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.The grand political coalition of the period which followed the FrenchRevolution, to take a different example, has remained the same, in verygeneral terms, for almost two centuries.The politics of economic reform,of individual rights, of rights to property, were linked, in the 1770s and1780s, to the objective of constitutional change, in Paine s politics, or inCondorcet s.But the events of the Revolution destroyed the possibility ofpolitical coalition between the supporters of market freedom and the sup-porters of Revolutionary freedom.The obvious coalition for economicand political liberals by the end of the 1790s, at least in England andFrance, was with the conservative opponents of the Revolution.In aconflict between gradual change and Revolutionary violence, the liberalswere on the side of the slow and the consensual; in a conflict between free-Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy Economic Dispositions 4949dom of individual property and violent expropriation, they were on theside of property.This taking of sides has lasted ever since; it lasted, at least,until the eventual end, with the overthrow of communist power in EasternEurope and Russia, of the epoch of European revolutions.There are disputes in political and economic theory, too, which last for avery long time, and it is with these that I am principally concerned.Theyare disputes, above all, about the political theory of people who them-selves have theories.The idea of a universal disposition of enlightenment,or of a discursive, disputatious, theorizing way of life, which is also a wayof life for everyone without exception, has been the subject of virtually un-interrupted discussion over the course of the past 250 years.It is this con-tinuing discussion to which the book is a contribution, and in respect ofwhich the past of political economy (or the early reaches of the present)seems to me to illuminate the disputes of our own times.The difficulty, in very general terms, is of the depiction of complicatedand self-conscious lives.Everyone knows, by introspection or imagination,that individuals have different, conflicting desires; that they have needs,and they also have opinions about needs; that they have political, eco-nomic, and spiritual sentiments; that they want commodities, and power,and they want to avoid being vexed.It is easy enough to describe (or tohint at) all this in one s own life, or in the tragedy of Oedipus, or in the bi-ography of Voltaire.The great difficulty, for the political theorists of theenlightened disposition, was how to describe a universe, or a society, inwhich everybody has opinions and theories and conflicting, changingdesires.It was to make a system out of the innumerable, swervingmoleculae of individual reflections and sentiments.There is a beautiful moment in one of the last passages Smith added tothe final, sixth edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, published shortlybefore his death, where he says, of the man of system, that he seems toimagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society withas much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.He does not consider that.in the great chess-board of human society,every single piece has a principle of motion of its own. This is a character-istic of imperial and royal reformers; it is also, or can also be, characteristicof the theorists of human societies.197 For if everyone has his or her ownprinciple of motion, then it is difficult to think of their union as a system,or a society.If everyone has the same principle of motion, then the systemis too simple; it does less than justice to the subtlety of individual lives.Ifeveryone has a theory of society, or an opinion about the principles of mo-Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy 50 Economic Sentiments50tion of other individuals, then the system must be a theory of people withtheories.The disputes of the late eighteenth century are particularly evocativenow because they took place at a time when the prospect of an entire soci-ety of self-conscious individuals was quite new, and when the frontier be-tween the economic and the political, or between economic and politicalsentiments, was still quite shifting.They are antecedent, that is to say, tothe systematization of economic thought in the early decades of the nine-teenth century, and to the vast self-abnegation whereby political economydefined itself (in John Stuart Mill s words of 1836) as the science of manconsidered solely as a being who desires to possess wealth.It makesentire abstraction of every other human passion or motive. 198 These ear-lier disputes are concerned, rather, with economic subjects who pursuetheir objectives sometimes by producing goods, sometimes by trying toinfluence regulations, and sometimes by seeking the friendship of officials;whose objectives are sometimes to become rich, sometimes to be re-venged, and sometimes to live in a more just society.The eighteenth-century disputes are evocative, too, because they tookplace at a time when sentiments and objectives were changing very rapidly,or were at least thought to be changing rapidly. All centuries, more orless, have been and will be centuries of transition, Tristan says in one ofLeopardi s dialogues of 1834.199 But the later part of the eighteenth cen-tury, like the end of the twentieth century, was a period of peculiarly self-conscious preoccupation with change in the rules, norms, and institutionsof economic life.It was not a time of which one might say, as Mill said ofVictorian England, that serious controversy had ceased on one subjectafter another, that industry flowed into an apparently stagnant sea, andthat people did only that which was suitable; that it does not occur tothem to have any inclination except for what is customary. 200 The ten-dency which so concerned Turgot, Smith, and Condorcet, of the shiftingjurisprudence of unenforced laws, was one illustration; so was the rapidchange in economic regulation.It is not only theorists, in such a period,who have to think about cases of conscience in economic life, and to formexpectations about continuing changes in economic policy.My suggestion, for all these reasons, is that the economic thought of thelate eighteenth century, including thought about the disposition of en-lightenment, can indeed cast light on present disputes, in political theory,in political economy, and in politics.For the old disputes were concerned,at their most general, with two very large and very lasting difficulties.OneCopyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy Economic Dispositions 5151has to do with the pursuit of self-interest subject to rules, and in particularwith the pursuit of economic interest subject to changing political regula-tions and norms; with the transformation of money into power, includingthe power to influence rules.The other has to do with public opinion andpublic instruction; with the disposition of individuals to subject them-selves to and to try to influence rules, and with the power of other individ-uals to influence this disposition.The two difficulties were of continuingimportance, as will be seen, both to Smith and to Condorcet.They are thedifficulties, in particular, of living with uncertainty.They are difficulties ofthe present as well [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.The grand political coalition of the period which followed the FrenchRevolution, to take a different example, has remained the same, in verygeneral terms, for almost two centuries.The politics of economic reform,of individual rights, of rights to property, were linked, in the 1770s and1780s, to the objective of constitutional change, in Paine s politics, or inCondorcet s.But the events of the Revolution destroyed the possibility ofpolitical coalition between the supporters of market freedom and the sup-porters of Revolutionary freedom.The obvious coalition for economicand political liberals by the end of the 1790s, at least in England andFrance, was with the conservative opponents of the Revolution.In aconflict between gradual change and Revolutionary violence, the liberalswere on the side of the slow and the consensual; in a conflict between free-Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy Economic Dispositions 4949dom of individual property and violent expropriation, they were on theside of property.This taking of sides has lasted ever since; it lasted, at least,until the eventual end, with the overthrow of communist power in EasternEurope and Russia, of the epoch of European revolutions.There are disputes in political and economic theory, too, which last for avery long time, and it is with these that I am principally concerned.Theyare disputes, above all, about the political theory of people who them-selves have theories.The idea of a universal disposition of enlightenment,or of a discursive, disputatious, theorizing way of life, which is also a wayof life for everyone without exception, has been the subject of virtually un-interrupted discussion over the course of the past 250 years.It is this con-tinuing discussion to which the book is a contribution, and in respect ofwhich the past of political economy (or the early reaches of the present)seems to me to illuminate the disputes of our own times.The difficulty, in very general terms, is of the depiction of complicatedand self-conscious lives.Everyone knows, by introspection or imagination,that individuals have different, conflicting desires; that they have needs,and they also have opinions about needs; that they have political, eco-nomic, and spiritual sentiments; that they want commodities, and power,and they want to avoid being vexed.It is easy enough to describe (or tohint at) all this in one s own life, or in the tragedy of Oedipus, or in the bi-ography of Voltaire.The great difficulty, for the political theorists of theenlightened disposition, was how to describe a universe, or a society, inwhich everybody has opinions and theories and conflicting, changingdesires.It was to make a system out of the innumerable, swervingmoleculae of individual reflections and sentiments.There is a beautiful moment in one of the last passages Smith added tothe final, sixth edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, published shortlybefore his death, where he says, of the man of system, that he seems toimagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society withas much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.He does not consider that.in the great chess-board of human society,every single piece has a principle of motion of its own. This is a character-istic of imperial and royal reformers; it is also, or can also be, characteristicof the theorists of human societies.197 For if everyone has his or her ownprinciple of motion, then it is difficult to think of their union as a system,or a society.If everyone has the same principle of motion, then the systemis too simple; it does less than justice to the subtlety of individual lives.Ifeveryone has a theory of society, or an opinion about the principles of mo-Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy 50 Economic Sentiments50tion of other individuals, then the system must be a theory of people withtheories.The disputes of the late eighteenth century are particularly evocativenow because they took place at a time when the prospect of an entire soci-ety of self-conscious individuals was quite new, and when the frontier be-tween the economic and the political, or between economic and politicalsentiments, was still quite shifting.They are antecedent, that is to say, tothe systematization of economic thought in the early decades of the nine-teenth century, and to the vast self-abnegation whereby political economydefined itself (in John Stuart Mill s words of 1836) as the science of manconsidered solely as a being who desires to possess wealth.It makesentire abstraction of every other human passion or motive. 198 These ear-lier disputes are concerned, rather, with economic subjects who pursuetheir objectives sometimes by producing goods, sometimes by trying toinfluence regulations, and sometimes by seeking the friendship of officials;whose objectives are sometimes to become rich, sometimes to be re-venged, and sometimes to live in a more just society.The eighteenth-century disputes are evocative, too, because they tookplace at a time when sentiments and objectives were changing very rapidly,or were at least thought to be changing rapidly. All centuries, more orless, have been and will be centuries of transition, Tristan says in one ofLeopardi s dialogues of 1834.199 But the later part of the eighteenth cen-tury, like the end of the twentieth century, was a period of peculiarly self-conscious preoccupation with change in the rules, norms, and institutionsof economic life.It was not a time of which one might say, as Mill said ofVictorian England, that serious controversy had ceased on one subjectafter another, that industry flowed into an apparently stagnant sea, andthat people did only that which was suitable; that it does not occur tothem to have any inclination except for what is customary. 200 The ten-dency which so concerned Turgot, Smith, and Condorcet, of the shiftingjurisprudence of unenforced laws, was one illustration; so was the rapidchange in economic regulation.It is not only theorists, in such a period,who have to think about cases of conscience in economic life, and to formexpectations about continuing changes in economic policy.My suggestion, for all these reasons, is that the economic thought of thelate eighteenth century, including thought about the disposition of en-lightenment, can indeed cast light on present disputes, in political theory,in political economy, and in politics.For the old disputes were concerned,at their most general, with two very large and very lasting difficulties.OneCopyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy Economic Dispositions 5151has to do with the pursuit of self-interest subject to rules, and in particularwith the pursuit of economic interest subject to changing political regula-tions and norms; with the transformation of money into power, includingthe power to influence rules.The other has to do with public opinion andpublic instruction; with the disposition of individuals to subject them-selves to and to try to influence rules, and with the power of other individ-uals to influence this disposition.The two difficulties were of continuingimportance, as will be seen, both to Smith and to Condorcet.They are thedifficulties, in particular, of living with uncertainty.They are difficulties ofthe present as well [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]