve of. The Wealth of Nations illustrates how in pursuing our own happiness within the bounds of prudence and commutative justice, we may be said, literally or metaphorically, to co...
This is a review of Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind, 'A Philosopher's Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
This essay provides an overview of the major changes across the editions of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). It deals with two issues relating to Smith's theological and economic perspectives. Although Smith pares away some of the orthodox Christian theology in the later editions of TMS, even evincing a skeptical attitude in some mome...
David K. Lewis published his brilliant PhD dissertation in 1969, Convention; A Philosophical Study. With a lag, scholarship on David Hume has come to elaborate the similitude between Lewis and Hume on convention. Reading Hume along the lines of Lewis gives us a vocabulary with which we can better appreciate and articulate the innovativeness of Hume...
Smith’s discourses aim to encourage mores, practices, and public policies in service to the common good, or that which a universally benevolent spectator would approve of. The Wealth of Nations illustrates how in pursuing our own happiness within the bounds of prudence and commutative justice we may be said, literally or metaphorically, to cooperat...
This chapter presents ethical and theological perspectives on commerce in Adam Smith through the lens of Bishop Joseph Butler. After discussing the context of Butler's political economy and Smith's and Butler's overlapping theological and psychological frameworks, I focus on three issues. The first is self-love. Against Hobbes, the French Jansenist...
We draw on David Hume's essays on happiness to extend ideas about welfare, preferences, and the social role of behavioral welfare economists in Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's (2020) Escaping Paternalism. Through literary dialogue, Hume illustrates that individuals have different perspectives on the good life. These perspectives cannot be resolved b...
This is an introduction to the symposium, "David Hume, Economic Rationality, and Policy." Topics treated in the symposium include the idea of true preferences; Hume's theory of preferences in relation to his economic philosophy; justice and markets as a joint coordination regime; the instability of general, inflexible rules; conservatism and libera...
Hume's theory of preferences would, from a contemporary point of view, be labelled an endogenous theory. He sees preferences largely as comparative desires that are formed and affected by the psychological process of sympathy. His view of preferences relates to his economic philosophy. Despite his understanding of preferences, Hume is, unlike some...
In this essay I consider the relationship between wealth and happiness in Adam Smith by a close reading of a famous section of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS IV.i.8-10). I interpret Smith as presenting an open-ended dialectic between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of happiness with the goal of contributing to his readers’ moral educatio...
David K. Lewis published his brilliant PhD dissertation in 1969, Convention; A Philosophical Study. With a lag, scholarship on David Hume has come to elaborate the similitude between Lewis and Hume on convention. Reading Hume along the lines of Lewis gives us a vocabulary with which we can better appreciate and articulate the innovativeness of Hume...
In one sense benevolence does not play a significant role in Adam Smith’s political economy. But in another sense, it does. The Wealth of Nations illustrates how in pursuing our own happiness within the bounds of commutative justice we further ends that a benevolent spectator would approve of. Drawing on Smith’s discussion of “universal benevolence...
This paper examines some connections between Hume’s epistemology in his Treatise of Human Nature and his political economy. I make three claims: (1) First, I argue that it is the development of Hume’s account of the faculty of reason in Book I of the Treatise that leads him to emphasize social science—including political economy—and the humanities...
We ambitiously reexamine Smith’s moral theory in relation to Hume’s. We regard Smith's developments as glorious and important. We also see them as quite fully agreeable to Hume, as enhancement, not departure. But Smith represents matters otherwise! Why would Smith overstate disagreement with his best friend?
One aspect of Smith’s enhancement, an as...
Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry e...
I develop an interpretation of reason using the thought of David Hume and Adam Smith. I contend that reason in Hume and Smith can plausibly be interpreted as a kind of sensation. Reason is a sensation in that it is a sentimental conception of the relationship between two objects that impels certain interpretations. Reason is developed sympathetical...
In this paper we seek to draw attention to some striking and heretofore unnoticed textual connections between Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. We find significant textual parallels between the parable of the poor man's son of TMS 4.1 (TMS 4.1.8-4.1.10) and the famous conclusion to Book 1 of Hume's...
This brief research memo collects quotations from David Hume’s works about reason as a passion — specifically, a calm passion. The collection shows that after "A Treatise of Human Nature", which Hume disavowed, the dichotomy between reason and passion pretty much falls away, and, instead, reason is, in the main, presented to be a sort of passion. T...