PAUL SAKMANN’S AND ALBERT SCHATZ’S MANDEVILLE STUDIES: THEIR LINK TO HAYEK’S ‘SPONTANEOUS ORDER’ THEORY

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-506
Author(s):  
Mark Charles Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Spontaneous Order ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
History Of

This paper agrees with Friedrich August Hayek’s assertion in his 1945 Dublin lecture that the importance of Dutch physician Bernard Mandeville’s role in the history of economics had been overlooked and with his 1966 London lecture’s assertion that Mandeville’s important contribution qualified him as a master mind. Paul Sakmann’s and Albert Schatz’s studies of Mandeville’s eighteenth-century allegorical Fable of the Bees satire were acknowledged by Hayek as having influenced his formulation and development of the theory of spontaneous order extended from Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. Each of these two writers’ contribution to Mandeville and spontaneous order theory is considered as well as proposing a new source for the term “spontaneous order”—Schatz’s 1907‘le principe d’ordre spontané.’

Commerce, Virtue, and Politics: Adam Ferguson's Constitutionalism

1983 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Adam Ferguson was one of several moral philosophers who contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment, a period aptly described as one of “remarkable efflorescence.” The works of Ferguson and his fellow Scotsmen — Adam Smith, David Hume, Dugald Stewart, Lord Kames, Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid — were widely distributed, seriously read, and vigorously debated during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The greatest contribution of this Scottish school to the history of political thinking was the refinement of the idea of commercial republicanism, the synthesis of modern notions of polity and economy.

The Muslim Scholars and the History of Economics

1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-276
Author(s):  
Abbas Mirakhor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medieval Economics ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
The Way

Introduction. . .The enterpriser addressing a Greek who had been boasting of the scientificachievement of his people, says: You boast most unreasonably of these sciences;for you did not discover them by your own penetration, but attained them fromthe scientific men of Ptolemy's times; and some sciences you took from the Eygptiansin the days of Prammetichus, and then introduced them into your ownland, and now you claim to have discovered them. The King asked the Greekphilosopher: "Can it be as he says?" He replied saying, "It is true; we obtainedmost of the sciences from the preceding philosophers, as others now receivethem from us. Such is the way of the world - for one people to derive benefitfrom another. Rasail of the Ikhwan Al-SafaNever in any age was any science discovered, but from the beginning of theworld wisdom has increased gradually, and it has not yet been completed asregards this life. Roger Bacon. . .there is no longer any excuse for a pmctice which has confounded the studyof medieval economics since its inception more than a century ago, namely,that of basing the most sweeping historical generalizations on a fav familiarnames, with no regard for context and continuity; even the best textbooks inthe field still skip and jump from one century to the next, in and out of differenttraditions. But a scholastic commentator superimposed his own ideas on thoseaccumulated in the particular tmdition in which he wrote, accepted its premisesand adopted its language. He cannot be fully understood until its foundationis also dug out.It is easy now to forget that those who laid the foundation of modemeconomics in the eighteenth century were as familiar with the accumulated ...

From Cudworth to Hume: Cambridge Platonism and the Scottish Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (S1) ◽  
pp. 8-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Moral Sentimentalism ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

This paper argues that the Cambridge Platonists had stronger philosophical links to Scottish moral philosophy than the received history allows. Building on the work of Michael Gill who has demonstrated links between ethical thought of More, Cudworth and Smith and moral sentimentalism, I outline some links between the Cambridge Platonists and Scottish thinkers in both the seventeenth century (e.g., James Nairn, Henry Scougal) and the eighteenth century (e.g., Smith, Blair, Stewart). I then discuss Hume's knowledge of Cudworth, in Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.

The Enlightenment's Animals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Wolloch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
European Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

In The Enlightenment’s Animals Nathaniel Wolloch takes a broad view of changing conceptions of animals in European culture during the long eighteenth century. Combining discussions of intellectual history, the history of science, the history of historiography, the history of economic thought, and, not least, art history, this book describes how animals were discussed and conceived in different intellectual and artistic contexts underwent a dramatic shift during this period. While in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century the main focus was on the sensory and cognitive characteristics of animals, during the late Enlightenment a new outlook emerged, emphasizing their conception as economic resources. Focusing particularly on seventeenth-century Dutch culture, and on the Scottish Enlightenment, Wolloch discusses developments in other countries as well, presenting a new look at a topic of increasing importance in modern scholarship.

PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN SCOTLAND: ADAM FERGUSON'S RESPONSE TO ROUSSEAU

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN MCDANIEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality is now recognized to have played a fundamental role in the shaping of Scottish Enlightenment political thought. Yet despite some excellent studies of Rousseau's influence on Adam Smith, his impact on Smith's contemporary, Adam Ferguson, has not been examined in detail. This article reassesses Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland by focusing on Ferguson's critique of Rousseau in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783), and his lectures and published writings in moral philosophy. Ferguson's differences from Rousseau were more pronounced than is sometimes assumed. Not only did Ferguson offer one of the most substantial eighteenth-century refutations of the Genevan's thinking on sociability, nature, art, and culture, he also provided an alternative to the theoretical history of the state set out in the Discourse on Inequality.

Intellectual Change before the Enlightenment: Scotland, the Netherlands and the Reception of Cartesian Thought, 1650–1700

2015 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
United Provinces

This article argues that intellectual historians' fascination with a narrative of the emerging Scottish enlightenment has led to a neglect of ideas that did not shape enlightenment culture. As a contribution to a less teleological intellectual history of Scotland, the article examines the reception of the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Cartesian thought enjoyed a brief period of popularity from the 1670s to the 1690s but appeared outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. Debates about Cartesianism illustrate the ways in which late seventeenth-century Scottish intellectual life was conditioned by the rivalry between presbyterians and episcopalians, and by fears that new philosophy would undermine christianity. Moreover, the reception of Cartesian thought exemplifies intellectual connections between Scotland and the Netherlands. Not only did Descartes' philosophy win its first supporters in the United Provinces, but the Dutch Republic also provided the arguments employed by the main Scottish critics of Cartesianism. In this period the Netherlands was both a source of philosophical innovation and of conservative reaction to intellectual change.

Assimilation and Identity in Modern Scottish History - Experience and Enlightenment: Socialization for Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland. By Charles Camic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Pp. x + 299. $25.00 (cloth). - Scottish Urban History. Edited by George Gordon and Brian Dicks. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1983. Pp. x + 160. $25.00/£14.00 (cloth). - Perspectives of the Scottish City. Edited by George Gordon. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985. Pp. x + 314. $28.00 (cloth). - Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh. By Richard B. Sher. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. xix + 390. $47.50 (cloth). - Shetland Life and Trade, 1550–1914. By Hance D. Smith. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984; distributed by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. Pp. x + 369. $38.00 (cloth). - Gaelic in Scotland, 1698–1981: The Geographical History of a Language. By Charles W. J. Withers. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984; distributed by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. Pp. xii + 352. $34.25 (cloth).

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

The Doctor's Casebook – A Process of Discovery

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Fraser ◽  
C Ayres
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Medical History ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Educational Purpose ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Style Of Writing ◽  
The University

Background and Aims A bound manuscript describing the medical cases seen by a mid-eighteenth century Scottish doctor was discovered in the possession of the first author's family. The identity of the doctor is not revealed in the book. The aims were to identify the doctor and understand the significance of this book in the context of Scottish medical history of that period. Methods The process of investigation involved transcribing the book in order to undertake detailed study of the text, with particular focus on style of writing, location, and the names of patients and doctors mentioned. This information was then used in searches of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London and the Department of Special Libraries and Archives of the University of Aberdeen as well as searches of the internet. Results The author was discovered to be a doctor working in Aberdeenshire in the middle of the eighteenth century. His style of writing suggests an educational purpose, with a particular interest in midwifery, and evidence of teaching midwifery techniques to students. He associated with other prominent local doctors of the time and was aware of the current thinking being put forward by his contemporaries. He had a particular association with Dr John Gregory, with whom he not only worked, but whose extended family he also treated. Conclusions The author of this casebook was identified as Dr David Skene, and this adds to our knowledge of this important figure of the Scottish Enlightenment who had a particular interest in midwifery and campaigned for the proper instruction of midwives

scholarly journals BETWEEN DISTANCE AND SYMPATHY: DR JOHN MOORE'S PHILOSOPHICAL TRAVEL WRITING

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BREWER
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Books ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conjectural History

Dr John Moore's four-volume account of his Grand Tour in the company of the Duke of Hamilton was one of the most successful European travel books of the late eighteenth century. Moore's text, I argue, is a philosophical travel narrative, an examination of manners, customs and characters, analogous to the philosophical histories of the Scottish Enlightenment. Intended as a critique of the superficial observations of much travel literature, it argues for a greater degree of closeness between the traveler and the native, one based on sympathetic conversation rather than observation, but accompanied by a more distanced analysis, based on conjectural history, of the hidden processes that explain manners and character. Difference should be understood through a combination of sympathy and analysis that makes travel and its accounting valuable.

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