Adam Smith and Rousseau Ethics, Politics, Economics

by Paganelli, Maria Pia; Rasmussen, Dennis C.; Smith, Craig

• ISBN13: 9781474452687
• ISBN10: 147445268X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2019-09-01
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

Looks at all aspects of the pivotal intellectual relationship between two key figures of the Enlightenment

This collection brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau scholars to explore the key shared concerns of these two great thinkers in politics, philosophy, economics, history and literature.

Rousseau (1712-78) and Smith (1723-90) are two of the foremost thinkers of the European Enlightenment. They both made seminal contributions to moral and political philosophy and shaped some of the key concepts of modern political economy. Among Smith's first published works was a letter to the Edinburgh Review where he discusses Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Smith continued to engage with Rousseau's work and to explore many shared themes such as sympathy, political economy, sentiment and inequality. Though we have no solid evidence that they met in person, we do know that they shared many friends and interlocutors. In particular, David Hume was Smith's closest intellectual associate and was also the one who arranged for Rousseau's stay in England in 1766.

Author Biography

Maria Pia Paganelli is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. She is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook on Adam Smith (OUP, 2013) along with Christopher Berry and Craig Smith. She has written extensively in journals on David Hume and Adam Smith.

Dennis C. Rasmussen is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University. He is the author of The Pragmatic Enlightenment: Recovering the Liberalism of Hume, Smith, Montesquieu and Voltaire (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Response to Rousseau (Penn State University Press, 2008).

Craig Smith is Adam Smith Lecturer in the Scottish Enlightenment in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Glasgow.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Citations and Abbreviations
Series Editor's Introduction

Part I: Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1. Introduction
Maria Pia Paganelli, Dennis C. Rasmussen and Craig Smith

2. On the Place of Politics in Commercial Society
Ryan Patrick Hanley

3. Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment: Connections and Disconnections
Mark Hulliung

Part II: Self-interest and Sympathy

4. The Role of Interpersonal Comparisons in Moral Learning and the Sources of Recognition Respect: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's amour-propre and Adam Smith's sympathy
Christel Fricke

5. Actors and Spectators: Rousseau's response to eighteenth-century debates on self-interest
Mark Hill

6. Pursuing Sympathy without Vanity: Interpreting Smith's Critique of Rousseau through Smith's Critique of Mandeville
John McHugh

Part III: Moral Sentiments and Spectatorship

7. Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Vices of the Marketplace
Michael Schleeter

8. Julie's Garden and the Impartial Spectator: an examination of Smithean themes in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse
Tabitha Baker

9. Sentimental Conviction: Rousseau's Apologia and the Impartial Spectator
Adam Schoene

Part IV: Commercial Society and Justice

10. Being and Appearing: self-falsification, exchange and freedom in Rousseau and Adam Smith
Charles L. Griswold

11. Citizens, Markets and Social Order: An Aristotelian Reading of Smith and Rousseau on Justice
Jimena Hurtado

Part V: Politics and Freedom

12. Smith, Rousseau and the True Spirit of a Republican
Dennis C. Rasmussen

13. Left to Their Own Devices: Smith and Rousseau on Public Opinion and the Role of the State
Jason Neidleman

14. Rousseau and Smith: Sympathy, Justice and Cosmopolitics
Neil Saccamano

Notes on Contributors
Index