The Inherited World View: Adam Smith and the Dynamic Economy

This essay seeks to dispel entrenched critical opinion regarding dance across Nietzsche's writings as representative of Dionysian intoxication alone. Taking as its prompt the riposte of Alain Badiou, ‘Nietzsche is miles away from any doctrine of dance as a primitive ecstasy’ and ‘dance is in no way the liberated bodily impulse, the wild energy of the body’, the essay uncovers the ties between dance and Apollo in the Nietzschean theory of art while qualifying dance's relation to Dionysus. Primarily through an analysis of The Dionysiac World View and The Birth of Tragedy, the essay seeks to illuminate enigmatic statements about dance in Nietzsche (‘in dance the greatest strength is only potential, although it is betrayed by the suppleness of movement’ and ‘dance is the preservation of orderly measure’). It does this through an elucidation of the specific function of dance in Nietzsche's interpretation of classical Greece; via an assessment of the difficulties associated with the Nietzschean understanding of the bacchanal; and lastly through an analysis of Nietzsche's characterization of dance as a symbol. The essay culminates in a discussion of dance's ties to Nietzschean life affirmation; here the themes of physico-phenomenal existence, joy and illusion in Nietzsche are surveyed.

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Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413275.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Craig Smith

Keyword(s):

Civil Society ◽

Moral Philosophy ◽

David Hume ◽

Adam Smith ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

Commercial Society ◽

University Of Edinburgh ◽

English Speaking ◽

English Speaking World ◽

The University

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.

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Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415019.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Christopher J. Berry

Keyword(s):

Intellectual History ◽

David Hume ◽

Adam Smith ◽

Detailed Examination ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

Subsequent Work ◽

Retrospective Assessment ◽

The 1960S

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.

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