Suchergebnisse

We probe the connections linking the market, speech, and sympathy in the work of Adam Smith, stressing how individuals strive for social esteem and ethical credit while competing in markets. We demonstrate how Smith approached speech and rhetoric as constituting attributes of markets, the modern analogue of previous institutional foundations for social order. Thus, markets are not simply, or exclusively, arenas for the instrumental quest by competitive and strategic individuals to secure their material preferences. They are a central mechanism for social integration derived not from strategic self-interest but from the inexorable struggle by human agents for moral approbation. Part One retranslates the master concept ofMoral Sentimentsinto a modern theory of recognition. Part Two considers how Smith, in hisRhetoric, established the mutual constitution of recognition and speech. Part Three carries this understanding to hisJurisprudence, the most integrative of his texts, which relocates these impulses inside the market itself.The pivotal second chapter of Adam Smith'sWealth of Nations, "Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour, " opens with the oft-cited claim that the foundation of modern political economy is the human "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." This formulation plays both an analytical and normative role. It offers an anthropological microfoundation for Smith's understanding of how modern commercial societies function as social organizations, which, in turn, provide a venue for the expression and operation of these human proclivities.

The utility of Benjamin Constant's (eg, 1861) constitutional writings for explaining the development of modern liberal theory is investigated. A review of contemporary criticism on Constant's political thought illustrates such literature's failure to acknowledge Constant's role in developing liberal theory. Constant's three principal constitutional writings are subsequently reviewed to demonstrate his significant contributions to modern liberalism. Whereas Constant articulated the republican foundations for his political thought in the first constitutional writing, it is claimed that his interpretation of popular sovereignty as a source of anxiety & liberty is indicative of his engagement with liberalism. However, Constant's third constitutional writing is viewed as his most comprehensive statement on liberalism & is credited with establishing an "imminent liberalism" that appealed to both radicals & conservatives. J. W. Parker