In this paper, I examine the claim that Rawls’s overlapping consensus is too narrow to allow most mainstream religions’ participation in political discourse. I do so by asking whether religious exclusion is a consequence of belief or action, using conversion as a paradigm case. After concluding that this objection to Rawls is, in fact, defensible, and that the overlapping consensus excludes both religious belief and action, I examine an alternative approach to managing religious pluralism as presented by Adam Smith. I (...) show that Smith’s so-called “marketplace of religions” assumes and encourages religious conversion. I then offer objections to Smith’s approach from Rawls’s point of view, concluding that, while Rawls cannot adequately respond to the Smithian challenge, in the end the two positions are complimentary. (shrink)

This article analyses the general economy of Georges Bataille (1897–1962) in relation to political economy. In the first section I present a critical perspective on economy that is necessary in order to appreciate Bataille’s conception of general economy, which is presented in the second section. The general economy is first considered in a macro-perspective, which comprises the whole of the universe, second in a micro-perspective, where the subjective aspect of economy is maintained as non-objectified desire and inner experience. In the (...) third section I turn to the general economy as it was explicitly intended, namely as a political economy. First I argue that the suggestions that Bataille himself presents are apolitical in an ordinary sense of politics, and that this can be shown to be due to some conceptual slides between nature and society and between history and ontology. I then sketch some postmodern attempts to legitimize respectively capitalism and communism, which refer to the general economy, but argue finally that Bataille can escape both, since he maintains the important distinction between need and desire. Although Bataille’s conception of economy thus reminds us of aspects often overlooked by economy in an ordinary sense, it also contains some serious aporias, which means that it cannot constitute the theoretical basis of a new general political economy, as Bataille had hoped. (shrink)

(2005). Wonder in the face of scientific revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 697-732. doi: 10.1080/09608780500293042.

Recent studies have investigated connections between Adam Smith’s economic and philosophical ideas and Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Scholars argue that their common background lies in their respective anthropologies, both endorsing a relational view of human beings. I raise one main concern regarding these analyses. I suggest that the relationality endorsed by Smith lacks a central element present in CST—the other-oriented perspective which is the intentional concern for promoting the good of others. Some key elements of CST, such as love, gift, (...) gratuitousness, and fraternity, find a very different space in Smith’s social view and very little space in his economic view. Moreover, I show how CST relationality is more in accordance with a civil economy view of the market as a place of fraternity and mutual assistance. (shrink)

There is long-standing disagreement about how radical Adam Smith should be taken to be. Recently, Jonathan Israel’s work on the enlightenment situates Smith as a moderate enlightenment thinker. This article challenges that assessment. Smith sees aristocrats as largely devoid of competence, wisdom, and virtue and thinks they do not wield significant political power in commercial societies. He is also highly critical of their economic power; and uses a neo-Roman concept of liberty to provide a powerful critique of slavery and feudalism. (...) In so doing, he extends discussions of liberty and focuses them on economic relations in ways that prefigure labour republicanism. Finally, I show how these more radical commitments can be reconciled with his moderate proposals for political reform through his epistemology and realist anti-utopianism. These are aspects of Smith’s thought that are essential for understanding it correctly and have much to teach us today. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza la concepción de la metodología científica expresada porAdam Smith en su historia de la astronomía, algo importante para comprender el resto de su obra. Losestudiosos de este tema se han centrado en su mayor parte en la influencia de Newton y Hume sobreSmith, surgiendo una concepción en la que la dimensión epistemológica y la estética se relacionande una manera tensa. El autor identifica nuevas fuentes, de naturaleza estética, que se integran eneste debate y ayudan a aclararlo: (...) Addison, Crousaz, Hutcheson, Berkeley y Diderot, cuya obra Smithconoció y apreció. A partir de ahí llega a la conclusión de que Smith puso en práctica una metodologíarica y compleja en la que los elementos epistemológicos y culturales se relacionaron de una manera notensa ni excluyente, sino armónica e incluyente. (shrink)

This paper argues that economics, over the past 200 years, has become steadily more anti-philosophical and that there are three stages in the development of economic thought. Adam Smith intended economics to be a descriptive social science, rooted in an understanding of the moral and psychological processes of an individual’s decision-making and its connection to society in general. Yet, immediately after Smith’s death, economists made a clean cut and invented a totally new discipline: they switched towards a physicalist understanding of (...) human nature. Humans, like atoms, follow a natural law: they are driven by an emotion (defined as a non-emotion, rationality), namely selfishness. Thus economics became a ‘natural’ science. In the 20th century, the second reinterpretation removed all traces of humanity from the study of economics and declared economics to be a formal science like mathematics and logics. The actor in Phase 3 economics is homo economicus syntheticus, a postulate whose only connection to real humanity is the word homo. The paper asks what the results of this dramatic relocation are and why Phase 3 economics still claims descent from Smithian economics, despite the massive differences. (shrink)

The paper takes a fresh look at two essays that Adam Smith wrote at the very beginning of his career. In these essays, Smith explains his philosophy of science, which is social constructivist. A social constructivist reading of Smith strengthens the scholarly consensus that The Wealth of Nations needs to be interpreted in light of the general moral theory he explicates in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, as the two essays and TMS stress the importance of the same concepts: e.g., (...) moral imagination, the socially embedded individual, and humility. The connecting tissue between all three works is made up of sentiments and values. Smith regards the socially embedded human as the agent in all three realms, and humans are always driven by values. Smith not only conceives of economics as an applied moral philosophy, but also bases both research areas on a view of knowledge creation that stresses specific epistemic values. If mainstream economic theory wants to have any claim to Adam Smith, it would have to change not only what it argues but also how it argues. Economists would have to replace the language of mathematics with the language and logic of moral philosophy and give values centre stage. (shrink)

Motivation crowding out can lead to a reduction of ‘higher’ virtues, such as altruism or public spirit, in market contexts. This article discusses the role of virtue in the moral and economic theory of Adam Smith. It argues that because Smith’s account of commercial society is based on ‘lower’ virtue, ‘higher’ virtue has a precarious place in it; this phenomenon is structurally similar to motivation crowding out. The article analyzes and systematizes the ways in which Smith builds on ‘contrivances of (...) nature’ in order to solve the problems of limited self-command and limited knowledge. As recent research has shown, a clear separation of different social spheres can help to reduce the risk of motivation crowding out and preserve a place for ‘higher virtue’ in commercial society. The conclusion reflects on the performative power of economics, arguing that the one-sided focus on models of ‘economic man’ should be embedded in a larger context. (shrink)

Libertarianism holds that agents initially fully own themselves and have moral powers to acquire property rights in external things under certain conditions. It is normally advocated as a theory of justice in the sense of the duties that we owe each other. So understood, it is silent about any impersonal duties (i.e., duties owed to no one) that we may have.

Philosophy was at the core of the eighteenth century movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The movement included major figures, such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson, and also many others who produced notable works, such as Gershom Carmichael, George Turnbull, George Campbell, James Beattie, Alexander Gerard, Henry Home (Lord Kames) and Dugald Stewart. I discuss some of the leading ideas of these thinkers, though paying less attention than I otherwise would to Hume, Smith (...) and Reid, who have separate Encyclopedia entries. Amongst the topics covered in this entry are aesthetics (particularly Hutcheson's), Moral philosophy (particularly Hutcheson's and Smith's), Turnbull's providential naturalism, Kames's doctrines on divine goodness and human freedom, Campbell's criticism of the Humean account of miracles, the philosophy of rhetoric, Ferguson's criticism of the idea of a state of nature, and finally the concept of conjectural history, a concept especially associated with Dugald Stewart. (shrink)

Since the beginning of 2020, lockdowns have been introduced in numerous countries across the world in response to the emergence of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes the COVID-19 disease. Although the topic of lockdowns has been considered from numerous perspectives, it has not yet been analyzed in the context of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy and liberalism. This paper aims to list – at least to some extent, as the topic is very broad – the most prominent arguments that have arisen in (...) the worldwide discussion on the effectiveness and side effects of lockdowns. In addition, the work provides some elements of Smith’s economic philosophy and liberalism. Finally, the arguments that have arisen in the academic discussion since the introduction of lockdowns are analyzed, and the legitimacy of lockdowns is assessed in the context of Smith’s principles. The methods used for the analysis are text exegesis and rational reconstruction. As far as the conclusions are concerned, an explicit assessment of the legitimacy of lockdowns in the discussed context is considered impossible, although for many elements of Smith’s liberalism, lockdowns are not legitimate at all. (shrink)