Adam Smith as a‘Revolutionary’in the History of Political Philosophy : A Contextualist Reinterpretation of Pierre Rosanvallon’s Le capitalisme utopique

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  • Ueno H.
    日本学術振興会特別研究員PD/一橋大学

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Other Title
  • アダム・スミスと政治哲学の革命 : ｢ユートピア的資本主義」論の現代的再構成
  • アダム ・ スミス ト セイジ テツガク ノ カクメイ : 「 ユートピアテキ シホン シュギ 」 ロン ノ ゲンダイテキ サイコウセイ

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Adam Smith, a father of modern economics, had been considered to be a radical liberalist, who criticized the government's intervention in the free market according to the idea of laissezfaireism; this type of image has gradually changed especially in the field of intellectual history, although this academic trend is often thought to result in too much diversification of the interpretation of Adam Smith. Firstly this paper classifies a great many new interpretations into several categories, which include a view that emphasizes he taught and studied ethics as a moral philosopher, and another view that his economic liberalism cannot work well without his study of historical sociology. Apart from these interpretations which focus on different aspects of Smith from one as an economist, there could be distinguished another understanding that his economic theory in itself was not a simply objective science of economy but, in fact, the art of government or the science of a legislator. Some important studies by Pierre Rosanvallon or by Istovan Hont can be reinterpreted as this type of understanding. From their perspective, Smith's theory should be, above all, situated in the long tradition of political philosophy, rather than on the starting point of modern economic science. Moreover, it is this point of view that enables us to understand what is so radical and almost 'revolutionary' with Adam Smith in the Western intellectual tradition.

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  • 人文學報

    人文學報 107 31-72, 2015-09-30

    THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES, KYOTO UNIVERSITY

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