Self-interest before Adam Smith: a genealogy of economic science
In: Ideas in context 68
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In: Ideas in context 68
In: Ideas in context 68
Self-Interest before Adam Smith inquires into the foundations of economic theory. It is generally assumed that the birth of modern economic science, marked by the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776, was the triumph of the 'selfish hypothesis' (the idea that self-interest is the motive of human action). Yet, as a neo-Epicurean idea, this hypothesis had been a matter of controversy for over a century and Smith opposed it from a neo-Stoic point of view. But how can the Epicurean principles of orthodox economic theory be reconciled with the Stoic principles of Adam Smith's philosophy? Pierre Force shows how Smith's theory refutes the 'selfish hypothesis' and integrates it at the same time. He also explains how Smith appropriated Rousseau's 'republican' critique of modern commercial society, and makes the case that the autonomy of economic science is an unintended consequence of Smith's 'republican' principles
In: Journal of social history, Band 54, Heft 4, S. 1241-1242
ISSN: 1527-1897
In: La Révolution Française: cahiers de l'Institut d'Histoire de la Révolution Française, Heft 16
ISSN: 2105-2557
In: Annales: histoire, sciences sociales. English Edition, Band 68, Heft 1, S. 75-106
ISSN: 2268-3763
Prior to the massive wave of emigration to South America during the nineteenth century, inhabitants of rural communities in the western French Pyrenees emigrated in large numbers to Saint-Domingue and other Caribbean islands. This article examines the connections between migratory movements and the organization of these communities into "house societies" (Lévi-Strauss) in which the continuation of the "house" was paramount and no new "houses" could be founded. Adopting a microhistorical approach, it analyzes the complex role of inheritance rights in the decision to emigrate and reconstructs the networks that made emigration possible. Unlike the traditional belief that sons were forced to leave because they were deprived of their share of inheritance, the family unit fully supported the emigration of its younger members. This article also argues that emigration simultaneously resulted from and undermined the "house system."
In: Annales: histoire, sciences sociales, Band 68, Heft 1, S. 77-107
ISSN: 1953-8146
RésuméAvant l'émigration de masse vers l'Amérique du Sud au XIXesiècle, les communautés rurales des Pyrénées occidentales connurent un mouvement migratoire notable vers Saint-Domingue et les autres îles des Caraïbes. Cette étude porte sur les rapports entre les mouvements migratoires et l'organisation de ces communautés en « sociétés à maisons » (Claude Lévi- Strauss), où la continuité de la « maison » était essentielle et aucune nouvelle « maison » ne pouvait être fondée. Usant d'une méthode microhistorique, on analyse le rôle complexe des coutumes successorales dans la décision d'émigrer, et on reconstruit les réseaux qui permirent l'émigration. Loin de l'image traditionnelle du fils forcé de partir parce que privé de sa part d'héritage, on montre que l'émigration des cadets avait le soutien de l'ensemble du groupe familial. On soutient aussi que vis-à-vis du « système à maisons », l'émigration était tout à la fois une conséquence du système et contraire à l'esprit du système.
In: Modern intellectual history: MIH, Band 6, Heft 3, S. 457-484
ISSN: 1479-2451
This article revisits what has often been called the "naive presentism" of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to "make allowances for time" in judging the past, and his extreme selectiveness in determining the relevance of past events to world history. Voltaire's historical practice is put in the context of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, and considered in a tradition of universal history going back to Bossuet and leading up to nineteenth-century German historicism. Paradoxically, Voltaire is a major figure in the history of historiography not in spite of his presentism (as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have argued), but because of it.
In: History of political economy, Band 38, Heft 2, S. 319-338
ISSN: 1527-1919
In: The European journal of the history of economic thought, Band 12, Heft 4, S. 723-731
ISSN: 1469-5936
In: https://doi.org/10.7916/D8X93PPW
This article tells the story of a young Charleston physician, John W. Schmidt Jr., whose medical license was revoked in 1831 because he was accused of being of "mixed blood." The physician's ancestry was unusual: his grandmother Marie-Adélaïde Rossignol Dumont was born in Gorée, West Africa; she was not a slave but a wealthy merchant who came to the United States in the 1790s via the French colony of Saint Domingue, which she left in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. The grandmother used various strategies of social and racial self-reinvention as she roamed the Atlantic world. Her acceptance into the Charleston elite was consistent with a traditional definition of race that was social and political rather than biological. The decision by the Medical Society of South Carolina to revoke her grandson's license following a denunciation by a fellow refugee from Saint Domingue and fellow physician, Vincent LeSeigneur, was a manifestation of the rising "scientific racism" whose early advocates were members of the medical profession.
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