Economic Sentiments

In a recreation of the epoch between the 1770s and the 1820s, Emma Rothschild reinterprets the ideas of the great revolutionary political economists to show us the true landscape of economic and political thought in their day, with important consequences for our own. Her work alters the readings of Adam Smith and Condorcet - and of ideas of enlightenment - that underlie much contemporary political thought. This text takes up late-18th-century disputes over the political economy of an enlightened, commercial society to show us how the "political" and the "economic" were intricately related to each other and to philosophical reflection. Rothschild examines theories of economic and political sentiments, and the reflection of these theories in the politics of enlightenment.

ISBN 0674008375   Pages 368 ISBN13 9780674008373 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Harvard University Press   Weight (grammes) 562 Imprint Harvard University Press   Published in Cambridge, Mass Format Paperback   Height (mm) 225 Publication date 11 Apr 2002   Width (mm) 146 Library of Congress HB   Spine width (mm) 29 DEWEY 330.153   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

Introduction 1. Economic Dispositions The History of Sentiments Civilized and Commercial Society The Unfrightened Mind Two Kinds of Enlightenment The Devil Himself Heroic Dispositions A Sort of Inner Shuddering The Cold Light of Reason and the Warmth of Economic Life Seeing the State as in a Picture Indulgence and Indifference The Light of History The Enlightenment and the Present 2. Adam Smith and Conservative Economics This Famous Philosopher Scotland in the 1790s Economic and Political Freedom The Liberal Reward of Labor One-Sided Rationalistic Liberalism Smith's Real Sentiments 3. Commerce and the State A Reciprocal Dependence Scarcities, Dearths, and Famines Poverty and General Equilibrium Turgot's Policies against Famine Interpretations of Smith and Turgot The Lapse of Time 4. Apprenticeship and Insecurity A Strange Adventure It Is But Equity, Besides Corporations and Competition Education and Apprenticeship A State of Nonage The Apprenticeship: A Digression on the Slave Trade Uncertain Jurisprudence History and Institutions 5. The Bloody and Invisible Hand The Invisible Hand of Jupiter Tremble, Unfortunate King! Intentions and Interests Political Influence Clerical Systems Smith's "Stoicism" Order and Design A Persuasive Device Explanation and Understanding Greatest Possible Values Evolved Orders Two Shortcomings of Liberal Thought 6. Economic and Political Choice Raton Was Quite Astonished... General Economic Interdependence Giving the Impression of Doing Nothing The Soul Discouraged Poverty, Taxes, and Unsalubrious Factories Formal Methods Social Choice and Economic Procedures Discussions and Constitutions Pelion and Ossa 7. Condorcet and the Conflict of Values Cold, Descriptive Cartesian Reason Diversity and Uniformity The Indissoluble Chain Civilized Conflict Inconsistent Universalism Domestic Virtues The Imaginary Enlightenment The Liberty of Thought and Discussion 8. A Fatherless World A Different Enlightenment Smith and Condorcet Uncertainty and Irresolution A System of Sentiments Civilized Political Discussion Economic Sentiments A World Unrestored Suitable Equality Notes Acknowledgments Index

In her readable as well as scholarly book, Economic Sentiments, [Rothschild] links [Adam] Smith with the French philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet, another thinker seen today as an emblem of "cold hard and rational enlightenment" but in reality interested, like Smith, "in economic life as a process of discussion, and as a process of emancipation," in which "one's freedom to buy or sell or lend or travel or work is difficult to distinguish from the rest of one's freedom." This larger picture, Rothschild thinks, is what was lost as economics developed along with the society it analyzed, and what she hopes to restore. -- Paul Mattick New York Times Book Review 20010708 This landmark work revisits the intellectual ferment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries...[Rothschild] dismantles, with quiet authority, the stereotype of the Enlightenment as a period dominated by chilly rationalists. New Yorker 20010604 One of the many virtues of Economic Sentiments is that it provides exactly what its subtitle says: an investigation of 'Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment.' Another, even more attractive than an unusual degree of truth in advertising, is that it casts an extraordinarily revealing light on many other writers and many other moments in history. It is a book that does with great success two things that are usually thought to be wholly antithetical; certainly they are rarely attempted by the same writer. On the one hand, it takes us back into the last third of the eighteenth century, and shows us what economic thinking was like before it became modern economic theory, on the other, it complicates the image of the Enlightenment in ways that are intended to make the political discussions of the twenty-first century more sophisticated, nuanced, and self-conscious than they often are. -- Alan Ryan New York Review of Books 20010705 Economic historians often discuss the half century after 1770 with barely a nod (or none at all) to the political revolutions. Emma Rothschild, however, turns that convention on its head. Her book examines the period from the vantage point of two of the most influential economic writers of the time--Adam Smith and the Marquis de Condorcet--and their followers...The book's distinctive approach brings real and unexpected insights. -- William Kennedy Times Higher Education Supplement 20010622 In her brilliantly illuminating and compelling reinterpretation of Adam Smith and Condorcet, Emma Rothschild presents a view of late 18th century ideas through which we can ourselves re-envision the human realities of life in the market. In so doing, she has produced a masterpiece of the historical imagination. First and foremost, Economic Sentiments is a rich, profound and at times revelatory essay in the history of ideas which will undoubtedly become part of the academic canon. But it is also an inspiring commentary on our own times, which can be read with profit by many outside the academy. -- John Gray Los Angeles Times 20011202 One must look hard to find a work so adept at doing the vigorous hermeneutics required to truly understand what drove the 18th-century Enlightenment and how that era impacts our thinking today. Rothschild roams across the landscape of thinkers and historical events focusing on Condorcet as an example of the 'cold, universalistic enlightenment of the French Revolution' and on Smith, who appears as the more conservative proponent of the 'reductionist enlightenment of laissez-faire economics.' Along the way the reader is challenged to rethink the positive-normative dichotomy commonly taught in economics, the meaning and role of Smith's 'invisible hand' and the self-serving manner in which 19th-century interpreters framed Smith's ideas...There is exceptional depth to this book...[It] has interdisciplinary appeal, systematically relying on literary, philosophical, political, economic, natural science, and sometimes theological disciplines to build arguments. Highly rec

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