The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith
Abstract
Combining the methods of the modern philosopher with those of the historian of ideas, Knud Haakonssen presents an interpretation of the philosophy of law which Adam Smith developed out of - and partly in response to - David Hume's theory of justice. While acknowledging that the influences on Smith were many and various, Dr Haakonssen suggests that the decisive philosophical one was Hume's analysis of justice in A Treatise of Human Nature and the second Enquiry. He therefore begins with a thorough investigation of Hume, from which he goes on to show the philosophical originality of Smith's new form of natural jurisprudence. At the same time, he provides an over all reading of Smith's social and political thought, demonstrating clearly the exact links between the moral theory of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Lectures on Jurisprudence, and the sociohistorical theory of The Wealth of Nations. This is the first full analysis of Adam Smith's jurisprudence; it emphasizes its normative and critical function, and relates this to the psychological, sociological, and histroical aspects which hitherto have attracted most attention. Dr Haakonssen is critical of both purely descriptivist and utilitarian interpretations of Smith's moral and political philosophy, and demonstrates the implausibility of regarding Smith's view of history as pseudo-economic or 'materialist'.
... This chapter aims to critically evaluate the efficacy of liberalism in addressing environmental degradation, anchoring its analysis in a blend of historical perspectives and contemporary scholarly debate. From the Enlightenment's heralding of reason and individual rights, figures like John Locke and Adam Smith have established a socio-political and economic narrative that places individual liberty, private property, and market autonomy at the forefront of societal progress (Waldron 2002;Haakonssen 1981). These principles, pivotal in sculpting economic growth and technological innovation, have, inadvertently or not, contributed to the sidelining of environmental concerns. ...
This study critically examines the limitations of liberalism in effectively addressing the climate crisis, informed by Domenico Losurdo’s critique and the lens of posthumanism. It illuminates the core liberal focus on individual rights and autonomy, which stands in stark contrast with the collective, interconnected nature of global environmental challenges. Through a detailed engagement with Losurdo’s analytical framework and posthumanist philosophy, the paper argues for a fundamental shift within liberal thought. This involves the incorporation of a robust environmental ethic and a commitment to global justice to reconcile the intrinsic values of liberalism with the urgent demands of environmental sustainability and collective action. The proposed reconfigured liberal philosophy seeks to combine its traditional strengths with a renewed focus on collective well-being, offering a more comprehensive and effective strategy for confronting the existential threat of the climate crisis. This study argues that such a reimagined liberal approach not only enhances its relevance in the face of global environmental challenges but also serves as a viable pathway toward promoting a more just and sustainable future.
By exploring Adam Smith’s considerations of arts, this paper stresses that the philosopher establishes a profound connection between music and sympathy. In his essay “Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts,” Smith delves into esthetic theory, dedicating a significant portion of the text to music and its role in eliciting pleasure and emotions. While previous studies have acknowledged the presence of art-related vocabulary and an esthetic dimension in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, they have not comprehensively mobilized his art essay to illuminate his moral theory. Following this unexplored path, this paper rallies the parallel Smith creates between emotions and musical aspects, such as rhythm and melody, to find a connection between his esthetic and moral ideas. In essence, it reveals how the human esthetic sensibility to look for regularities and order serves as a foundational element in Smith’s understanding of sympathy and social harmony .
El texto se propone reconstruir el concepto smithiano de obligación política, a partir de la revisión crítica de tres de sus principales obras: Teoría de los sentimientos morales, Lecciones de jurisprudencia y La riqueza de las naciones. Si bien no se trata de un concepto central en su teoría, la propuesta del autor, en continuidad con la de Hume, presenta una lectura alternativa a las lecturas dominantes basadas en el consentimiento. Aunque este cuestionamiento tiene potencial crítico, el apego del escocés a las jerarquías heredadas como garantes del orden social, tendrán efectos conservadores que serán refutados por los hechos históricos posteriores.
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 patriotisms: the patriotism of national jealousy and the patriotism of radical reform. Much of what is heralded as serving the common good, Smith argued, does no such thing. The true patriot will not pursue national aggrandizement, but commercial liberalizations, which undercut the interest of factions but serve the good of the nation. Liberalization, however, ought to be undertaken with prudence and moderation, out of respect for the established order. Radicalism, even that which is opposed to real corruptions, Smith argued, can often undercut its own cause. Besides of the two patriotic foils (that is, the patriotism of jealousy and the patriotism of radical reform), it is useful to contrast Smith's patriotism of partnership with a third position, namely the position that is against patriotism altogether. This position is represented by Soame Jenyns.
Recent years have seen the dominance of neoclassical, marginalist and welfarist schools of Competition Law and Economics being challenged more vigor- ously than ever [See two major collecting works in: Fennell and McAdams (2013) and Cappelen and Tungodden (2019)]. Although the core assumptions of the neoclas- sical school regarding overt reliance on rationality and efficiency ever since the inception of the school have been target of much criticism [Flynn (December 1988), pp. 713–43 and Dworkin (1980), pp. 191–226], the latest decades of both research and real life developments have reinvigorated the criticim [An indication is the title of the latest Global Competition Forum, themed “Time for a Reset?”, see here: http://www.oecd.org/competition/globalforum/GFC-2020-agenda-en.pdf, accessed 2020-12-07]. Nowhere is the influence of neoclassical and marginalist economic approaches, in turn underscored by Legal Realism and Legal Positivist approaches, more prevalent, than laws governing economic activities, chief among them antitrust law and policy. The famous “Antitrust Revolution” in the late 70s by the likes of Robert Bork (1978) and Richard Posner (2014) still today dominates mainstream law and economics of not only US Antitrust law, but also of Euro- pean [Bartalevich (2016), pp. 267–83] and global competition law [Stiglitz (2017)]. Leaving behind decades long (and one would say, centuries long) fairness-related approaches to law and economics [Watkins (1922)] (which in this article will be dubbed Kantian although the core philosophy predates Kant by eons), we now also note insights in bounded rationality [Piron and Fernandez (1995)], which further underscore the previous theoretical and philosophical approaches. Using the legal prohibition against “unfair pricing” as an optimal proxy [See e.g. Treaty on the Func- tioning of the European Union Article 102a, prohibiting unfair pricing imposed by a dominant undertaking capable of affecting trade between member states or in substan- tial part of the Union; See also Kianzad and Minssen (2018), pp. 133–48], the present article juxtaposes the neoclassical and marginalist approaches to this area of political economy, by way of using Kantian ethics and Kantian legal philosophy to demon- strate the inaptness of the so-called mainstream Law and Economics approaches to the matter “fairness in law and economics”. A return to Kantian philosophy of law [White (2019), pp. 53–76] and a balanced approach between law and economics disci- plines, more so regarding laws governing economic activity, is forwarded, making the case that whether one is Kantian or Utilitarian in the normative will invariably affect the substantive positive legal and economic analysis. This fact is independent of the claims to “rationality”, “objectivity” or “humanity” and “divinity” made by either approach. Following the introduction framing the “paradox” regarding the return of Kantian, fairness-based approaches to law and economics, the second section depicts the Posnerian attack on Kant construed alongside Wealth Maximisation as an optimal goal of law and economics. The third section describes the supposed division between fairness and welfare, or efficiency, as an optimal goal of law and economics. The fourth section in turn constructs the Kantian comeback. The fifth section concludes.
This chapter focuses on a particular kind of education in Smith’s moral philosophy. Specifically, it describes in what sense Smith’s understanding of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and others that mature through natural education. In Smith, ‘natural education’ consists of those natural educational consequences of the sympathetic consideration and emulation of others and their judgments by human beings, since childhood. This natural education concerns both the self-correction of the human being in the sense of a spontaneous self-command in infancy, and the condition of possibility of the moral conscience in the sense of an impartial spectator.
For Smith, natural education is the basis of the first stage of the formation of moral conscience, which underlies the moral development of the self and the emotional expression associated with the moral judgment by the internal and external spectators on human conduct. In this context, for Smith, sympathetic human beings would correct themselves in order to be deservedly approved by others and by their own internal impartial spectator.
For Smith, the historical process is indispensable for understanding in what sense and to what extent we can speak of harmony between the individual self and others. Indeed, the historical process is not only a driving cause of self-development in terms of the differentiation of the individual self of each human being in society, but it also influences the nature of the relationships that human beings have with each other. Starting from these premises, this chapter describes in what sense Smith’s understanding of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and others that depends on the historical process. Therefore, I outline in what sense it would be possible to speak of a relationship between historical context, moral conduct and human nature in Smith’s conception of the human being. In particular, after outlining some features of Smith’s philosophy of history, I explore one of the main features of Smith’s philosophical anthropology through an examination of the figure of the savage. In doing so, I provide an example of how the development of the self would be linked to the satisfaction of a desiderative human nature of the human being depending on the historical and social context.
This chapter aims to provide an overview of the meaning of the terms ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ as used by Smith in his moral philosophy in relation to human nature. Starting from a synthesis of a number of perspectives, as opposed to those that see nature unilaterally as an object of description or as a matrix of moral norms, I show in what sense nature could be a normative object amenable to description in Smith’s moral philosophy.
In particular, I describe the possibility of considering the relationship between nature and morality in a non-unilateral way. In doing so, I show how, for Smith, nature can express itself through morality; sometimes nature itself can be moral; or morality can express itself naturally or directly; at other times, differently, morality seems to correct aspects of nature. Within this framework, I emphasise that Smith does not reduce morality to what is natural in relation to the divine will or God. Rather, for Smith, the limits of descriptive knowledge of a normative nature open up the field of possibility for a different understanding of human beings in moral terms.
This chapter describes in what sense Smith’s conception of human nature can be defined in different ways, and how it is related to some tendencies and desires, such as sociability, language, the human propensity to exchange, self-love, harmony, the desire to gain deserved approval from real and imagined spectators, the desire to improve one’s condition and happiness. In particular, I describe how, in Smith’s moral philosophy, these desiderative and motivational dimensions, across several categories of discourse (philosophical, psychological and anthropological), are all linked to the possibility of harmony between oneself and others in society.
This chapter shows in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding Smith’s conception of harmony between oneself and others. Specifically, assuming the centrality of the concept of immediacy, I describe in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding human nature, mind and the self in relation to Smith’s conceptions of the origin of moral judgment, the moral development of the self, and emotional expression. Firstly, I analyse the fundamental role of the passions as the object and origin of moral judgment in human beings, showing their immediate dimension. Then I consider the crucial role of the imagination in the articulation of the imperfect and perfect degrees of sympathy, understanding this imagination as a mental process consisting of two moments: a natural-immediate, linked to sensory perception; a moral-rational, marked by an intellectual effort. Thus, imperfect sympathy is defined as that related to the perceptual dimension, which a person experiences only when he has a general idea of the cause that provokes the feeling with which she sympathises; perfect sympathy is described as that which a person has when, considering the other’s situation, she expresses a moral judgment on the character and conduct of the other. Finally, the chapter offers an inventory of Smith’s main qualifications of the concept of sympathy in his moral theory.
Este artículo detalla de manera esquemática las diferencias entre las teorías de David Hume y Adam Smith en los diversos temas que tratan. Para ello, se abren cuadros de doble entrada que dan muestra de la contraposición de ambas teorías, y que demuestran que Adam Smith quiso rebatir en sus distintas obras las teorías de David Hume.
Scholars working on recovering forgotten historical women philosophers have noted the importance of looking beyond traditional philosophical genres. This strategy is particularly important for finding Scottish women philosophers. By considering non-canonical genres, we can see the philosophical interest of the works of Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), who presents an account of “sympathetic curiosity” as one of the basic principles of the human mind. Baillie's work is also interesting for being a rare case of a woman's philosophical work that was discussed in print by another woman philosopher – in this case, by Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816), who argues for the importance of a feature of human nature that she calls the “selfish principle.” The article suggests that focusing on critical engagements between historical women philosophers can help integrate their texts into the history of philosophy without presenting them as “handmaidens” to male philosophers.
The eighteenth century is often thought of as an important era for the secularization of British philosophy. One dimension of this secularization involves philosophers developing theories that, while not explicitly rejecting God, are less reliant on claims about God for their intelligibility and plausibility. A comparison of Adam Smith with his teacher, Francis Hutcheson, reveals an underappreciated facet of this process. Hutcheson portrayed God as an impartial legislator and used this metaphor to clarify contested moral rules in a way that would make little sense if God did not exist. In contrast, Smith's impartial spectator does not require belief in a God who is the author of the moral law in order to determine the correct interpretation of contested moral principles. By pursuing this alternative conception of impartiality, Smith developed a theory that was, in this respect, less reliant on religious premises than Hutcheson's had been.
Hume’s most sophisticated contemporary interlocutor was his friend Adam Smith (1723–1790). Smith treated religion in a naturalistic fashion, as a subject not framed by theological concepts and biblical frameworks derived from scripture, but as something analysed in terms of psychological, social and historical observations. In both Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith was in clear dialogue with Hume, part of their wider conversation over human nature and society. Yet Smith’s conclusions distinctly differed from his friend, as he saw the “natural principles of religion” as outgrowths of our natural moral sentiments and viewed them as beneficial to morality and society in general. Problems arose when those natural principles were perverted away from being a function of morality.
The subject of the article is the study of Adam Smith's conceptual ideas about uncertainty and security and their relationship. Methods of conceptual analysis are used in two versions. The presentist approach aims to interpret Smith's ideas about uncertainty in terms of modern concepts (fundamental and epistemological uncertainty and their forms). The antiquarian approach aims to explain the features of Smith's concepts in the context of the theological, philosophical ideas and methodological ideas he shared. The analysis is used in presentist and antiquarian variants. The first part of the article shows that Smith uses several concepts of uncertainty. One of them corresponds to the modern idea of epistemic uncertainty. Smith also develops an original concept of ambiguity, which, in the author's opinion, can be most constructively understood from the standpoint of a generalized version of Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity. However, in Smith's system this type of uncertainty is of fundamental importance and is associated with the feeling of sympathy. The third part of the article examines the influence of theological ideas on Smith's ideas about uncertainty. The peculiarities of scientists' interpretation of the uncertainty of the future are explored. The second part also examines selected conceptual relationships between uncertainty and security. In Smith's theoretical system, the reduction of uncertainty plays a special role in ensuring the long-term survival of society (ensuring security - in the presentist interpretation). Smith associates it with following the rules of the virtue of justice, which have the greatest certainty and, functioning like the rules of grammar, perform the function of creating order.
In recent decades, the mainstream microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis was proven to be insufficient for exploring the dynamic and complex interactions among humans, institutions, and nature in our real economy. On the one side, microeconomics is filled with black-box models that fail to study the actual contractual relations between firms and markets, while on the other side macroeconomics were proven useless because they mistook the beauty of theoretical models for truth. Thus, questions have arisen about using new theoretical and empirical structures that would better describe our economic systems.
Bridging Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and the Effects on Economic Development and Growth is an essential reference source that analyzes the hypotheses that govern the relationships of aggregate structures (macroeconomic analysis) that may be compatible with the assumptions that govern the behavior of individuals, households, and firms (micro analysis), and vice versa, in trying to achieve sustainable economic development and growth. Moreover, modern evolutionary growth thinking is used in trying to bridge the inconsistencies between microeconomics and macroeconomics and confront their failures in order to better describe the economic reality. While highlighting a broad range of topics including globalization, economic systems, and the role of institutions, this book is aimed toward economic analysts, financial advisors, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.
Adam Smith had a longstanding interest in colonialism and more generally relations between Europe and the rest of the world. It was through engagement with these issues that he worked through some of the central elements of his thought. This paper examines both Smith’s contexts and our own and argues that Smith’s work provides an important resource for reflecting today on relations with distant and diverse others today. It identifies three aspects of Smith’s thought that are particularly relevant: the political and economic costs of colonial ventures to the colonisers themselves, the question of whether and how imperialism had encouraged ‘progress’, and the question of how social and cultural differences should be understood and judged. The paper teases out Smith’s sometimes uncertain arguments in these areas and suggests that they can contribute to our own reflections on the troubled practices of liberal imperialism.
The central core of the work of Adam Smith is identified here, with particular reference to his own words. His argumentation is full of surprises and paradoxes, and it offers key insights for sociology, especially as it allows us to better understand key features of the modern world.
As a tutor for a ‘Grand Tour’, Adam Smith both taught and exercised his moral philosophy for his pupil, the third Duke of Buccleuch. Moral education in Smith’s moral philosophy has, in general, been less discussed, partly because of its descriptive, not prescriptive, tone. Smith’s prescriptive suggestions, if anything, required of ordinary citizens only thin or light morality, different from what the word ‘virtues’ normally reminds us of at present. However, Smith’s moral argument left sufficient room for developing superior morality among leading politicians and legislators, cultivated with the language of virtue, aside from basic moral sense and rules required of ordinary citizens. Smith wanted his nobleman-student to learn the virtue of ‘oeconomy’, a necessary trait for governing private land estates. This exploration into Smith’s great interest in private moral economy shall shed new light on his rich analysis of the modern political economy.
For the first time, in Hume and Smith, ‘sympathy’ occupies a central position as the principle of moral judgment. The key to solving the relationship between sympathy and economic thought lies in the theory of justice. Hume and Smith inherited Hutcheson’s criticism of the Hobbesian selfish system and considered humans selfish and social. For both, the relationship between selfishness and sympathy is neither a contradiction nor a subordinate structure in which selfishness ultimately dominates sympathy. In this joint project, Hume’s institutional utilitarianism could justify Smith’s economic theories and provide Smith’s theory of government with a proper philosophical foundation. I argue that this is particularly significant because Smith himself failed to provide the foundation in areas where the idea of public utility plays a vital role, such as in the critical case of national defence and the decline of martial spirit.
What does Adam Smith mean by “good government”? How is it related to his political economy and system of natural liberty? No extensive or specific treatment of these hermeneutical issues has been given in Smith’s scholarship. Answering these questions is fundamental to having a new interpretation of the various links between the legal, political, ethical and economic aspects of Smith’s view of social order. The great theme of good government, which runs through the whole history of Western political-legal thought, if read in relation to the system of natural liberty, provides a different understanding of the thought of Smith on “Political Economy” as the “science of a statesman or legislator” and the new art of good government. Our reconstruction of Smith’s view of good government aims to cast light on and give a new significance to his unfinished project of a new science of society.
Does liberty matter for economics? To address this question, I distinguish among three different types of liberty: Adam Smith’s, the neoclassical, and the so-called “classical liberal.” They differ in that the neoclassical and the classical liberal perspectives presume the existence, typically without noting it, of the four conditions that comprise the foundation of liberty, namely, secure property rights, enforcement of contracts, absence of government predation, and security. In contrast, Adam Smith sought to explain these foundations. In this article—an extraliterary review of one of the central themes of Acemoglu and Robinson (2019)—I draw the implications of Smith’s approach, and I explain why neoclassical economics—which takes the foundations of liberty as given—is unable to understand the work of Smith on this topic and, hence, on economic development. I also show that the neoclassical and the classical liberal approaches rest on a foundation of magic: they both presume the foundational conditions just noted but fail to explain how they arise. Put simply, the neoclassical approach has no explanation for the origin of liberty or of the mechanisms that sustain it. If markets require the four conditions of the foundation of liberty, then a complete explanation of the origin and development of markets must include an explanation of how these conditions come to hold. The Smithian economic perspective is especially important for today’s developing countries, most of which, at best, struggle to create the four foundational assumptions of liberty.
In his lectures of 1978–79, published posthumously as The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault addressed versions of liberalism in which an invisible market appears immune to government intervention. Among the thinkers discussed were Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson. This essay offers critical reflections on Foucault’s description of Smith as emphasizing the invisibility of the economy, as well as on Foucault’s interpretation of the “invisible hand” and his ascription of egoism to Smith’s economic agents. Foucault also appeals to Ferguson’s notion of civil society to resolve incompatibilities between economic agents and the sovereign. However, Ferguson’s theory of society does not provide the assistance that Foucault thinks it does. Moreover, like Smith, Ferguson holds no egoistic view of economic motivation. Nonetheless, and surprisingly, Foucault would have found enticing Ferguson’s use of conjectural history, with its appeal to the unintended, contingent, and conflictual basis of social change.
This article analyzes the relationship between competition and justice in Adam Smith in order to determine to what extent competition can promote and undermine justice. I examine how competition features in two basic motivations for human action, “the propensity to truck barter and exchange,” and “the desire of bettering our condition.” Both can be traced back to the desire for recognition, but they operate in very different ways. The former manifests itself in social cooperation, chiefly commercial exchange and the division of labor, and while it can take a competitive form, competitive success produces benefits for everyone. In contrast, the latter may manifest itself in win-lose social competition. Commercial society harnesses both motivations, and both have negative as well as positive effects. However, while Smith explicitly addresses the negative effects of excessive specialization in the division of labor, it is less clear how he thinks the negative effects of social competition can be addressed. I argue that competition can undermine justice when (i) it pits people against each other and (ii) leads to psychological corruption. I conclude with some reflections on what a focus on competition adds to our understanding of Smith’s work.
David Hume’s historical thought was shaped before he even began writing the History of Great Britain in 1752. This article shows how Hume developed his historical thought in an attempt to combine two historical structures: the natural-jurisprudential conjectural history of the Treatise of Human Nature and the early eighteenth-century historical narratives of modern Europe that featured in his Essays. The Treatise’s conjectural history used the developmental categories “rude” and “civilised” to explain the origins of justice, government and the moral sentiment. The narratives of modern Europe, in contrast, revolved around the historical categories “ancient” and “modern.” Hume’s historical thought was shaped by the attempt to merge those two structures into a single, coherent structure. The critical question concerned the relation between the ancient and the modern: was modern Europe merely a “revival” of classical antiquity? Or did it have new, “post-ancient” dimensions? The article shows how Hume gradually distanced classical antiquity from modern Europe, thereby creating space for exclusively modern concepts such as “civilised monarchies” and the narrative of modern civilisation that structured his History of England (1754–1762). The paper concludes by suggesting that this structure defined Enlightenment philosophical history, not just Hume’s version of it.
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 about self-awareness and self-judgment, I first argue that inconsistency need not be viewed as pathological. Inconsistent choices might indicate legitimate context-dependencies as individuals reflect over disjointed perspectives and act accordingly. Understanding inconsistency as reasonable raises epistemic difficulties for identifying errant choices and designing corrective policies. Second, I draw on Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator to discuss dynamic aspects of welfare. Welfare is not simply a matter of preference satisfaction but involves a sense of progress and improvement towards better preferences. Smith’s account suggests that economists interested in welfare should focus on institutional arrangements that facilitate self-development.
I begin with a diagnosis. Present-day scholarly work on the Scottish Enlightenment is bifurcated: it is either focused on the areas of moral philosophy or of natural philosophy, broadly construed in both cases. The aspiration to combine these inquiries is rare and unsystematic. This paper makes a case for the need and possibility of a perspective that conceives moral and natural inquiry as integrated enterprises in the period. It also suggests that potentially useful interpretive devices can be adopted from the historiography of science and philosophy, as well as science studies.
Today doing history of economic thought can mean many things. Most fundamentally, they are the different questions, rather than the methods chosen to answer them, that give rise to varying examinations of the products of previous economists. As a classification, four kinds of questions are suggested. The answers to the various questions may sometimes complement and reinforce each other. But if they do not, this should not necessarily be a problem for continued dialogue. All one needs is an acknowledgment that different perspectives are not mutually exclusive.
This article reconstructs Adam Smith’s contribution to the conversation on the nature and value of free government in the eighteenth century. Smith contributes to this conversation in two ways. First, by embedding the idea of free government in a narrative of the progress of government, which traces the interplay between natural progress and social circumstances, and culminates in the establishment of modern free government in Britain. Second, by offering a theory of the form of free government fit for modern commercial states. Drawing on the “rational system of liberty” established in Britain, the Smithian model of free government is based on a “happy mixture” of republicanism and monarchism. Looking beyond the rational system, it merges the traditional concern for constitutional security against arbitrary power with a new science of policy intended to moderate the oppressive inclinations of legislators. The article contests Duncan Forbes’ reading of Smith as questioning the relation between individual liberty and free government, and brings Smith closer to Quentin Skinner’s work on the neo-Roman understanding of liberty. It suggests that Smith’s work may offer insight into some of the ways in which neo-Roman ideas were being creatively reformulated in the eighteenth century.
Smith advanced a particular view of altruism that should prove to be relevant to the modern literature on the subject. It provided the backbone of his critique of three different theories. These three theories have been reincarnated in three modern approaches : Robert Axelrod’s “egoistic”, Gary Becker’s “egocentric”, and George Herbert Mead and Robert Frank’s ”altercentric” views. Axelrod’s approach repeats the failing, which Smith found in Mandeville’s. Becker’s theory echoes the shortcoming, which Smith identified in Hobbes’. Mead/Frank’s view duplicates the fault, which Smith uncovered in the approach of Francis Hutcheson and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
This paper investigates the sources of Jacob Viner’s universal economy doctrine, which is part of his argument that theological arguments for free trade preceded and shaped the economic arguments. Viner’s key source is the influential fourth-century pagan orator Libanius, quoted by Hugo Grotius, but identification of the passage in Libanius has eluded contemporary scholars, even though Viner’s Libanius quotation and the universal economy doctrine it supports has been used in many subsequent works on the history of international trade theory. Investigating the context of the passage and Libanius’ economic views suggests that he meant something very different to the ways that Grotius and Viner and many subsequent authors used the passage. Rather than merely convicting these authors of crimes against the canons of contextual historiography, we suggest that viewing the curious tale of the quotation and its subsequent use through the lens of reception history would be more fruitful.
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 real wages and population through an extending division of labor. The liberal plan facilitates market integration, leading toward a distribution of food supplies that could be called liberal and generous if it was brought about by design of a distributor. The liberal plan entails a generous view of the person that dignifies the mundane and elevates ordinary work. Considering ways that Smith's liberal plan is “liberal” shines light on the soul of classical liberal political economy.
El primer objetivo del presente artículo es reconstruir el concepto de obligación política en Hume a partir de lo expuesto en el Tratado de la naturaleza humana y en algunos de sus ensayos políticos. Hume es crítico del contractualismo y su idea del consentimiento como fundamento de la legitimidad de la autoridad, proponiendo en su lugar lo que llama “aquiescencia precaria”. El segundo objetivo es analizar el alcance del escepticismo humeano respecto de la obligación política y verificar si se extiende a la obligación de cumplir las reglas de justicia. Para ello analizaremos la figura del sensible knave introducida en la Investigación de los principios de la moral, y la respuesta que Hume le da a quienes se resisten a cumplir las reglas. Concluiremos que el escepticismo humeano que se ve reflejado en su comprensión de la obligación política, afecta también a su respuesta a los potenciales infractores de las reglas, sin embargo, más que un fallo en el argumento de Hume sería una ventaja para pensar la política más allá de los dogmatismos.
What are the causes of prosperity? In addition to the division of labor, saving, capital accumulation, and good institutions, Adam Smith explains opulence through vanity and luck, two variables we tend to forget today. For Smith, wealth comes from our propensity to better our condition, combined with freedom and the security of the law. The propensity to better our condition is grounded in our vanity and can take the form of both parsimony and prodigality. The laws that guarantee freedom and security seem to be more of an accident of history than deliberate attempts to create prosperity. For Smith, vanity and accidents play a relevant role in economic growth.
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 cooperate with God in furthering the happiness of humankind. The Theory of Moral Sentiments elaborates an ethic, here called “focalism,” that instructs us to proportion our beneficent efforts to our knowledge and ability. The relationship between political economy and focalism is bidirectionally reinforcing. In one direction, the ethic of focalism contributes to the moral authorization of self-love, thereby invigorating and dignifying honest commercial activities. In the other direction, the insights of political economy reinforce the ethic of focalism by elaborating how through prudent commerce and focal beneficence, we cooperate, even if only metaphorically, in a grand social enterprise.
We propose to investigate the history of the relation between the concept of utility and utilitarianism and the need for taxation, specifically as it relates to Anglo-American political thought from the seventeenth century in Hobbes to the nineteenth century in Mill. During this period, the justification for taxation gradually shifted from a taxation model of ‘payment for benefit’ to taxation as ‘ability to pay’. Specifically, we show that it is the enlightenment concept of self-determination, arising in one form or another in Locke, Hume, Smith and even Bentham, which makes it possible for ‘benefit’ to be conceived as both individual and social at the same time, which ultimately results in the shift from taxation as ‘payment for benefit’ to taxation as ‘ability to pay’. We first examine the concept of the idea of utility (here often understood as self-interest) as it forms the basis of the social contract. Because of the individualistic notions of benefit, Hobbes and Locke both argue that taxation should fall on all equally since the fundamental benefit of each is security. In the eighteenth century, however, we find an emphasis on ‘fellow feeling’ (Smith) which modifies the agent’s self-interest. While Hume is the first theorist to use the concept of utility systematically, Smith retreats from it out of concern that it would result in some deciding for others in matters of personal happiness. Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, somewhat surprisingly also emphasizes critique of received opinion and personal autonomy, arguing that the concept of utility is compatible with utility maximization. This ambiguity continues in Mill, whose Utilitarianism and On Liberty have often been seen as at odds. In Hume through Mill it is the attention to autonomy conceived of socially which mitigates the idea of taxation as ‘payment for benefit’ since the benefit is understood as accruing to society as a whole.
During the twentieth century, Joan Robinson introduced Marx's political economy into academic discussions of economic thought. This article argues that Robinson's work generates a proposal for academic integrity in economic ideas through an ethical vision of Marx's discourse and an epistemic critique of orthodox economic theory. Robinson's research shows that economic theory has been characterized by hiding the interests of the bourgeoisie, consolidating an "unethical behavior". Following Macfarlane's (2009) work on virtue theory, it is possible to identify in Robinson's production virtues that can enhance the academic integrity of economists.
For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth century is a rational explanation of crime and a utilitarian use of punishment, Adam Smith instead builds his theory of criminal behavior and legal prosecution consistently on the sentiments. A well-functioning legal system is thus an unintended consequence of our desire to bring justice to the individual person, not the result of a rational calculation to promote the public good, just like a well-functioning economic system is the unintended consequence of our desire to better our own condition, not the result of a rational calculation to promote public good.
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