Charles-Louis de Montesquieu and Adam Smith

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Chapter 4 in Unintended Consequences and the Social Sciences, 2023, pp 57-77 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter shows how Montesquieu, focusing on the ancient republics, distinguished between the military ones (Sparta) and the commercial ones (Athens). He understood that the order of a commercial society cannot be done intentionally. It occurs unintentionally, because “the common interest always includes the individual interest”. It is the theory of voluntary social cooperation. And yet Montesquieu’s intellectual journey was at times uncertain. It is from one of his equivocal positions that the myth of Sparta was reborn. Smith’s intellectual Journey was different. He climbed on the shoulders of Mandeville and Hume. He brought the theory of voluntary social cooperation to its highest and most specific development. Starting from the History of Astronomy, his work is characterized by a profound continuity and by the struggle against that "vulgar philosophy", ready to attribute every unintentional event to the will of supernatural beings. The theory of "invisible hand" is a consistent application of the idea of unintended consequences. The compatibility of individual plans does not need any Great Legislator and any mandatory hierarchy of ends, because social cooperation concerns only the means that the actors exchange. It is therefore possible to cooperate with unknown people, for purpose we do not know and which, if we knew, we might not share.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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