Daniel B. Klein’s research while affiliated with George Mason University and other places

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Publications (193)

By the same author: Presenting Adam Smith's works as a whole
  • Article

November 2022

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7 Reads

Economic Affairs

Daniel B Klein

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Caroline Breashears

In the first edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in London in 1776, the ‘by the same author’ list is presented in a very unusual place: directly opposite the table of contents. That placement suggests a continuity and unity in Smith's published works. A photograph provides a touchstone to discuss: (a) the Language essay, (b) the full title of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and (c) Wealth of Nations under the ethical umbrella of Moral Sentiments.

Gratefulness, resentfulness, and some modern slogans

February 2022

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12 Reads

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1 Citation

Economic Affairs

Daniel B Klein

Scholars distinguish between gratitude and gratefulness. Both sentiments involve an appreciation of the benefits that one enjoys. Gratitude, however, also involves a positive feeling directed to the benefactor. Gratefulness does not necessarily involve any benefactor, much less a feeling towards one (‘I am grateful for the warm sunshine’). I suggest a parallel distinction between resentment and resentfulness. I suggest that in the primeval band resentfulness would be provoked by inequality and by non‐inclusiveness, and give rise to proper resentment. But we are not in the band any more. Now, resentfulness is bad, only it should be deemed an atavism. Gratefulness is, rather, a virtue, and should be encouraged. This article suggests that the propagandistic power of the modern slogans of ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘equity’ is atavistic.

A call to embrace jural dualism

October 2021

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7 Reads

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6 Citations

Economic Affairs

Jonathon Diesel

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Daniel B Klein

This article explores concepts under a rubric termed ‘jural’, the meaning of which is differentiated from ‘legal’. Within the conceptualisation of the modern nation state, there are two categories of jural relationships. In the first, both parties have equal jural standing (equal–equal), as between neighbours. In the second jural relationship (superior–inferior), one party has standing as a special jural player, essentially the governor. The jural superior wields the coercive powers of government. Human beings, we argue, are predisposed to folding this jural superior back into the equal–equal relationship, thus notionally collapsing two relationships back to one, or collapsing from jural dualism into jural monism. Two varieties of the tendency stand out, namely collectivist thinking that sees government as a set of rules and arrangements arrived at voluntarily, and Rothbardian libertarianism that sees government as a criminal organisation and proposes its elimination. But, beyond those two varieties, we see traces and tinctures of the tendency towards jural monism. We call for a conscious embrace of jural dualism.

The yellow area is convention without consent/compact
Convention without convening
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

August 2021

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26 Reads

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8 Citations

Constitutional Political Economy

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Daniel B. Klein

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’s theory of convention. This study contributes to that appreciation and to rearticulates Hume’s innovative analytical framework for thinking about the unformalized duties and obligations—sometimes glossed as institutions or culture—underlying social interaction and economic behavior. After summarizing Lewis, we treat Hume’s account of the emergence of the conventions of language, justice, and political authority in broadly Lewisian terms. Another purpose is to draw on Hume to develop a concept of “natural convention.” A natural convention is a social practice whose concrete form in time and place is conventional in a Lewisian sense, but whose generalized form is necessary, and hence natural, for more advanced social organization. In the final section of the paper, we consider the semantic originality of Hume’s convention talk. Drawing from a largescale textual search, we find scant evidence that the English word “convention” was used in a Lewisian sense—that is, in a sense that did not entail a literal convening—prior to Hume.

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Citations (48)

... It would be context dependent. As Smith writes, every moral sentiment is driven by the sympathy, or "fellow-feeling," which we share with other individuals (Smith, 1759: 10; see Klein, 2021). It would recognize that sympathy prompts us to seek social approbation and prevents us from being wholly self-interested (Smith, 1776: 27). ...

Reference:

Two worlds collide: A review essay of Humanomics: moral sentiments and the wealth of nations for the twenty-first century
In Praise of Adam Smith’s Organon and Smithian Allegory
  • Citing Article

  • January 2021

SSRN Electronic Journal

Daniel B. Klein

... But he had no doubt that there exist certain "laws of nature" that are "obvious and absolutely necessary" and "inseparable from the species" (Hume, 2000(Hume, [1740, p. 311); he believed these laws must be reflected to some extent in local moral sensibilities and positive laws for a social group to prosper-or to extend at all out of a primeval state (cf. Matson & Klein, 2022). ...

Reference:

Classical Liberalism: Some Historical Influences from Religion and Natural Law
Convention without convening

Constitutional Political Economy

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Daniel B. Klein

... On connections between the political and pre-political meaning of "liberal" in Adam Smith, seeMatson (2022b) 4 For a discussion of the conservative nature of the liberalism of Hume, Smith, and Burke, seeKlein (2021b). On the connection between epistemology and politics in Hume see(Livingston, 1984;Matson, 2019;Merrill, 2015) 5 Whewell(1853)is an abridged translation of De Jure Belli ac Pacis.6 Grotius, it should be mentioned, went to lengths to distinguish his position from the idea that morality is to be equated with expediency. ...

Reference:

Classical Liberalism: Some Historical Influences from Religion and Natural Law
Conservative liberalism: Hume, Smith, and Burke as policy liberals and polity conservatives
  • Citing Article

  • December 2020

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Daniel B. Klein

... Transactions are difficult to apply, every individual has the right to protect their reputation and is entitled to adequate legal protection. Reputation is generally considered a perfectly natural right by most classical scholars as it falls under the same general category as the right to life and liberty (Bonica, 2021). Conversely, others have also argued that although reputation is a perfect natural right, it is undesirable to resort to defamation law. ...

Reference:

Defamation and Insult Via Digital Media in Indonesia: The Islamic Law and Human Rights Perspective
Adam Smith on reputation, commutative justice, and defamation laws
  • Citing Article

  • September 2020

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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Daniel B. Klein

... In Sweden, older adults tend to live in their own private homes with home care provided multiple times per day until such support is no longer sufficient to independently undertake everyday activities. Subsequently, by the time older adults move into a care home, they tend to have extensive care needs (Stern & Klein, 2020). ...

Reference:

The impact of facility and staff characteristics on infection control of COVID‐19: Perceptions of elder care home managers in Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm City’s Elderly Care and Covid19: Interview with Barbro Karlsson

Society

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Daniel B. Klein

... Although he recognized myriad problems with Hanoverian Britain, he sought to support the Hanoverian Settlement upon the recognition that opting for an imperfect but stable political order is most often better than striving for constitutional perfection. 21 Although a liberal with respect to ordinary policy reform, Hume, like Smith and Edmund Burke, was conservative with respect to polity reformation (Klein, 2021b). ...

Reference:

Convention without convening
Conservative Liberalism: Hume, Smith, and Burke as Policy Liberals and Polity Conservatives
  • Citing Article

  • January 2020

SSRN Electronic Journal

Daniel B. Klein

... It is unlikely that Smith failed to appreciate the subtleties of his favorite teacher, just like it is highly unlikely that he failed to properly grasp Hume's moral psychology (cf. Matson, Doran, and Klein 2019;Raynor 1984). But for reasons that are not clear, Smith provides his reader with misleading representations of both Hutcheson's and Hume's ideas. ...

Reference:

Commerce as Cooperation with the Deity: Self-Love, the Common Good, and the Coherence of Francis Hutcheson
Hume and Smith on utility, agreeableness, propriety, and moral approval

History of European Ideas

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Colin Doran

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Daniel B. Klein

... Peterson loosely uses the term 'postmodernism' as a referent for a wide range of trends in (French) philosophy, including neo-Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction (c.f. Klein 2018). In a lecture titled 'Why You Have To Fight Postmodernism' (2017), he claims that 'the postmodernists completely reject the structure of Western civilisation'. ...

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Filter bubbles and guru effects: Jordan B. Peterson as a public intellectual in the attention economy
On Jordan Peterson, Postmodernism, and PoMo-Bashing

Society

Daniel B. Klein

... Throughout TMS Smith employs the phrase 'impartial spectator' in a number of ways (Klein et al., 2018(Klein et al., , p. 1155. At times, 'impartial spectator' designates a literal bystander of an event, a person presumed to be well-wishing, well enough informed, and disinterested in the event's outcome. ...

Reference:

Our Dynamic Being Within: A Smithian Critique of the New Paternalism
The man within the breast, the supreme impartial spectator, and other impartial spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments

History of European Ideas

Daniel B. Klein

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Colin Doran