RH351Rhetoric of Economic Thought

TransparenciesSet 2

Francis Bacon1561 - 1626

Thomas Hobbes1588 - 1679

John Locke1632 - 1704

Galileo1564 - 1642

Descartes1596 - 1650

Adam Smith1723 - 1790

1200 180016001400

Frances Hutcheson1694 - 1746

Hobbes

Locke

Smith

Toward the birth of Modern Economics

François Quesnay 1694 - 1774

ItalianRenaissance

Protestant Reformation

Mercantilism

Industrial RevolutionIn England

Niccol Machiavelli1469 - 1527

Aquinas1225 - 1274

Michelangelo1475 - 1564

Chaucer1343 – 1400(?)

Scholasticism

Machiavelli

Dante1265 – 1321

John Locke 1632 – 1704

Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

David Hume 1711 – 1776

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

Political Discourses (1752)

How Can or Should Society be Organized?

Niccolò Machiavelli 1469 – 1527

The Prince (1531) Discourses on Livy (1531)

Thomas Hobbes 1588 – 1679

Leviathan (1651)

How Can or Should Society be Organized?

Niccolò Machiavelli 1469 – 1527

The Prince (1531) Discourses on Livy (1531)

But since I intend to write something useful to an

understanding reader, it seemed better to go after the real truth of the matter than to repeat what people have imagined. A great many men have imagined states and princedoms such as nobody ever saw or knew in the real world, and there’s such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation. Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity

The Prince, Chapter XV

How Can or Should Society be Organized?

Thomas Hobbes 1588 – 1679

Leviathan (1651)

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a

common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man …

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Leviathan, Chapter XIII

Private Vices, Public Virtues?

From: The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest (1705)

A Spacious Hive well stock’d with Bees,That lived in Luxury and Ease …

Millions endeavoring to supplyEach other’s Lust and Vanity …

Thus every Part was full of Vice,Yet the whole Mass a Paradise …

[At last] Jove, with Indignation moved,… In Anger swore, he’d ridThe bawling Hive of Fraud, and did.The very Moment it departs,And Honestry fills all their Hearts …Oh, ye Gods! What Consternation,How vast and sudden was th’ Alteration!

Without great Vices, is a vainEutopia seated in the Brain.

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Bernard de Mandeville1670 – 1733

The Fable of the Bees1714

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

There is, however, another system which seems totake away altogether, the distinction between vicevirtue, and of which the tendency is, upon thataccount, wholly pernicious; I mean the system ofDr. Mandeville …

It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville’s book torepresent every passion as wholly vicious, which isso in any degree and in any direction. It is thus that he treats every thing as vanity which has any reference either to what are, or to what ought to be, the sentiments of others; and it is by means of this sophistry that he establishes his favourite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits.

Wealth of Nations (1776)

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Adam Smith responds to Mandeville

Our ancestors took it for granted, almost throughout

English history, until the mid-nineteenth century, that government should give a certain direction to nationalindustry and commerce…

Our earlier statesmen saw real merit in the old “mercantilesystem.” According to this system an excess in the valueof exports over that of imports, and the consequent attraction, as it was assumed, of a balance in coin or bullioninto the country, was a test of successful policy …

Adam Smith first shook the principle by lucid reasoningsintended to show that the “wealth of nations,” so far as thatwas the object in view, was best secured not by controland restrictions, but by perfect freedom of industry andcommerce.

Bernard Holland, The Fall of Protection, 1840 - 1850

Mercantilism

Thomas Mun1571 – 1641

Jean Baptiste Colbert1619 – 1683

William Petty 1623 – 1687

Colbert and Mercantilism

The Dutch have inhibited them all and bring us these same manufactures, drawing from us in exchange the commodities they want for their own consumption and re-export. If these manufactures were well re-established, not only would we have enough for our own needs, so that the Dutch would have to pay us in cash for the commodities they desire, but we would even have enough to send abroad, which would also bring us returns in money-and that, in one word, is the only aim of trade and the sole means of increasing the greatness and power of this State.

Having summarized the condition of domestic and foreign trade, it will perhaps not be inappropriate to say a few words about the advantages of trade …

I believe everyone will easily agree to this principle, that only the abundance of money in a State makes the difference in its greatness and power.

Sire, it pleases Your Majesty to give some hours of his attention to

the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of trade in his kingdom …

As for internal trade and trade between [French] ports:The manufacture of cloths and serges and other textiles of this kind, paper goods, ironware, silks, linens, soaps, and generally all other manufactures were and are almost entirely ruined.

Jean Baptiste Colbert1619 - 1683

Quesnay’s Tableau Economique

François Quesnay1694 - 1774