Economic Justice in The Natural Law Tradition: Thomas Aquinas to Francis Hutcheson

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Young ◽  
Barry Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Relative Neglect ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

After three or more decades of mainly positivistic readings of the economics of Adam Smith, there was a decided movement following the bicentennial of the publication of the Wealth of Nations to broaden the agenda of Smithian studies. The publication in 1978 of the Report of 1762–63 of Smith's lectures in jurisprudence added impetus to this movement. In particular, historians of ideas began to pay increased attention to Smith's concern with justice in economic life. That attention has evoked renewed interest in certain of Smith's intellectual antecedents who may have played a part in shaping his ideas, but whose influence has remained a matter of relative neglect in modern scholarship.

Adam Smith on Economic Justice in the Labor Market

1995 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edd S. Noell
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Impact

One of the most significant statements in Joseph Schumpeter's discussion of Adam Smith in the History of Economic Analysis highlights the impact of scholastic thought upon Smith's economic analysis. Speaking of The Wealth of Nations, Schumpeter claimed that “the skeleton of Smith's analysis hails from the scholastics and natural-law philosophers” (Schumpeter 1954, p. 182). Though not the first to make this connection, Schumpeter's affirmation, alongside his treatment (ibid., part II, ch. 2) of the literature produced by these two groups, has been a stimulus to further exploration with respect to both the Protestant scholastics Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and the medieval theologians (De Roover 1957; Bowley 1973). More recent studies which have followed in this vein have focused on the significance of the scholastic and natural law traditions for Smith's treatment of economic justice (Hont and Ignatieff 1983; Young and Gordon 1992).

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

Must Historians of Economics Apologize Presidential Address History of Economics Society May, 1984

1985 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Whitaker
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
High Level

The body of enquiry known as economics grew out of the practical needs of economic life and statesmanship, and also out of philosophical speculation on the nature of man and society. Adam Smith reflects both aspects, but I would locate him predominantly in the philosophical wing. When he switched from considering the theory of moral sentiments to dealing with the causes of the wealth of nations, I don't believe that he saw himself as engaging in a fundamentally different mode of enquiry. He was, of course, concerned with practical questions--of ethical behaviour in the one case and of economic policy in the other--but discussion of both was from a broad philosophic viewpoint. Ricardo, on the other hand, seems to me to exemplify, and at a high level, someone who falls predominatly in the other wing. Although his thought was abstract, it was much more an attempt to deal pragmatically with important issues of practice than it was an attempt, in the philosophical tradition, to understand the general nature of men's interaction in society. Indeed, utilitarianism by then offered a strictly philosophic rationale for concern with practice (albeit a piggish one in some eyes) which did much to confound and confuse the dual origins of economics. Mill and Sidgwick, among others, maintained the tradition of a close connection between philosophical and economic enquiry, within the framework of a broadened utilitarianism, and the continuing affinity of the two disciplines has been exemplified more recently in the work of writers such as Rawls and Sen, not to mention the recent upsurge in discussion of economic methodology.

Two Intellectual Landmarks in the Year 1749

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Farhad Rassekh
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Classical Economics ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Economic Thinking

In the year 1749 Adam Smith conceived his theory of commercial liberty and David Hume laid the foundation of his monetary theory. These two intellectual developments, despite their brevity, heralded a paradigm shift in economic thinking. Smith expanded and promulgated his theory over the course of his scholarly career, culminating in the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hume elaborated on the constituents of his monetary framework in several essays that were published in 1752. Although Smith and Hume devised their economic theories in 1749 independently, these theories complemented each other and to a considerable extent created the structure of classical economics.

The Ethics of Natural Law according to Thomas Aquinas

Verbum ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-368
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija Stancienė
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas

Germain Grisez and the “New Natural Law”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter is an extended examination of a revisionist approach to natural law, explored by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Grisez and Finnis elucidated an entirely new paradigm that they believed to be both sounder intellectually than the paradigms of the neo-scholastics and revisionists and much closer in outline to the paradigm offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. This approach is usually labeled the “new natural law.” The author proposes that the entire “new natural law” project undertaken by Grisez and Finnis could be viewed as being about saving natural law by reestablishing it on distinctly different foundations that avoided any appeal to metaphysical claims, which modern science had long rejected as outdated and unscientific.

The Novel of Sensibility in the 1780s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Franklin
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
Epistolary Novels ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter studies the novels of sensibility in the 1780s. The philosophy of John Locke, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson had influenced the first wave of epistolary novels of sensibility beginning in the 1740s. These explored the interaction between emotion and reason in producing moral actions. Response to stimuli was minutely examined, especially the relationship between the psychological and physiological manifestations of feelings. Later in the century, and, in particular during the late 1780s when the novel enjoyed a surge in popularity, the capacity for fine feeling became increasingly valued for its own sake rather than moralized. Ultimately, sensibility should be seen as a long-lasting literary movement rather than an ephemeral fashion. It put paternal authority and conventional modes of masculinity under question.

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