Politics in Commercial Society

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith

Inbunden, Engelska, 2015

AvIstvan Hont,Béla Kapossy,Michael Sonenscher

529 kr

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Scholars normally emphasize the contrast between the two great eighteenth-century thinkers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. Rousseau is seen as a critic of modernity, Smith as an apologist. Istvan Hont, however, finds significant commonalities in their work, arguing that both were theorists of commercial society and from surprisingly similar perspectives.In making his case, Hont begins with the concept of commercial society and explains why that concept has much in common with what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant called unsocial sociability. This is why many earlier scholars used to refer to an Adam Smith Problem and, in a somewhat different way, to a Jean-Jacques Rousseau Problem. The two problems—and the questions about the relationship between individualism and altruism that they raised—were, in fact, more similar than has usually been thought because both arose from the more fundamental problems generated by thinking about morality and politics in a commercial society. Commerce entails reciprocity, but a commercial society also entails involuntary social interdependence, relentless economic competition, and intermittent interstate rivalry. This was the world to which Rousseau and Smith belonged, and Politics in Commercial Society is an account of how they thought about it.Building his argument on the similarity between Smith’s and Rousseau’s theoretical concerns, Hont shows the relevance of commercial society to modern politics—the politics of the nation-state, global commerce, international competition, social inequality, and democratic accountability.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2015-06-09
Mått156 x 235 x 18 mm
Vikt388 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor160
FörlagHarvard University Press
ISBN9780674967700

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Istvan Hont [was] a terrifically gifted historian of political and economic thought… Politics in Commercial Society…outlines in capsule form his reconstruction of [Rousseau and Adam Smith], showing not only what they have in common but also how little modern political theory has advanced beyond their concerns… Eighteenth-century political theory, as Hont’s iconoclastic work shows, still has much to teach us.