The eighteenth-century Physiocrats are widely considered to be precursors to classical economics, the French ninteenth-century Economistes, and contemporary free-market economics. They advocated free trade against mercantilism, and natural law against despotism. Although the Physiocrats also contributed to Walras and modern economic engineering, they fit squarely within the French (and world) liberal tradition.

Control over food supply was advanced in the kingdom of France in the Eighteenth century by Physiocrat economists under the seemingly advantageous label of 'freedom of grain trade'. In 1764 these reforms brought about a rise in grain prices and generated an artificial dearth that ruined the poor, some of whom died from malnutrition. The King halted the reform and re-established the old regime of regulated prices; in order to maintain the delicate balance between prices and wages, the monarchy tried (...) to limit speculation in subsistence goods and achieved some success in regulating the provisioning of public markets. Le Mercier de la Riviere concluded that executing these reforms required more effective political control. After 1774 the new king gave the Physiocratic reforms a second chance, reforming property rights and establishing an aristocracy of the landed rich. Again, this led to price hikes and as a result so-called 'popular emotions' erupted. Turgot ordered military intervention to dispel the protesters, marking a first rupture between the monarchy and the people over speculation on subsistence. Turgot's experiment failed and he was dismissed, but the Physiocracy had discovered that the market in subsistence offered new opportunities for economic power under the misleading legitimacy of 'economic laws'. Turgot's followers, Dupont de Nemours and Condorcet, continued to develop this 'theory' that was later translated into a 'scientific language' that ultimately asserted the autonomy of the economic sphere and its alleged independence from ethics and politics. The paper examines the continuity of events through the six great jacqueries and the French Revolution, including the all- important agrarian reform that ensued after 1792. Robespierre's concept of 'popular political economy' is analysed and compared with the notion of unfettered private property rights that lies at the heart of neoliberalism. (shrink)

This article offers a revision of the history of Vincent de Gournay’s neologism bureaucracy. The author shows that it was designed as a polemical tool against a tendency to multiply customs, tax-collecting and controlling bureaus, which “strangled commerce” in France. The origin of the term had more to do with the pre-physiocratic theory of liberal economy than with political philosophy. More than just a pun, it emerged in the wake of a long tradition of anti-office discourse and formed part of (...) a new rhetorical strategy aimed at legitimizing the merchant estate, which suffered from a lack of prestige in France. (shrink)

Is it possible to avoid “the agrarian myth” while recognizing the genuine value—which is not necessarily the economic or monetary value—of agrarian pursuits? My answer is that such a recognition of genuine agrarian values is possible, but only if we recapture a lost sense of the value of productive activities generally.An impediment to this recognition, I maintain, is modern economics—both socialist and free market; one important means to it, the natural law philosophy of the eighteenth century French Physiocrats.

SummaryThis study focuses on the cultural and political context from which stemmed the French translation of the British Merchant. The paratextual and macrostructural interventions that characterised Le négotiant anglois clearly demonstrate that the translator, Véron de Forbonnais, used his work to set out his own epistemological method and his way of looking at inter-state relations. With the book, Forbonnais had distanced himself from Gournay by rejecting the idea that in order for France to prosper in a situation of international competition (...) the government needed to adopt a muscular strategy that included the adoption of a navigation act modelled on the one enacted by Britain in 1660. At the same time, Forbonnais warned French decision-makers that signing commercial treaties with the maritime powers might also be prejudicial to national economic interests. Forbonnais supplied qualified French readers not only with an annotated edition of the British Merchant but also with a translation of Davenant's Of the Use of Political Arithmetick. In so doing, he proposed to his audience a type of governance based on a competent use of statistics. In conclusion, I will argue that in Le négotiant anglois Forbonnais anticipated the key political and economical tenets of his project of ‘monarchie commerçante’, which he later set out in the Principes et observations æconomiques in order to counter the rise of the epistemology and plans for a ‘royaume agricole’ put forward by the physiocratic movement. (shrink)

Democracy purged of all its Disadvantages. « Encoded at the level of its lexicology and logical constructedness, the republican discourse of the enlightenment and revolution is marked by two conceptualizations which contradict and mutually exclude each other. Contemporary observers of the revolution or those close to its events speak about an opposition between an order of egotism and an order of equality, between a principle of utility and a principle of ascetism, between an ethics based on personal interest and an (...) ethics based on the national interest, between a kind of individualism and a kind of socialism, etc. Because it has excluded physiocratic thinking from its domain, the traditional historio-graphy of political ideas has obstructed an unbiased view to the context which engenders conceptualizations of an alternative Republicanism vis-a-vis that of Rousseau, while at the same time utilizing Rousseaus formulas ». (shrink)

In France the XVIIIth century was characterized by the Enlightenment as a philosophical phenomenon and Physiocracy as an expression of new economic thinking. But the Physiocrats were not merely a school of economic thought; they were also a school of political action. Kings, princes and high public servants were among their pupils. The great French Revolution itself was influenced by their writings. And the force of their work is still not wholly sprent. In order to appreciate the theory and (...) significance of the Physiocracy it is necessary to take into account the circumstances of its time. Physiocracy is a doctrine which esteems that agriculture is of more importance than industry and commerce. In this article following subjects of the physiocratic doctrine are dealt with : the natural order, property and liberty ; the relations between the government and the individual citizen ; the theory of the produit net and the Tableau Economique of François Quesnay. The evaluation also includes the question about the expansion of Physiocracy. Indeed, it had many followers in several countries of Europe and was also the first real School of economic thinking. By its systematic approach, Physiocracy established the economy as a science. All the aspects of Physiocracy which have been mentioned above are intimately bound together and are in several aspects the economic precursor of the French Revolution. (shrink)

The Abbé de Saint-Pierre, best known for his 'Project for Perpetual Peace', in fact left a much larger and more coherent body of political and moral writing, but it has been only partially studied. This book, the first systematic exploration of his entire corpus, offers a complete re-evaluation of this important author's contributions to the Enlightenment. From the first decades of the eighteenth century, Saint-Pierre set forth a pioneering vision of politics as the harmonisation of interests, anticipating Bentham as a (...) utilitarian. He imagines replacing the system of inherited power and clientele networks, which structured Old Regime society and determined the exercise of power under absolutism, with a rationalised, meritocratic and dynamic organisation. He argued for the political values of social utility and public good to take the place of the Christian ideals of perfection and the aristocratic ideals of personal charisma. As a deist seeking to reconcile morality and religion, Saint-Pierre argued that the search for salvation through active piety must also promote social justice and beneficence--and that only the indivisible power of a rationalised monarch, informed by competent elites, could carry out the reforms necessary to yield a government which would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Saint-Pierre, thus, provided among the first arguments for an imposed welfare state, well before the sources more frequently associated with that idea--political economists, cameralists and the physiocrats."--Pages v-vi. (shrink)

This article revisits the "harmony doctrine" school of economics and its distinctive understanding of how ethics and economics intersect. Harmony doctrine thinkers staked out a “natural” understanding of economic phenomena that in many ways fused the classical political economy of Adam Smith with the earlier French Physiocratic School. Their metaphysically grounded interpretation was largely eclipsed by the developments of utilitarian and marginalist schools by the end of the nineteenth century. Yet harmony doctrine thinking adhered to a distinct understanding of how (...) ethical processes and outcomes play out within the economic sphere that has to date gone under examined by business ethicists. This paper outlines three characteristics of harmony doctrine views: the belief in curative forces empowered to "heal" the economic order, a dichotomous interpretation of the economic realm that distinguishes the “natural” from the “artificial,” and an overarching belief in a harmonious social order actualized by cooperative interdependencies within economic enterprises. Despite falling into obscurity in the economic discipline, all these ideas found new life in intellectual currents of organizational and political thought at the turn of the twentieth century. After surveying these historical developments, this article concludes by demonstrating how harmony doctrine thinking helpfully illuminates persisting metaphysical dimensions of contemporary business ethics. (shrink)

The “Adam Smith problem” has traditionally been concerned with the issue of authorial integrity: the issue of how a single author, Adam Smith, could have written two such apparently dissimilar, even contradictory, works as The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. As the problem to be resolved was the single authorial origin of two such works, the perceived incompatibilities between them were explained in terms of Smith's intellectual biography – for example, Smith's travels to France, Smith's meetings (...) with the physiocrats, or the mental incapacities of an aging man. The current consensus is that the Adam Smith problem is a “pseudo problem” and that Smith's works represent a unified project, but the same reference to authorial origins now provides thr opposite claim that “the same man” wrote both books. Here the postulate of authorial integrity, “of stable integrated character, not subject to deep intellectual doubts or fissures” provides an assurance that such a man is unlikely to have written two entirely different books, an assurance underwritten by a coherent authorial intentionality that guarantees the consistency of the two works. (shrink)

Can animals, and especially cattle, be the subject ofmoral concern? Should we care about their well-being?Two competing ethical theories have addressed suchissues so far. A utilitarian theory which, inBentham's wake, extends moral consideration to everysentient being, and a theory of the rights orinterests of animals which follows Feinberg'sconceptions. This includes various positions rangingfrom the most radical (about animal liberation) tomore moderate ones (concerned with the well-being ofanimals). Notwithstanding their diversity, theseconceptions share some common flaws. First, as anextension of primarily anthropocentric (...) theories (aboututility or rights) they still participate in the flawsof the original setting. Second, extending them tonon-human beings raises the problem of the borderwhich is to be drawn between what can be included inthe purview of moral consideration and what is leftoutside. Third, such theories are not able to distinguishbetween an ethics of wildlife and an ethics ofdomestic life, which too often leads to preposterousstatements. We would like to argue (i) that we should distinguishbetween environmental ethics (concerned withpopulations, species, biotic communities) and animalethics (where animals are taken into consideration individually);(ii) that individualist animal ethics are not relevantfor animal rearing; (iii) that animal rearing is a hierarchicalrelationship which rules are to be found in the fiction of a domesticcontract.Hence, we would like to construct a new conception ofthe ethics of the relation between men and the cattlethey breed based on the idea of a domestic contract.Our main assumption is Mary Midgleys's anthropologicalassumption, according to which human communities,since the Neolithic age, have always included variousanimals, so that relations of sociability have alwaysexisted between human beings and animals within thedomestic community (a mixed community). In order tospecify the hierarchical and non-egalitarian, butinclusive reciprocal obligations and relations insidesuch a community, we will elaborate on the notion ofa ``domestic contract'', an implicitly assumedidea traced back to Lucretius and whichwe will follow up to the physiocrats and Adam Smith.We will show that such an idea relies upon theassumption of communication between cattle farmer andanimals, of shared experience and exchanges betweenthe two parties. We will then show how modern factory,or battery animal farming, can be seen as unilaterallybreaking this domestic contract, forsaking ourduties towards domestic animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay aims at reconsidering the impact of Physiocratic ideas on the United States context during and after the American Revolution, which represented the first turning point concerning the democratic implications of political economy. In the confrontation in the 1790s between Jefferson’s Republicans and Hamilton’s Federalists the early scientific analysis of economics, grounded in the central role of agriculture formulated by Physiocracy, gave strong theoretical validation of the agrarian democracy ideology as an alternative to the British model and contributed (...) to shaping the American identity. The article will investigate this opposition and the economic culture that provides theoretical foundations to two opposed political projects. The reasons and the forms of this impact will be explored through the confrontation between Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures and George Logan’s series of pamphlets conceived as an orchestrated campaign against the Secretary of the Treasury. The study of Physiocracy beyond Europe and the Old Regime can offer new and divergent outlooks compared to recent studies aiming at questioning the relevance of Physiocratic theory in the Old Regime social and political context and its impact during the French Revolution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The recent discovery of the marquis de Mirabeau’s lifelong correspondence with his Swiss friend Frédéric de Sacconay has shed new light on the development of his economic thought. Not only is it the only precise entry in his daily life leading to his fame, but it also clarifies the context in which important eighteenth-century texts have been produced and read. Amongst this collection of letters, one of them, written by Mirabeau on October 12, 1740, establishes that he possessed a (...) manuscript of Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en général at the time. This fact renews the insight on his intellectual origins and on the genesis of the Ami des hommes. Indeed, conceived at first as a commentary of the Essai, Mirabeau’s most famous work is the result of a project that dates back to his youth. Already concerned about France’s decline, the future physiocrat wrote to his Swiss friend to express his nascent thoughts on agricultural sciences and commerce, thus giving his first economic statement known to date. (shrink)

Places have very different faces. My place can be the home where I live, the country where I was born, the town where I work, the garden I cultivate, the continent of our shared past or even the cosmos as a whole. If we look at the history of modern economic thought, land as a scarce resource has played an important role. For the school of Physiocrats in the eighteenth century, land was the main if not the only source (...) of value creation. With modern industrialization and the rise of classical economics labor became the creator and measure of monetary worth. Later on, neoclassical economists considered utility (pleasure, happiness) as the measure of value creation and price formation.In today’s economics ‘place’ only becomes relevant when it is perceived as a scarce good. An economist is not interested in the uniqueness of a specific locale, nor in its memories and stories. The laws of economics apply to every place and hence to no specific place. Space and place are considered factors in a production function or elements of consumption and entertainment. From the moment scarcity arises, opportunity cost, competition and price formation and regulation become part of the game. When, e.g., the oceans become the subject of intensive human exploitation and competition, they need political and economic regulation. All these features can be subsumed under the umbrella of ‘economics of place’. However, by place-based economics we mean something altogether different. While the economics of place primarily envisage place as an instrumental good used for the maximization of human utility, the proposed alternative views place as an existential good that creates meaning and identity for people.In a first section I will now explore the existential meaning of ‘place’ starting from Martin Heidegger’s definition of the human being as Da-sein which means literally being-there, being rooted in a specific place. In the second section I will reconstruct a well-known theorem in economics called the tragedy of the commons. It explains how places can be degraded from communal property where relations matter to instrumental goods for individual profit maximization. The third section revisits the first theoretical model of place-based economics in Western philosophy developed by Aristotle in the fourth century BC. It is fascinating to see how this Aristotelian model of oiko-nomia gradually lost its grip in subsequent centuries. In the last section I reflect on some proposals of E.F. Schumacher to recontextualize the Aristotelian model of place-based economics. (shrink)

SummaryIn the Social Contract, Rousseau predicted that Europe would experience a cycle of increasingly intense wars, culminating in invasion from the east: first, Russia would conquer Europe's exhausted and war-torn states; then, Russia would itself become overextended and Europe would ultimately be overrun by the Tartars. The future of the modern state would be a version of the fall of Rome. The present essay provides an explanation of why Rousseau held such apocalyptic views by placing them in the context of (...) projects to reform Europe's political economy in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. In 1767, when Catherine the Great was planning a major revision of the Russian legal code, she outlined her goals in a manifesto called the Grand Instruction, key sections of which were derived from Montesquieu's analysis of depopulation of the countryside caused by uncontrolled industrialisation. The Grand Instruction became the subject of a critical exchange between the Physiocrat Le Trosne and Diderot, who, drawing upon Rousseau, was by turns both sympathetic to and sceptical of Physiocracy. This discourse reveals a triangular debate about the possibility of stabilising the international order by imposing a balance between the agricultural and manufacturing sectors of Europe's rapidly growing economies. (shrink)

The Slave Plantation and the Origins of the Physiocratic Theory of Capitalism : The experiences of Le Mercier De la Rivière as Royal Intendant in La Martinique. A study of some little-known writings of Le Mercier de la Rivière should enable us to define the nature of his experiences, first as a planter, and subsequently as intendant of La Martinique, from 1759 to 1764. A reappraisal of his book, L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques , in the light of (...) his experience of the slave and segregationist colonies of America sheds new light on his physiocratic theory of capitalism and on the genesis of concepts as central as those of legal despotism, physical liberty and chattel property, the latter being considered in relation to an unexpected source, the 1685 Code Noir. (shrink)

Johann August Schlettwein established a reputation during the later eighteenth century as Germany's foremost Physiocrat. Schlettwein's primarily literary reputation was lent authority by his direct participation in two practical Physiocratic experiments: the Markgraf of Baden's trial introduction of a single tax during the the early 1770s, and the creation of an Economic Faculty at the University of Giessen as part of a general financial reform in the state of Hessen-Darmstadt. It is this latter case which will be examined here, where (...) university reform was assigned an important role in the general reconstruction of state finances. But why should the reformers in Darmstadt have lighted upon a maverick figure such as Schlettwein to lead a Faculty which was in turn assigned a leading role in the reform of their state university? And given the apparent failure of Schlettwein to fulfil the hopes placed in him, to what can we attribute his generally lacklustre performance in Giessen? While the first of these questions can be fairly readily answered by considering the choices facing the state government, the second problem is more open: a number of possibilities suggest themselves. The fact that Physiocratic principles conflicted sharply with those governing cameralistic teaching in the German university could have been a significant obstacle; or it could have been that the role assigned to Schlettwein proved impossible, caught between the agenda of Physiocratic reform and that of the state government; or it might of course be that Schlettwein bore personally the major share of the blame. The Physiocratic programme was sweeping in its ambitions; but where it was put into practice (in Baden), or was lent an academic platform (in Giessen), it failed. By examining the reasons behind the failure in Gie?en we can perhaps learn something more of the scope of Physiocracy as a programme of reform in the eighteenth century and thence, indirectly, about the contemporary reception of Physiocratic ideas. (shrink)

Scholarship on the French Atlantic empire traditionally and uniquely focuses upon Africa as a source of slave labour for the American colonies. However, this article explores how, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Africa emerged as a viable alternative for colonial expansion. Uncertainties about a colonial future in the New World directed French expansionist attention away from the Americas and towards the African continent, expanding its role beyond a source of labour. The intellectual underpinnings for a transfer of (...) empire first surfaced within the Physiocratic School of political economy. The article examines the emergence of such ideas and their reception within the colonial administration of the Ancien Régime. It also shows how expansion into Africa became central to the imperial agenda of the first French Republic. Exploring Africa as a substitute to colonial America helps expand the lens through which Africa is examined as part of the Atlantic World. It also reveals continuities between Ancien Régime colonialism and later French republican imperialism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154, DAVID HUME'S PRACTICAL ECONOMICS As Professor Eugene Rotwein emphasized in his introduction to David Hume: Writings on Economics (Madison, 1955), the philosopher made his observations on the eve of the industrial revolution in a period of accelerating change. Very often — as in the latter half of the seventeenth century — times of flux and turmoil call forth Utopian thinkers, who propose the creation of hierarchical, communal, authoritarian (...) societies, often patterned after a supposed golden 2 age. Hume emphatically rejected Utopian schemes of this kind. "All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind," he said, 3 "are plainly imaginary." He repeatedly warned as well that "projectors" and visionaries would disrupt the balance in government between liberty and authority. Thus he could speak of or make reference to "the visionary system or ravings of Plato" (in The Republic), the ultimate impracticality of More's Utopia and James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, and the absurdity of Robert Wallace's theories on 4 population and the paper money schemes of John Law. Even the Utopian republics of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the Scottish patriot whom Hume admired as "a man of undaunted courage and inflexible principles," were dismissed with the others on practical grounds. The key word we have extracted from Hume's economics is practicality. Much as Hume would have liked to have designed an empirical "science of man" — which, incidentally, would have permitted him to propose his own infallible scheme of political economy — he realized that his own attempts had fallen far short of his goal. Thus his nine essays devoted especially to economics: "Of Commerce," "Of Refinement 155. in the Arts," "Of Money," "Of Interest," "Of the Balance of Trade," "Of the Jealousy of Trade," "Of Taxes," "Of Public Credit," and "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," are cautious in approach and pragmatic in spirit. Most of these essays were specifically designed to challenge prevailing assumptions and Utopian grand schemes of one sort or another. In "Of Commerce," for example, Hume rejects the idea that a nation can achieve greatness as an agricultural utopia. In "Of Refinement in the Arts" he takes issue with certain religious thinkers who 7 denote luxury as evil. In "Of Money" he is critical of those who believe that an injection of money into O the economy will work long-term wonders, and in "Of Interest" he argues with those who reason that the 9 plenty of money leads to low interest rates. "Of the Balance of Trade" and "Of the Jealousy of Trade" are directed against the protectionist policies of the mercantilists, "Of Taxes" rejects the French physiocratic single tax on land, and "Of Public Credit" deplores the expedients of Lord Oxford's partisans to draw bills on posterity and imprudently 12 use public credit to create paper riches. Finally, he addressed his essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" to a refutation of the doomsday thinking of 13 the Reverend Robert Wallace of Edinburgh. This is not to imply, however, that Hume's economic thought was merely negative, or that he believed governments could safely entrust their powers over the economy to an "invisible hand." Even Hume's advocacy of free trade (which his friend and pupil Adam Smith, of course, applied with less caution) left the government with room to maneuver. Hume was willing to employ both the market and authority in designs for human progress. In seeking his mix of "action, 156. consumption, liveliness and indolence," a contradictory, counter-poised economic actor, the individual, was not a simple pleasure maximizer, nor did the acquisition of wealth and luxury make him a villain. He was a person in whom the complex springs of action, the causes of labour, needed first one, now another counter-weight. Society benefited from both 14 free trade and from tariff. Hume believed that industrial development and the advancement of commerce were the springboards to progress and happiness. Less is less and more is more; Hume never got these simple verities mixed up. "The same age," he said, "which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skillful weavers, and ship-carpenters.... The spirit of the age... (shrink)

Even a decade after the end of the 1914–1918 war, economic theory assumed that the world was tranquil and orderly. By 1939 an economic slump without parallel, allied to the re-emergence of military ambition in Europe, had brought economic theorists face to face with reality. In this classic book, first published in 1967, Professor Shackle provides a study, in exact and professional language, of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the theories which were formulated in these fourteen (...) years - unparalleled in the whole history of economics except perhaps by the years of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. These theories are not prototypes on the way to something better but are of essential and permanent importance. (shrink)

In his main work, The Science of Legislation , the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri proposed a set of extensive political and cultural reforms. These reforms were necessary to free eighteenth-century societies from the remnants of feudal institutions that obstructed international peace and economic growth. Filangieri's ideas were shaped by the international political climate between the seven Years’ War and the eve of the French Revolution. Reinterpreting Montesquieu and Genovesi through the influences of French radical and Enlightenment thought , as well as (...) the economics of Hume, Verri and the Physiocrats, he concluded that European modernity was inherently contradictory.From this perspective Filangieri set out to force a clean break between the technical horizons of mercantilism and enlightened absolutism and a society based on civil rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources, and free trade. Proper ‘scientific’ knowledge of the rules and principles of legislation would allow governments to balance out the natural and cultural factors that characterise individual states, and to identify the appropriate model for social and economic development. If all states acted on their proper interest, international free trade and peaceful competition between states would emerge and the potential for general economic growth be materialised. Thus, the natural equilibrium and ‘universal consensus’ among nations could be restored. (shrink)

Physiocracy is still sometimes seen as an oddly archaic programme of agricultural development. The aim of this paper is to show that one of the Physiocrats’ prime concerns was to take the subject of agriculture out of international relations. The fiscal regime that was central to Physiocracy was designed to make every large territorial state self-sufficient and, by doing so, to break the connection between modern great power politics, the international division of labour, and the politics of necessity. From (...) this perspective, the memorandum that Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, sent to the Berne Economic Society in 1759, contains an early indication of what, had the Physiocratic programme ever been implemented in full, a world reformed on Physiocratic lines might have looked like. (shrink)

The novelty in Smith’s way of looking at the economy is the discovery of a social character of wealth, something new in comparison with its definition in physical terms by the Physiocrats. The possibility of carrying out such an idealization was a result of the adoption of a Newtonian, as opposed to a Cartesian, epistemology, where an intermediate and provisional character of theoretical entities is explicitly accepted, dropping Cartesian strong epistemological realism.

A discussion of the economic work of Genovesi, the first professor of political economy in Europe. Genovesi supports a physiocratic theory of value as the net produce of agricultural work; a theory of interest as the motive of human action, intermediate between the extreme poles of excessive self-love and benevolence; a doctrine of innate rights as a limit to the sovereign's action; a commercial policy that limits dependence on foreign countries. He also took a position in the eighteenth-century debate on (...) "luxury", taking a firm stance in favour of moderate luxury, considered not vice but virtue as the right means between excessive parsimony and prodigality. He also discusses the function of the classes not dedicated to "mechanical arts" and not producing "rents" but nevertheless useful to society (Adam Smith's "unproductive" workers) in which he includes the proprietary classes which he defends against Rousseau's radical criticism, limiting himself to advocating the abolition of inalienable properties. Finally, he advocates population growth as a way to increase public happiness, the development of agriculture, the freedom of grain trade and the interest rate. (shrink)

Originally published in 1981, Dr Currie's main emphasis in this book is on the economic theory of agricultural land tenure, but he also makes extensive reference to the historical development of land tenure in England. After consideration of the history of economic thought on this important topic, he employs an essentially neo-classical approach, though one that pays due attention to the nature of institutional arrangements and particular forms of property rights. In dealing with these latter aspects, he considers not only (...) the economic effects of particular institutional forms but also their economic causes. The careful use of the history of land tenure development gives this work especial relevance for agricultural development and for issues of land reform. The Physiocrats and Classical economists gave land tenure an important place in their work. Following a long period of' neglect by Neo-Classical economists, land tenure arrangements again received considerable theoretical attention in the years preceding publication. Dr Currie draws on and develops this work. Moreover, he investigates the importance of a number of crucial issues that were being neglected at the time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 107-108 [Access article in PDF] H. H. M. van Lieshout. The Making of Pierre Bayle's Dictionaire Historique et Critique: With a CD-ROM containing the Dictionaire's library and references between articles. Translated by Lynne Richards. Amsterdam and Utrecht: APA-Holland University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv + 339. Cloth, + 58,00. Bayle's Dictionaire Historique et Critique was published in 1697 in Rotterdam with a (...) second edition appearing in 1702. In this journal there should be no need to point out that Bayle (1647-1706) was by vocation a professor of philosophy. His courses were divided into logic, ethics, physics, and metaphysics and their emphasis was upon science and the methods appropriate to its pursuit. That is to say that Bayle's students received a grounding in the post-Cartesian philosophy syllabus that had spread throughout continental Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century. Indeed, that Bayle was no dilettante was evidenced by the fact that before embarking on the Dictionaire in 1692, he had published various monographs on natural philosophy and works of public criticism in the skeptical/rationalist tradition. The French thinker, furthermore, despite his success as an encyclopaedist, returned increasingly in the years from 1697-1706 to his first calling as a critical philosopher. [End Page 107]Nevertheless from his student days Bayle loved books for their own sake, a passion which in due course came to support his first literary enterprise, the journal of books Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684). As author of the Dictionaire, he attracted attention from scholars in many disciplines. This study addresses therefore the general scholar rather than the historian of philosophy, for the Dictionaire did indeed become an indispensable work of reference for lexicographers, as well as for the encyclopaedists, the philosophes, the historians, the economists, the physiocrats, the satirists, the poets, and the reformers throughout the eighteenth century and on both sides of the Atlantic. Bound within four in-folio volumes, its second edition consisted of some seventeen hundred bio-bibliographical articles rigorously annotated and devoted to the ideas of authors in print, profane and sacred.Yet how could one author, it has often been asked, have produced in a mere five years so monumental a work? The Dutch scholar Leny Van Lieshout, already author of works of distinction about Bayle, has sought to answer this question and has done so with a rigor that equals that of Bayle himself. To assist her analysis she has compiled a bibliography of all the sources cited in the text of the Dictionaire itself. She has then matched this source, which she describes as a "library for learned Europe" (177), with Bayle's prodigious and lifelong correspondence about books with an ever-expanding network of friends and associates.With such tools at her elbow, Dr. Van Lieshout has been able to throw new light on many questions about the making of the Dictionaire. For example, how far did Bayle consider his method to be a model for the sort of reference book appropriate to a post-theological culture which today we call a plural age? His medium was indeed part of the message insofar as he sought to separate fact from comment, to cite relevant evidence, and to invoke many classical and heterodox sources whether or not they might offend an apologist for Christian doctrine. And how far did Bayle's own life really lie "only in his writings" (150) as Voltaire suggested, implying that Bayle could not have achieved so much had he not been a dry Huguenot recluse who knew little or nothing of the real world? The two questions are shown to be connected. In respect of the first, Dr. Van Lieshout observes that through the very structure of the Dictionaire Bayle seeks to assert that the political authority of the Church, following the breakdown of former Catholic Christendom, had ceased to be appropriate to the pursuit of scientific... (shrink)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, in France there was an important attempt to renew the reflection on the practices of government of society. Opposing the Colbertist mercantilism of the previous century, the physiocracy is part of this debate by introducing a new way of rationalizing the political society and its practices of government, which develops around a notion of «natural order» which prescribes full freedom for economic subjects. Thanks to the support of the “regime of truth” in (...) the economic science, Quesnay and the physiocrats would propose an innovative form of modern “governmentality”, which in their thought is called despotisme. How can the notion of “despotism” coexist with the claim of maximum liberty for economic actors? The present article intends to answer this question, investigating the relationship that Quesnay and the physiocracy entertain with the birth of liberalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William Robertson’s History of Manners in German, 1770–1795László KontlerThe work I have had in preparing this new edition of Robertson’s History of Charles V has not been very agreeable. To compare an already existing translation line by line with the original... costs more trouble than a new translation would require. I do not flatter myself that I have noticed everything that could have been improved, and would hardly undertake (...) such a task for a second time.... 1Anybody familiar with the frustrating side of editorial work can only sympathize with the sentiments expressed in these sentences by Julius August Remer, the editor of the second German edition of William Robertson’s The History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V in 1779. What makes this complaint somewhat peculiar is that just shortly before its author had spoken very highly about their object: “The translator, the late councillor Mittelstedt had too much wisdom and common sense, and was too proficient in both languages... to produce a translation that is not faithful,” and the “excellent book” only needed to be supplemented with a few notes in order to improve its accuracy. 2 Nevertheless, a few years later Remer thought it appropriate to revise Robertson’s work completely, radically changing its structure and its organizing principles and adding substantially to its size. In the process much of the meaning of the [End Page 125] original was lost; and what was gained instead bore the imprint of the environment, the personality, and the limitations of the stature of the new author. At the same time Robertson’s History—in the original, in Mittelstedt’s translation, and in Remer’s version alike—was held in considerable esteem in German-speaking areas well into the nineteenth century. 3A study of the patterns of thought involved in its several incarnations may offer an insight into the way of the transmission of ideas through cultural boundaries. Looking at the German publishing history of the celebrated Scottish historian William Robertson’s greatest accomplishment between the 1770s and the 1790s, this article is intended as a contribution to the study of the limits of translatability as well as of the intellectual horizons of cultural exchanges, through translation, between such different enlightened intellectual communities as those of late-eighteenth-century Scotland and North Germany. 4Although it is only recently that William Robertson has started to emerge from the obscurity he suffered in the shadow of the more glittering names of the Scottish Enlightenment, an analysis of the ways in which he was influential no longer needs either to be defended or prefaced by a survey of his various activities. Robertson is the protagonist of Richard B. Sher’s study of Church, academe, and polite society in Edinburgh; and his character and oeuvre as a historian have been analyzed from several points of view. 5 Robertson’s contemporary admirers already placed him on a par with Hume and Smith, describing him as a chief component in Scotland’s “strong ray of philosophic [End Page 126] light.” 6 His “combination of philosophy and history” was said to have avoided, more successfully than all others, “the inconveniences which it threatens.” 7 Indeed, his History of Charles V was one of the most formidable eighteenth-century attempts to use “stadial” or conjectural history—which figured prominently not only in the thought of the Scottish theorists but also of the French physiocrats and the German-Swiss thinker Isaak Iselin—as a conceptual background to his account of the historical process as a result of which the foundations of modernity were laid.Such development studies were deemed essential to the proper understanding of contemporary commercial society; and especially in the long introduction of Robertson’s work, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, “descriptive and narrative history” 8 were magisterially interwoven to produce a richly documented piece of historiography. It also offered an overview of the natural succession of various stages in people’s mode of subsistence from hunting through shepherding and agriculture to commerce and the ways in which these gave rise... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the following pages we will address the internal and external dimensions of the Hegelian conceptualization of political economy in the analytical context of the Rechstphilosophie of 1820. We will understand by internal dimensions the moments proper to the Hegelian argument in its logical coherence and consistency and, by external dimensions, the validity and representativeness of that same argument in relation to the problems of political economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. To this end, we will (...) focus especially on the relationship between capitalism and mercantilism in its physiocratic and cameralist forms in order to establish the logical and historical horizon of the Hegelian exposition. Finally, on the basis of this relationship and its conceptualization, we will summarily address the limits of the meaning of political economy as a representation of the present in Rechtsphilosophie. (shrink)

Tocqueville's judgment of the role of 18 th century men of letters in the preparation of the Revolution is well known. Under their influence, “each public passion disguised itself… in philosophy; political life was violendy forced back into the literature.” Less attention is paid to Tocqueville's reflections on the rise of new theoreticians — so-called “economists or physiocrats.” Tocqueville himself admits that they were not as influential as the philosophies, but he thinks that it is in their writings “that (...) one can best study the true nature” of the Revolution. Further: “One recognizes already in their books mis revolutionary, democratic temperament we know so well. (shrink)

La physiocratie occupe une place majeure dans l'histoire du siècle des Lumières. La doctrine élaborée par le docteur François Quesnay, le marquis de Mirabeau et leurs disciples constitue un modèle original de réforme de la société d'Ancien Régime. Liberté du commerce, impôt unique sur les terres, abolition des corporations, établissement du "despotisme légal", reconnaissance du triptyque "liberté, propriété, sûreté" au rang de droits fondamentaux, les propositions des physiocrates bouleversent l'ordre juridique et social traditionnel. Par ses théories universalistes, la physiocratie s'exporte (...) bien au-delà des frontières françaises. De quelles manières les idées de cette "science nouvelle" ont-elles circulées et comment ont-elles été reçues en Europe?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)