scholarly journals O espectador imparcial de Adam Smith e o observador ideal de John Rawls: Uma crítica à ética utilitarista

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Solange Regina Marin ◽  
André Marzulo Quintana ◽  
Cezar Augusto Pereira dos Santos
Keyword(s):  

Resumo John Rawls fundamenta o utilitarismo na concepção de observador ideal presente nas teorias dos sentimentalistas escoceses do século XVIII, particularmente nas teorias de David Hume e Adam Smith. Como a tese do utilitarismo não é tão explícita e acessível na ótica de ambos os filósofos escoceses, pretendemos, no presente trabalho, confrontar a tese do espectador imparcial de Smith e a crítica de Rawls à concepção do observador ideal como fundadora do utilitarismo. Observamos maior abrangência para o espectador imparcial em relação ao observador ideal utilitarista nas escolhas morais.

Author(s):  
Craig Smith

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.


Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry

A collection of essays by a leading scholar. The work selected spans several decades, which together with three new unpublished pieces, cumulatively constitute a distinct interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a whole while incorporating detailed examination of the work of David Hume and Adam Smith. There is, in addition, a substantial introduction which, alongside Berry’s personal intellectual history, provides a commentary on the development of the study of the Scottish Enlightenment from the 1960s. Each of the previously published chapters includes a postscript where Berry comments on subsequent work and his own retrospective assessment. The recurrent themes are the ideas of sociability and socialisation, the Humean science of man and Smith’s analysis of the relation between commerce and morality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Farhad Rassekh

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.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigino Bruni ◽  
Robert Sugden

It is a truism that a market economy cannot function without trust. We must be able to rely on other people to respect our property rights, and on our trading partners to keep their promises. The theory of economics is incomplete unless it can explain why economic agents often trust one another, and why that trust is often repaid. There is a long history of work in economics and philosophy which tries to explain the kinds of reasoning that people use when they engage in practices of trust: this work develops theories of trust. A related tradition in economics, sociology and political science investigates the kinds of social institution that reproduce whatever habits, dispositions or modes of reasoning are involved in acts of trust: this work develops theories of social capital. A recurring question in these literatures is whether a society which organizes its economic life through markets is capable of reproducing the trust on which those markets depend. In this paper, we look at these themes in relation to the writings of three eighteenth-century philosopher-economists: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Antonio Genovesi.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brandstedt

AbstractSome key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Sávia Lorena Barreto Carvalho De Sousa

Este ensaio teórico de base analítica visa entender criticamente aspectos do liberalismo e da intervenção do Estado. Com o objetivo central de resgatar questões trabalhadas por autores modernos da Ciência Política a respeito das formas que uma sociedade pode ser mais justa e combater as desigualdades no mundo, o questionamento principal se desdobra em reflexões sobre como conciliar a liberdade com a atuação dos mercados e a respeito dos limites da democracia neste contexto, discutidos em uma problematização de pensadores como Adam Smith, Alex de Tocqueville, Stuart Mill, Max Weber e Karl Marx em diálogo com teóricos mais contemporâneos, como Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas e Anthony Giddens. Conclui-se a urgência de um processo de fortalecimento dos Parlamentos, com políticas públicas de inclusão social que permitam uma sociedade mais igualitária e uma educação que abra portas para formar um cidadão crítico, que compreenda as diferenças dentro do campo do respeito ao Outro e às liberdades de escolha. A proposta de contínuo aprimoramento das instituições e juízos através de sistemas de consultas, reformas e revisões jurídicas e políticas, é cada vez mais necessária em um mundo de constantes mudanças.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.


1996 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gus diZerega

Liberalism and Deep Ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. However, the “evolutionary” tradition of liberal thought, rooted in David Hume and Adam Smith, and including Michael Polanyi and F. A. Hayek, provides a foundation for their reconciliation. Linkage is through Hume and Smith's conception of sympathy, which today means empathy. For Hume, sympathy extends into the animal realm. Sympathy is essential for certain scientific work, and provides an foundation for both liberal and ecological ethics. Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess use the same concept. Linkage is first to biocentric ethics, and then, through examining natural beauty and, via Michael Polanyi's tacit knowledge, ecocentric ethics. The work of Hayek suggests how modern society might be harmonized with the requirements of nature. This deepens J. Baird Callicott's pioneering approach, uniting it with Lewis Hinchman's recent analysis. Liberalism's and Deep Ecology's foundations both benefit from their mutual integration.


Author(s):  
Alan Ryan

This chapter explains what liberalism is. It is easy to list famous liberals, but it is harder to say what they have in common. John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton, T. H. Green, John Dewey, and contemporaries such as Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls are certainly liberals. However, they do not agree on issues such as the boundaries of toleration, the legitimacy of the welfare state, and the virtues of democracy. They do not even agree on the nature of the liberty they think liberals ought to seek. The chapter considers classical versus modern liberalism, the divide within liberal theory between liberalism and libertarianism, and liberal opposition to absolutism, religious authority, and capitalism. It also discusses liberalism as a theory for the individual, society, and the state.


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