THE RISE OF GREED IN EARLY ECONOMIC THOUGHT: FROM DEADLY SIN TO SOCIAL BENEFIT

Rudi Verburg

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2012, vol. 34, issue 4, 515-539

Abstract: This paper discusses the historical changes in economic and ideological conditions through which greed turned from one of the deadly sins into a passion from which society derived social benefits. Adding to the perspective developed by Hirschman in his The Passions and the Interests, three stages are distinguished in the construction of the notion of the social utility of greed: (1) the self-sufficient community; (2) the mercantile state; and (3) commercial society. The paper relates how changing conditions led philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to recognize the conditional usefulness of greed and, eventually, to build a dream on the idea of greed as instrumental in establishing the material foundation of progress in society.

Date: 2012
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