Bentham and Ricardo’s Rendez-vous Manqués

Christophe Depoortère, André Lapidus and Nathalie Sigot ()
Additional contact information
Nathalie Sigot: PHARE, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Chapter Chapter 10 in New Perspectives on Political Economy and Its History, 2020, pp 195-216 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter discusses the possible influence of Bentham on Ricardo’s economics through three rendez-vous. The first one was mediated by James Mill: we show that (i) if Mill ever had an influence on Ricardo early in their relationship, he was not yet Benthamian, and (ii) if this influence was to come later, Ricardo’s comments prove that he was unconvinced by Mill’s description of how people act. The second rendez-vous manqué resulted from Ricardo’s reading of Bentham’s Sur les prix: this reading could not have influenced Ricardo’s monetary thought, because (i) it occurred after Ricardo’s first monetary publications, and (ii) it led Ricardo to disagree with Bentham’s monetary analysis. The last rendez-vous was also manqué. Bentham blamed Ricardo for confusing ‘cost’ with ‘value’ in his Essay on Profits, but this reflects diverging approaches between the two authors. Accordingly, the assumption of Bentham’s influence on Ricardo’s economics seems hardly defendable.

Keywords: Bentham; Ricardo; James Mill; Utilitarianism; Foundations of Ricardian economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Bentham and Ricardo's rendez-vous manqués (2020)
Working Paper: Bentham and Ricardo’s rendez-vous manqués (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-3-030-42925-6_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783030429256

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-42925-6_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().