The periphery of the Center: Scottish and Irish theoretical

contributions

• Adam Smith (1723-1790) – Scottish Enlightenment/ Scots’ problematic relations with England (Union in 1707)

• Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

18th Century Revolutions

• England– 1649– 1679-80

• United States of America– 1776

• France– 1789

Industrial Revolution (1780 onwards)

Adam Smith (1723-1790)• Scottish, Smith studied in Oxford. In 1752 he

returned to Glasgow and became a Professor (moral philosophy, ethics, natural theology, jurisprudence, and political economy).

• “Scottish Enlightenment” (Francis Hutcheson, James Hutton, David Hume, Adam Smith)

• In 1764-6 Smith traveled to France, where he met the physiocrats

• 1767 James Steuart. Principles of Political Oeconomy

• Major Works:– Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)– Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762-4) – The Wealth of Nations (1776)

“Moral Sentiments”• Goal: to identify the elements sustaining ethical judgment in

human psychology Natural propensities or tendencies:

– Sympathy: tendency to experience certain feelings before certain situations (and toward other people’s experiencing them)

– A desire for others to react towards us in harmony with how we feel about ourselves;

– A desire to gain the others’ approval

(≠ Hobbes’ assumption on human intrinsic selfishness)

• Basic feelings Smith’s theory of subjectivity and justice (it is our feelings, and not any abstract principle, what orients our perception of right and wrong while making judgments)

• Human goals are not predetermined • Human need for freedom

Lectures on Jurisprudence(Still) influenced by the success of MercantilismSmith sees crime as a product of the socio-economic conditions

prevalent in society and of the specific conditions of the poorMain task of government: “promoting the opulence of the state”

defined as police: (Political economy was considered the main branch of the “science of police” by its modern founders) – “whatever regulations are made with respect to the trade, commerce,

agriculture, manufactures of the country are considered as belonging to the police'.

– Police has three aspects: • Cleanliness, • Security (against accidents and crime), and • The cost of provisions and the maintenance of the market.

Smith considers both cleanliness and security against accidents not worthy of defining a branch of jurisprudence, yet crime and the maintenance of the market are considered part of the police. Still, it is the proper running of the market--by guaranteeing the cheapness and supply of commodities—what stands out as the most important area of police

Smith attacks…

• Mercantilism

• Absolutism

With… the Market

(the “invisible hand”)

Political Economy

• Sir James Stuart, Principles of Political Economy, 1767

The Wealth of Nations• Develops Locke’s idea of labor as the source of

value• % of labor• (Possibly as a consequence of his stay in

France) in the Wealth of Nations Smith's use of the government (police) radically changes

• Government must be minimal (administration of justice, defense, and public works)– “Police” appears as negative (systems in which the

state favors the industry of either town or country). Police becomes a part of the wrong type of government

Labor(Smith develops Locke’s insights further) • Labor is the origin of value

• Value– “the utility of some particular object” (value in use)– “the power of purchasing other goods” (value in exchange

• The market smoothly regulates the movement of commodities and workers and the expansion of wealth

• Wealth expands through trade

Automatic (Social) Mechanisms

• The Market (“the invisible hand” naturally regulates society)

• Machines

• Division of Labor & Specialization

(minimal) Government• “The first duty of the sovereign is that of

protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies”

• The second duty of the sovereign is that of protecting… every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member… or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice”

• The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and public works…[that] cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.”

Where is politics in this scheme?

And the good life?

Wealth and development provide security

• Despite Paris having more police than London, it has more crimes because of the development of commerce in the two nations: in Paris

• 'the spirit of the feudal government is not so entirely abolished as it is here'.

• More servants, more crime; more free workers, less crime

• Crime is linked to feudalism.– “the establishment of commerce and manufactures…

[is] the best police for preventing crimes”

"There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This would be if every machine could work by itself, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation." Aristotle’s Politics

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)• Born in Dublin, to a middle class family half

Protestant (his father,) half Catholic (his mother)

• 1750 Burke moves to London to study law, but he becomes a writer and a politician– Entered the Parliament in 1766

• No systematic work or treatise.– 1756 A Vindication of Natural Society– 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France

The British vs. the French Revolution

• Burke opposes an idealized version of the 1688 Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution

• “We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire… Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty…” (525)

Burke, the Conservative Enemy of the French Revolution

• Pessimism• Organic view of society (Compare with both Plato &

Rousseau)• Role of contingency• Uniqueness of historical processes• Against (critical) Idealism• Enemy of democracy and revolutions• (Unequal) groups over individuals• Aristocratic & hierarchical view of human nature• Politics = the “art of the possible”• Veneration of

– Tradition (history)– Aristocracy– Religion

Burke’s Values• Property

– Commerce: “the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God…”

• Inequality• Essentialized ideas of nations (nations seem to preexist

history…)• Prescription• Connection between property & political rule• Inheritance• Rank• Distinction• Religion: “religion is the basis of civil society, and the

source of all good and all comfort” (527)• “Good order is the foundation of all good things.” (521)

British Inherited Liberties

– The Magna Charta proves to Burke “the pedigree of our liberties” (513)

– British liberties are inherited from previous generations “as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or previous right.” (514)

– “By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors…” (514)

The French Dishonored their past

• “Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of lowborn servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789.”

• “gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage…” (515)

“France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority…

• … doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices; and has extended through all ranks of life… all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France.” (516)

“By following those false lights,

• …France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings!... France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue.”(516)

What happens when authority…

• Falls in the hands of “men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake…” (517) – (provincial) lawyers & doctors in medicine

• “At present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of nature. The property in France does not govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence.” (519)

Property

• “The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal.” (518)

• “The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.” (519)

The Rights of Man

• “The nature of man is intricate… (…) The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle…” (525)

Government

• “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.” (524)

• “The science of constructing a commonwealth… is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori” (524)

A Conservative, and not a Reactionary

• “You do not imagine, that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. …they have… the passport of Heaven to human place and honour.” (518)

“Society is indeed a contract…

• …It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection… a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.” (528)

Against (direct?) democracy• “Everything ought to be open; but not

indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition, or rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other.” (518)

• “our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised.” (522)