.... ____. [1763] 1997 . Meditazioni sulla felicità . Milan: Fondazione Feltrinelli. Winch, D. 1996 . Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750-1834 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pietro Verri’s Political Economy: Commercial Society, Civil Society...

...Carl Wennerlind The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment . By Berry Christopher J. . Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press , 2013 . xii ; 216 pp. Hardback $110.00 . Copyright 2014 by Duke University Press 2014...

...Jeffrey T. Young Biancamaria Fontana. Rethinking the politics of commercial society: the “Edinburgh Review” 1802–1832 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. viii, 256. $34.50. © 1988 by Duke University Press 1988 506 History of Political Economy 20:3 (1988) of England...

...Maria Pia Paganelli Adam Smith's account of commercial societies as societies of strangers may be read as a moral defense of commercial societies. A society of strangers can be a fostering environment for moral development. Smith's account of moral development echoes his contemporaries' accounts...

... that had been manifest in Anglo-Saxon economics since the sixteenth century or earlier. Moreover, this tradition of thinking about commercial society became quite widespread and in the seventeenth and eighteenth century extended to the entire European continent where it has become commonly known, in its...

... opportunities to interact with strangers and introduces distance in interpersonal relationships. Commercial societies are therefore the environments that most facilitate and are amenable to proper and moral behavior. According to this reading of The Theory of Moral Sentiments , for Smith, commerce facilitates...

.... In subsequent editions, the simple, ecological model gives way to a sophisticated general model of a commercial society with property rights, the rule of law, marriage laws similar to those of the British Christian tradition, and expanded markets. The result was not the “dismal” prognostication that Malthus...

... republic led by a unique goal of promoting virtue and exercising a peculiar version of positive lib- erty is a superior choice to a commercial republic that defends negative liberties and the maximum right to private property (or, if one prefers, a given stratified society that preserves men...

...Roy H. Grieve In a recent paper Terry Peach argues that Adam Smith found no reason to limit application of the labor-embodied theory of value to the early and rude state of society. According to Peach, Smith—having found a problem in employing the labor-commanded measure of value in the case...

... significance, not only for the individ- ual, but for society as a whole? If this question can be answered in the affirmative, then is it further possible to ask whether a commercial society is a net investor in moral capital-i.e., is it, on balance, enlarg- ing or depleting its stock of moral capital...

... and Condorcet’s normative judgments about commercial society in general, and national commercial policy in particular, the focus is on such sentiments as vexation, oppres- sion, the value of freedom and independence, equity, reason, and freedom from fear in an uncertain world, rather than on the maximization...

... the conditions necessary for the existence of classical liberal commercial society emerge as the na- ture of man is shaped by social norms, and social norms are shaped by material conditions.* The material conditions of a commercial society, division of labor, and exchange of surpluses through...

.... Part 2, “Designing the Decent Society,” has short, generally effective chapters on Smith’s views of the mercantile system, social science as the anticipation of the unanticipated, commercial humanism as Smith’s civilizing project, the impartial spectator,the historical...

...,” shows that Smith saw a re- ciprocal relation between commerce and liberty: (a) (the relation usually em- phasized) that economic liberty is good for commercial growth and prosper- ity; (b) (what is more often neglected) that the emergence of commercial society leads to a political regime...

..., combin- ing pastoral and early agricultural societies under a single heading of barbarity. “Barbarian” and “savage” (hunting) societies taken together are, in his terms, “rude” in contrast to the “polished” or “commercial” societies of his own time. There is, of course, no conflict between...

... Rethinking the politics of commercial society: the “Edinburgh Review” 1802- 1832. By Biancamaria Fontana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. viii, 256. $34.50. In 1802 a group of Scottish intellectuals, steeped in the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, founded the Edinburgh...

..., and the intellectual background to Smith’s thought. Part 2, “Designing the Decent Society,” has short, generally effective chapters on Smith’s views of the mercantile system, social science as the anticipation of the unanticipated, commercial humanism as Smith’s civilizing project, the impartial spectator...

... here is that with regard to Hume’s ideas about the creation and enforce- ment of the rules by which modern commercial society operates, Hob- bes’s influence is positive and unmistakable. One point I wish to establish is that Hume’s distinction between what is possible in small, populated...

... . Berry Christopher J. 2010 . “Adam Smith's Moral Economy.” Kyoto Economic Review 79 ( 1 ): 2 – 15 . ———. 2012 . “Adam Smith's ‘Science of Human Nature.’” History of Political Economy 44 ( 3 ): 471 – 92 . ———. 2013 . The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment...

... did more good than harm. Smith’s vision of a self-interested commercial society was not as problematic as the “Private Vices, Public Benefi ts” described by Bernard Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees, but it was still unclear exactly where Christian ethics and a Christian God fi t into Smith’s...