I argue that Aristotle's approach to the proper type of acquisition, use-value, want, and accumulation/storage of wealth is oriented less to excluding commercial activity, such as that of Aristotle's Athens, than to forestalling misordered concupiscence – the taking of an inherendy limited good for the unlimited, or highest, good. That is, his moral aversion to taking a means for an end lies behind his rendering of the sort of wealth that is natural. By stressing the limited nature (...) of natural wealth, Aristode distinguishes such wealth qua limited from an artificial unlimited desire for profit in order to drive home his point that wealth ought not be taken as an objective good. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has long been recognised that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) advances a ‘system of natural liberty’ in seeking to account for the ‘nature and causes of the wealth of nations.’ This is not however a theme that is explored or explained in the early sections of the book; in fact, not until Book IV, Ch. ix does Smith give his most expansive account of what he might mean by this term. This paper examines this (...) chapter in detail to determine the limits of his critique in that chapter of the ‘agricultural system’ (of Physiocracy), and why it might be that Smith is so parsimonious in offering a clear account of his central idea. (shrink)

Responsible investment is increasingly prevalent, and both financial and moral concerns can drive such investment. In this article, we investigate how responsible investors of different wealth weigh financial and moral arguments. Prior research on different factors that may codetermine responsible investment behavior yield competing predictions about the influence of personal wealth on investment. We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment on responsible investment, wherein we treat investors with financial, moral, and no arguments. We find that there is (...) a statistically and economically significant difference in responsiveness to financial and moral arguments between investors of different wealth. Specifically, financial arguments are more effective than are moral arguments for high wealth investors but not for low wealth investors, and the effect is particularly high for the wealthiest investors. The findings hold for several different measures of wealth. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the moderating effect of wealth on responsible investment choice. Furthermore, these insights may enable more fine-tuned strategies to stimulate responsible investment among different individual investor segments. (shrink)

This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in (...) favour of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)

Current economic ontology development has failed to confront two important errors associated with historicism. Embracing the linearity of economic value being directly attributed to the labor applied to natural resources taken together with efficiency arguments used to justify monetary policy on both the microlevel (transaction) and macrolevel (global trade), we know these legacies of the scientific method applied to economic systems have left the G-20 paralyzed to deal with structural failings evidenced from banking to business to economic policy. An (...) exploration of the structural modalities that impair our current capacity for adaptation and alternative methods for accounting for value is the basis for this inquiry. Integral accounting is proposed as a more suitable method to transition from scarcity-based market models to abundance-based modes of sustainable engagement. (shrink)

The main aim of the present study is to identify which mental footnotes (related to Adam Smith’s Capitalism) have more weight in the current cognitive processing of participants. We used the “Wealth of Nations” as the main source of the concepts from this author. An experimental design (based on a previous qualitative research) was carried out to test the influence of mental footnotes on the citizens’ decision on the validity of the concepts. The findings point out that there are (...) strong, current, mental footnotes related to the Adam Smith’s concept of price. People mostly understand that, for every product, the entrepreneur has to recover their initial investment and to gain a profit. On the other hand, the fact that entrepreneurs have to pay some expenditures and they need to have profits determines the price of products. (shrink)

Care is at the heart of the Maori values system, which calls for humans to be kaitiaki, caretakers of the maun y the life-force, in each other and in nature. The relational Five Well-beings approach, based on four case studies of Maori businesses, demonstrates how business can create spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic well-being. A Well-beings approach entails praxis, which brings values and practice together with the purpose of consciously creating well-being and, in so doing, creates multi-dimensional wealth. (...) Underlying the Well-beings approach is an ethic of care and an intrinsic stakeholder view of business. (shrink)

Develops the concept of sustainable development and shows how it is related to the maintenance of social well‐being through time. It is shown that wealth, estimated in terms of accounting prices, serves admirably as an index of well‐being over time and across generations. A country's wealth measures the social worth of its capital assets. The notion of wealth developed here is a comprehensive one, including in it the social worth of manufactured and human capital, public knowledge, and (...) natural capital. Given that movements in wealth over time measure movements in social well‐being, the object of study is then shown to be genuine investment, the social worth of net changes in an economy's capital assets. Thus, ensuring that social well‐being is sustainable involves taking care that the economy's assets are managed well. The theory is also put to work on contemporary data from the poorest countries in the world. Movements in the wealth of nations present a vastly different picture from the one gleaned from the two most popular measures of social well‐being. A substantial reassessment of the post‐war development experience among poor countries is now needed if sustainable development is to be anything more than a slogan at national and international conferences. (shrink)

I perform an economic and ethical analysis on wealth and income inequality. Economists have performed many statistical studies that reveal a number of, often contradictory, findings in connection with the distribution of wealth and income. Hence, the statistical findings leave us with no better knowledge of the effects that inequality has on economic progress. At the same time, the existing theoretical results have not provided us with a definitive answer concerning the effects of inequality on progress. By gaining (...) knowledge of the nature of inequality, and bringing basic economic principles to bear on the subject, we can come to an understanding of what the causal relationship is between inequality and economic progress. Furthermore, I apply a new theory of ethics – rational egoism – to assess economic inequality. I show that, in the right context, economic inequality is both economically and morally desirable. (shrink)

Annotation A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

The purpose of this article was to compare Jerome’s and Augustine’s sermons on the fifth book of the Psalms with regard to their views on the rich and the poor. After a brief consideration of the different audiences of Jerome and Augustine, we focused on their attitudes to wealth and poverty, and almsgiving and its relationship to eschatology. In both Jerome’s and Augustine’s commentaries we were confronted with problems regarding the nature of the collections, the composition of the audiences, (...) and a lack of overlap between the two works, but it was possible to discern congruences and differences in their exegesis. In their preaching on poverty and riches, both homilists associated Judas with the devil and wealth. With regard to the identification of Christ and the poor, Jerome offers a somewhat uneasy exegesis in explaining that Christ stands at the right hand of the pauper, although the Lord himself is rich. Augustine mentioned the identification of Christ and the poor a few times in Enarrationes in Psalmos and framed the poverty of Christ within the body of the church, emphasising the common humanity of his congregation. In his sermons, mainly delivered to monks, Jerome advocated total renunciation. Augustine made more allowances for human frailty, advocating partial and gradual dispossession. The Songs of Ascent provided both our authors with the opportunity to consider the place of almsgiving in an eschatological context. Contribution: We investigate the views of two prominent Latin fathers on wealth and poverty in their sermons on Psalms 109–150. The focus on wealth and poverty is evident. Judas is identified with the rich and Christ with the poor, placing Christ and riches against each other in an either/or position. (shrink)

In this paper I give some reasons why ‘saving for future generations’ is not as straightforward as it sounds and when we might be skeptical of the permissibility of states saving for future citizens, even though such savings are often seen to be morally praiseworthy. I emerge with an account of when state savings for future citizens through sovereign wealth funds may be morally permissible. I argue that we ought to follow a modified version of Armstrong’s criteria for the (...) moral permissibility of sovereign wealth fund savings. That is, states are entitled to the full proceeds from the sale of a natural resource until their citizens’ basic rights are secured. Once they are, states are entitled only to the improved value of the resource, so long as they have not excluded others from the opportunity also to improve the resource. States may create sovereign wealth funds based on this improved value and, due to justified compatriot partiality, may choose to distribute those funds to current or future members of the state, even if non-citizens may be worse off and/or in greater need. Any residual value of the resource extraction must be redistributed globally. (shrink)

We examine the unique nature of agency problems within publicly traded family firms by investigating the earnings management decision of dominant family owners relative to non-family. To do so, we draw upon literature demonstrating that family owners are loss averse with respect to the family’s socioemotional wealth, or the affective endowment derived from firm ownership and control. Our theory and findings suggest that potential reputational consequences of earnings management lead family principals to engage in less of this practice relative (...) to non-family firms, and that founder family firms are less likely than non-founder family firms to use earnings management. Moreover, the family-firm effect varies with the firm size, the degree of CEO entrenchment, and the firm’s stock structure. We provide important insights regarding differences between family and non-family principals in the use of unethical accounting practices, thereby extending agency theory and advancing an underdeveloped research area. (shrink)

The unquestionable achievement of J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was to describe the retention of pre-modern values in a modern society. Pocock was notoriously accused of decentring Locke and side-lining the Liberal Tradition. A more pertinent critique had it that he failed to articulate how civic humanism in the context of increasingly commercial societies produced more than Jeremiahs or Cassandras. This article explains how Pocock responded to his various critics by inventing the term “commercial humanism” in an effort (...) to clarify the way in which classical virtue was modified in modern commercial contexts, especially by natural jurists and republicans. Commercial humanism proved controversial but stimulated one of the most original scholars working in the history of political thought, István Hont, to undertake a prolonged engagement with Pocock's revisionist ideas, which ultimately allowed him to answer Pocock's critics better than Pocock, whose voice remained too in tune with those whose view of modern political thought he had rejected. For Hont, Pocock's labours in the history of political thought remained less relevant to present politics than they might become, once the depth of eighteenth-century analyses of the relationship between wealth and virtue was recovered. (shrink)

The object of a critical theory of society is Man [_Menschen_] in her historically specific forms of life. The article argues against ontological conceptions of social labour and of economy. Instead it insists that historical materialism far from being a materialism of nature and history, is fundamentally a critique of the objectivity of the capitalist economic categories. For a critical theory of society, the economic concept, capital as a process of the valorisation of value, is not a natural thing (...) but a social relationship between persons that is mediated through things. The fetishism of commodities is real. In the mediated world the social individuals appear as personifications of the economic object; and yet there would be nothing without their social practices—of self-preservation. Human suffering is objectively mediated. The article concludes that suffering is the non-conceptual content of the concept of society as a process of valorisation. The sheer unrest of life is the social constituent of the economic object. (shrink)

Along with the developments in social, scientific, and technological fields, today’s conditions are constantly changing and becoming much more complex. Humans must keep pace with the rapidly changing world, meet requirements, and solve various problems encountered with minimal damage. One of the most crucial obligations is to preserve the delicate balance between nature and culture to make it sustainable for humanity. This study is carried out pursuant to semiotics with an interdisciplinary perspective dealing with the relation of culture with nature (...) and the role of humans, as a subject, in this relation regarding both natural and cultural heritages of Latmos. The study examines the subject’s acts and possible influences on nature, culture, and society in the region. It is seen that there is an uphill battle between two different subjects; the reason for this is a conflict of interest encountered on individual and social planes. On the one hand, one of the subjects is aware of the positive effects of preserving natural and cultural values on society and its future. On the other hand, another subject is unaware of all these or is aware of them but ignores natural and cultural values and destroys them for the sake of self-interest. (shrink)

Aristotle argued that you need some wealth to live well. The Stoics argued that you could live well with or without wealth. But the Cynics argued that wealth is a hinderance. For the Cynics, a good life consists in self-sufficiency, or being able to rule and help yourself. You accomplish this by living simply and naturally, and by subjecting yourself to rigorous philosophical exercises. Cynics confronted people to get them to abandon extraneous possessions and positions of power (...) to live better. And while the Cynics were experts in living in this way, their ascetic lifestyles made their message curious to some audiences. This paper reflects on Cynic ascetic practices and the ways others perceived them. (shrink)

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred. Nasr traces the historical process (...) through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Is it possible to avoid “the agrarian myth” while recognizing the genuine value—which is not necessarily the economic or monetary value—of agrarian pursuits? My answer is that such a recognition of genuine agrarian values is possible, but only if we recapture a lost sense of the value of productive activities generally.An impediment to this recognition, I maintain, is modern economics—both socialist and free market; one important means to it, the natural law philosophy of the eighteenth century French Physiocrats.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nature and Freedom, Purity and Impurity in Reconsidering the Life of PowerJames Garrison (bio)My book Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy is not so much about providing a systematic account of what it means to be a self-monitoring, self-regulating subject, the branches of which might resolve down to some single root, despite its clear debt to Judith Butler's 1997 The (...) Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection.1 My book is instead more self-consciously rhizomatic in the [End Page 833] manner of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.2 Describing my rhizomatic approach in this book, Joseph Harroff observes in his preceding article that:Instead of thinking about thinking as being conducive to the construction of totalizing systems, final vocabularies, or epistemic closure, Garrison connects our embodied reflection in the interstices of habit to the always changing life of power—that is, the conditions for the possibility of becoming a thinking, feeling, body-subject—to the dynamic and amorphous nature of the multitudinous processes by which we are constantly being rendered subjectival in daily life by forces working relatively synchronically in the present as "subjectivation" and relatively diachronically in cultural traditions as so many forms of "subjectality"3This is a very nuanced way of saying that my efforts to present subject life as being (1) relational, (2) bodily, (3) discursive, and (4) ritually philosophy. Indeed, thoughmpelled have led to a book that sprawls.4 This sprawl is thus like that of a rhizome (think of ginger), not proceeding from a single source of growth with a single, clear arche. Do I revel in the imprecision? Yes, but only when it is justified by the investigation itself. And in the case of this inquiry—which spans what Judith Butler captures regarding ritual performativity by drawing on figures like Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault and the complex approaches to ritual seen in classical and contemporary Rú 儒 philosophy (Confucianism)—the rhizomatic approach very much is.With my book having hopefully earned its own rhizomatic badge of honor, my response to the thoughtful questions posed by Kelly Coble and Joseph Harroff likewise takes up this spirit and cuts its own course through what has been presented in their articles. Hence, I will proceed in a non-linear fashion that draws links between ideas capriciously and unapologetically.That said, my way of looking at Reconsidering the Life of Power and what I immodestly call its insights is far from the only perspective. I hold a copyright on the book (fact check: ctually, it's SUNY Press), but in the marketplace of ideas, I hold no monopoly, even over what I have authored. Therefore, while I feel a degree of ownership over the ideas presented here, I am delighted to see my thinking challenged and extended by people like Kelly Coble and Joseph Harroff in this forum and by others (like Michael J. Ardoline in the article "Building a Way: Becoming Active in One's Own Subjectivation through Deleuze and Xunzi" from the journal Philosophies),5 all of whom see so much present in the text beyond what I, even in its conception, was able.To wit, Joseph Harroff's characterization of my efforts to reclaim and redefine the term "liberal arts" captures so much of what I tried to convey so much more succinctly and with so much more in the way of provocative connection to a wealth of texts of a decidedly European lineage on the connection between freedom, the arts, and self-cultivation.6 However, as he well identifies, whereas classical European conceptions of liberal arts tend to [End Page 834] be more about self-cultivation of an atomic individual, what I am offering is more about finding freedom while taking the "self" in question to be deeply and constitutively relational along the lines that he very effectively links to the pragmatism of John Dewey and also in Rú, philosophy. Indeed, though not much of this specific pragmatist thread made it directly into this book, the influence of Roger T. Ames from my time at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa pervades Reconsidering the Life... (shrink)

Appeals to nature are ubiquitous in Epicurean ethics and politics. The foundation of Epicurean ethics is its claim that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good and pain the sole intrinsic evil, and this is supposedly shown by the behavior of infants who have not yet been corrupted, "when nature's judgement is pure and whole." Central to their recommendations about how to attain pleasure is their division between types of desires: the natural and necessary ones, the natural but non-necessary (...) ones, and the vain and empty ones. Elsewhere, the Epicureans talk about the "natural goods" of political power and fame, and they contrast "natural wealth" with wealth as "defined by empty opinion." Finally, in their politics, Epicurus claims that the "the justice of nature is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, [i.e.,] neither to harm one another nor to be harmed." This paper explores two questions regarding these various appeals to nature. The first is: what is it for these things to be natural, i.e., what notion of "natural" or "nature" is at play here? (Furthermore, is there a single notion being used across these appeals, and if not, how are they related?) The second is: what normative work does a thing's being natural do? That is, what reason, if any, does a desire's being natural give me for pursuing the object of that desire and trying to fulfill that desire, as opposed to not doing so and trying to eliminate it, and similarly for the other appeals to nature? (shrink)

1- The first period of human life in prehistoric times was known as the period of food gathering economy, as it depended on gathering wild plants and hunting animals, and made simple tools and machines from stones and animal bones that were used in hunting, and used tree leaves and animal skins to make clothes. As for the second period, the Neolithic era, it was known as the period of food production economy when he learned agriculture and domesticated animals. Agriculture (...) was initially described as meeting the need and was cultivated in small areas and in one season. 2- When he learned the life of stability and lived in permanent villages, the oldest of which is the village of Jarmo, many tools were found made of flint, stone vessels, spoons and pottery. In addition, the village contained permanent houses and clay ovens for making bread, fireplaces, basins, stoves and clay dolls. 3- Domesticating animals, especially goats, sheep and pigs, benefiting from their meat, cheese, skins and fat to make oils, and domesticating dogs. 4- The most important crops that he cultivated were wheat and barley, and later in other areas he cultivated lentils, flax and legumes. 5- In the Stone Age, he learned fertilization and artificial irrigation. He cultivated large areas and had a surplus in production, which prompted him to make large-sized stores to store the surplus, noting that the stores had existed since the era of Hassouna, but they were small. He also learned trade and the barter system and the discovery of metals. Specialization in work and division of labor appeared, and other crafts and professions appeared. The pottery wheel, spinning and weaving discs, and seals were invented. 6- Wool and hair of sheep and goats and some plants such as flax were used to make clothes using spinning discs. 7- Many pottery vessels of different sizes and shapes were found, and they contained drawings, decorations, engravings, and colors of great precision, some of which were made by hand and others with a pottery wheel. Tools and machines were made of copper. 8- Moving to the south and the emergence of large cities, carrying out irrigation projects, and the emergence of the first systems of government. 9- A change and development occurred in the human mind, benefiting from the natural environment and the wealth it contains that could serve him as a result of the development of social, cultural and economic life. 10- Plant cultivation and domestication were coupled with animal husbandry and domestication, as both complement each other in terms of benefit. Because of them, other crafts and professions emerged, including the manufacture of tools and machines, pottery and weaving. Trade also flourished as a result of an increase in the surplus and the increase in labor. 11- Learning how to extract oils and methods of obtaining them from plants and animals which was of great importance because it had multiple uses, especially in cooking, and the demand for it increased in trade. 12- Plant and animal wealth played an important role in its prosperity and economic recovery, as it represented the backbone of the economy of Mesopotamia. 13- Our information about animals and plants came from cuneiform texts and seals that show scenes of hunting animals, scenes of grazing sheep, scenes of ears of wheat and plants, and from murals on the walls of palaces, scenes of barns designated for raising animals, scenes of relief and three-dimensional sculptures that show domesticated domesticated animals, and scenes of hunting predatory animals. (shrink)

The Natural Problems, attributed to Aristotle, have gained much scholarly attention in the last decades, yet a systematic study of how the collection circulated in the Graeco-Roman Empire remains a blind spot in contemporary scholarship. Indeed, the Imperial Era is a seminal period for the history of the text, not just as a conduit between Aristotle and the Middle Ages – which in itself is essential for explaining the subsequent Arabic and Latin uptake of the Problems more clearly – (...) but also for the wealth of sources and testimonies it offers about the collection’s ancient readership and concrete use. The evidence shows that the collection sparked much debate among a range of ancient philosophers, doctors, sophists and scholars, both Greeks and Romans. This paper provides a selection of readings representative of the different socio-intellectual milieus in which the Problems circulated and the different agendas that it served. (shrink)

The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing (...) curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations. We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Peter the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology. "Rich in detail, lucid explanation, telling anecdotes, and fascinating characters.... Asma has rendered a fascinating and credible account of how natural history museums are conceived and presented. It's the kind of book that will not only engage a wide and diverse readership, but it should, best of all, send them flocking to see how we look at nature and ourselves in those fabulous legacies of the curiosity cabinet."--The Boston Herald. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers generally accept the claim that εὐδαιμονία is within our power to achieve, regardless of circumstance. Conversely, external goods - physical health, education, social standing - are frequently present or absent due to circumstances beyond our control. Can eudaimonism explain how more than a privileged elite can attain εὐδαιμονία when so few enjoy the requisite external goods? <BR> A satisfactory account of the relation between external goods and well-being must accommodate both the insight that there is an essential (...) connection between prosperity and the flourishing life and that there is a real sense in which εὐδαιμονία is a self-sufficient concept. The -applied intellectualist- interpretation of eudaimonism defended here accommodates important insights of several ancient Greek traditions: Aristotle's account of human nature, specifically the role of external goods as necessary preconditions for leading a human life; Socratic and Stoic analysis that external goods are necessary constituents of moral action; and Plato's commitment to a criterion for judging the compatibility of external prosperity with a life of εὐδαιμονία. <BR> This text provides a comprehensive linguistic and ethical analysis of key terms and arguments across several centuries of ancient Greek ethical thought on this fascinating topic, making it an excellent foundation for an upper-division undergraduate seminar in ancient Greek ethics, virtue ethics, or applied ethics.". (shrink)

The Epicureans advocate a moderately ascetic lifestyle on instrumental grounds, as the most effective means to securing tranquility. The virtuous person will reduce his desires to what is natural and necessary in order to avoid the trouble and anxiety caused by excessive desire. So much is clear from Epicurus' general ethics. But the later Epicurean Philodemus fills in far more detail about the attitude a wise Epicurean will take toward wealth in his treatise On Property Management. This paper (...) explores some of Philodemus' distinctive doctrines and argues that Philodemus' position on crafts is an improvement on the Socratic and Aristotelian positions that he is reacting against. Philodemus rejects both constraints on what counts as a genuine craft proposed by Socrates in the Gorgias: that a craft aims at a genuine good, and that it is based on a grasp of the nature of its subject. Philodemus also rejects the attempts of Xenophon and Theophrastus to preserve an important place for the craft of property management, conceived of as aiming at maximizing your wealth, within the Socratic and Aristotelian ethical tradition that puts virtue and virtuous activity at the center of the happy life. According to Philodemus, cultivating and exercising the traditional technê of property management is actually incompatible with being a virtuous person and obtaining happiness. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s ‘natural price’ has long been interpreted as a ‘normal price’ or ‘centre of gravitation price’ based on the famous gravitation metaphor of the Wealth of Nations I.vii, natural in the sense that it is the price that would … More ›.

Economic analysis identifies comparative, rather than absolute, advantage as the basis of international trade, a distinction first thought to have been clearly made by David Ricardo in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation . Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is thought to have failed to make this distinction, instead treating foreign trade principally as a “vent” for surplus domestic produce. However, Smith's underlying argument in favour of a “system of natural liberty” made his name synonymous with open (...) seas and free markets, and the economist most closely linked to free trade. This paper suggests that Smith advanced a rather more sophisticated analysis of the gains from trade than this textbook understanding would suggest, but that his line of reasoning has long been obscured by the long-established habit of reading Wealth of Nations as a work whose first two books contain the important analytical elements that the later books merely elaborate. It is demonstrated that Smith's analysis of the gains from trade derives from his discussion of capital, and that therefore a reader needs to begin at the end of Book II, and not with the principles of exchange outlined in Book I. (shrink)

During the 1870s animal morphologists and embryologists at Cambridge University came to dominate British zoology, quickly establishing an international reputation. Earlier accounts of the Cambridge school have portrayed this success as short-lived, and attributed the school's failure to a more general movement within the life sciences away from museum-based description, towards laboratory-based experiment. More recent work has shown that the shift in the life sciences to experimental work was locally contingent and highly varied, often drawing on and incorporating aspects of (...) museum work. Thus in order to understand the more general changes, studies of particular sites are needed. Here I examine the organisation of teaching at Cambridge, both in terms of the spaces in which it was taught and the ways in which teaching and examining were organised, to bring out the complexities of the 'revolt from morphology' and to show in more detail the institutional aspects that intertwined with intellectual change. Francis Maitland Balfour, as head of the Cambridge school, was able to make use of family connections and his own personal wealth to promote morphology. His successor lacked these resources, and one competition within the natural sciences at Cambridge intensified, morphology was unable to compete properly. (shrink)

The Stoic is often seen as the forerunner of Adam Smith’s market man of morals, but others have suggested that the sophist played a role in the formation of market morality and political economy. This article traces Smith’s treatment of ancient sophists and his use of the term sophistry in the Wealth of Nations. Smith praised ancient sophists for their effective didactic oratory and their ability to make money through teaching. Smith criticized arguments as sophistic when they promoted monetary (...) advantage for a few over and above the principle of competition. This varied reception of sophists and sophistry suggests a keen understanding of the rhetorical tradition and its capacity to influence the development of the discourse of political economy. Smith’s use of sophistry and reference to the sophists invites a deeper awareness of the essential vitality of effective argumentation for Smith’s “system of natural liberty. (shrink)

Definitions of human nature have preoccupied philosophers, politicians, anthropologists and social scientists for centuries. Our conceptions of ourselves - what we perceive to be 'human nature' - have taken many forms from the abstract to the biologically determined. In The Human Nature Debate, Harry Cowen describes the diversity of ideas about human nature and demonstrates the extent to which all such ideas are socially and politically grounded, reflecting the prevailing concerns and priorities of their times, from the classical Greek conceptions (...) of 'rational man' to the behaviourist explanations that did so much to bolster and justify fascism and Stalinism in the twentieth century. Cowen's admirably clear introduction to the history of ideas about human nature goes beyond the theorising to the ways in which concepts of human nature have both informed and reflected policy and practice. Drawing on a wealth of evidence and example, he demonstrates the political significance of the human nature debate, and looks at the vital interactions between theory and practice in the social sciences, social policy and social practice. (shrink)

Promoting Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) aims to increase the productive capacities of farmer households. Under FMNR, farmers select and manage natural regeneration on farmlands and keep them under production. While FMNR contributes to the wealth of farming communities, its contribution to household food security has rarely been researched. We, therefore, used a mixed-methods approach to address the research gap by measuring FMNR’s contribution to food security among farmer households in the Talensi district of Ghana. We adopted (...) the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) and Food Consumption Score (FCS) to estimate food security status among 243 FMNR farmer households and 243 non-FMNR farmer households. Also, we performed a Chi-square test of independence to compare the frequency of each food group (present vs not present) between FMNR adopters and non-FMNR adopters to establish the relationship between adopting FMNR and consuming the FCS and HDDS food groups. Our results reveal that FMNR farmer households are more food secure than non-FMNR farmer households. The HHDS of the FMNR farmer households was 9.6, which is higher than the target value of 9.1. Conversely, the HHDS of the non-FMNR farmer households was 4.3, which is lower than the target value of 9.1. Up to 86% and 37% of the FMNR farmer households and non-FMNR farmer households fell within acceptable FCS; 15% and 17% of FMNR farmer households and non-FMNR farmer households fell within borderline FCS. While none of the FMNR farmer households fell within poor FCS, 46% of non-FMNR farmer households fell within poor FCS. Adopting FMNR is significantly related to consuming all food groups promoted and benefiting from FMNR practices. The paper recommends enabling farmers in semi-arid environments to practice and invest in FMNR for long-term returns to food security. (shrink)

There is a question over whether or not Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), contended that the rich devise structures of authority (especially civil government) to protect their wealth. At issue is whether significant, private wealth can exist prior to forms of authority. Smith seems to me not to have thought so. It is true that he asserts that, "antecedent to any civil institutions", superiority of fortune can "give some men superiority over the greater part (...) of their brethren" (p.670). However, I argue that there is strong reason not to take the word "antecedent" here in a temporal sense. In numerous and important examples Smith depicts the relationship between wealth and authority as non-empirical (or at least not simply empirical). This connection flows naturally from Smith's epoch-making redefinition of wealth as the productive capacity which a society can command within its given social and political framework. Appreciating this point leads one to see Smith as developing an early form of historical materialism. (shrink)

This essay explores how economic theory and historical inquiry were brought together for one of the first times in modern political thought in Books II and III of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It shows how the theory of capital found in Book II provides a perspective for thinking about historical development and political institutions that is in sharp contrast with the historical record traced out in Book III. Smith's solution to the problem of reconciling economic theory and history (...) lies in a complex understanding of the nature of rational economic behaviour and how it has been affected by uncertainty and institutional development in human history. Embedded in Smith's political economy is not only a new theory of economic life, but a new political understanding of the importance of history to contemporary political life. (shrink)

To address climate change fairly, many conflicting claims over natural resources must be balanced against one another. This has long been obvious in the case of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas sinks including the atmosphere and forests; but it is ever more apparent that responses to climate change also threaten to spur new competition over land and extractive resources. This makes climate change an instance of a broader, more enduring and - for many - all too familiar problem: the (...) problem of human conflict over how the natural world should be cared for, protected, shared, used, and managed. -/- This work develops a new theory of global egalitarianism concerning natural resources, rejecting both permanent sovereignty and equal division, which is then used to examine the problem of climate change. It formulates principles of resource right designed to protect the ability of all human beings to satisfy their basic needs as members of self-determining political communities, where it is understood that the genuine exercise of collective self-determination is not possible from a position of significant disadvantage in global wealth and power relations. These principles are used to address the question of where to set the ceiling on future greenhouse gas emissions and how to share the resulting emissions budget, in the face of conflicting claims to fossil fuels, climate sinks, and land. It is also used to defend an unorthodox understanding of responsibility for climate change as a problem of global justice, based on its provenance in historical injustice concerning natural resources. (shrink)

Philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who worked within the tradition of modern natural law became interested in political economy in part as they attempted to reconcile two conflicting images of economic activity. On the one hand, from the legal point of view economic activity was understood as a morally neutral and benign activity that could be regulated by simple and clear rules of justice. On the other hand, it was seen as a realm of political struggle, manipulation, (...) deceit and the exercise of hidden forms of domination. This article examines the legal and moral contexts of Adam Smith's excursion into political economy by interpreting the roles played by these two images of the market in the theory of value articulated in book I of The Wealth of Nations. (shrink)

From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both (...) human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle.Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members.Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things. (shrink)

Beyond Fukuyama. Where do we stand today? Gerald A. Cohen enumerated the four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class: it constitutes the majority of society; it produces the wealth of society; it consists of the exploited members of society; its members are the needy people in society. When these four features are combined, they generate two further features: the working class has nothing to lose from revolution; it can and will engage in a revolutionary transformation (...) of society. None of the first four features applies to today's working class, which is why features and cannot be generated. that open up the site of resistance. (shrink)

"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological (...) life, evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress. Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces -- themselves technologies -- that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms -- it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. (shrink)

Among scholars of ancient economic thought, it is widely recognized that Aristotle established an upper limit to money-making. This “natural limit” has been variously construed, with some claiming that it might be settled independently of Aristotle’s ethical theory. This paper defends the opposite thesis: Aristotle’s natural limit is inextricably tied to his account of human flourishing. It also argues that Aristotle precludes the wealth-seeking path as coincident with a flourishing life. Why? For Aristotle, money-making as an end (...) in itself is endemic to the life of pleasure, not the good life. Moreover, the unchecked pursuit of ever more money is likely to crowd out other intrinsically valuable goods, such as friendship, agency, and autonomy. Finally, from the standpoint of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, wealth acquisition beyond the natural limit is considered to be a vice, not a virtue. (shrink)

`the state of men without civil society is nothing else but a mere war of all against all.' Thomas Hobbes was the first great philosopher to write in English. His account of the human condition, first developed in The Elements of Law, which comprises Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, is a direct product of the intellectural and political strife of the seventeenth century. It is also a remarkably penetrating look at human nature, and a permanently relevant analysis of the (...) fears of self-seeking that result in the war of `each against every man'. In The Elements of Law Hobbes memorably sets out both the main lines of his general philosophy, later augmented in De Corpore, and the moral and political philosophy later made famous in Leviathan. Copies of Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, until 1889 printed as separate works, are rare antiques or scarcely less rare scholarly texts; this is the first complete popular edition. It is here supplemented by chapters from De Corpore and Three Lives, two from Hobbes's original Latin. These have never before been published together in English. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Many countries around the world embrace freedom and democracy as part of their political culture. However, culture is at least in part a human response to the ecological challenges that a society faces; hence, it should not be surprising that the degree to which societies regulate the level of individual freedom is related to environmental circumstances. Previous research suggests that levels of societal freedom across countries are systematically related to three types of ecological threats: prevalence of pathogens, climate challenges, and (...) natural disaster threat. Though their incidence overlaps, the literature has not yet provided a competitive test. Drawing upon the ecocultural framework, we tested five rival hypotheses, alternately focused on the above ecological factors and their interactions with economic wealth in explaining country variations in socio-political freedom. Focusing on data from 150 countries, we performed a series of linear mixed-effects regressions predicting freedom in the domains of politics, media, and economy. We found that countries with higher pathogen prevalence were more likely to suppress democracy and media freedom. Economic wealth, however, moderated the effect of pathogen prevalence on economic freedom, with the main effect being only found among wealthy countries, but not among poor countries. In contrast, natural disaster threat predicted political freedom and press freedom only among poor countries, consistent with the idea that disaster threat accompanied by poor resources promote socio-political freedom as a means of increasing collective survival. Throughout our analyses, we found no support for hypotheses based on climatic challenges. In addition, our multilevel approach revealed that country scores for socio-political freedom were highly clustered within world regions, accounting for substantial portions of variance. Overall, the present research offers a nuanced view of the interplay between ecology and wealth in the emergence of socio-political freedom. We discuss new directions in future research considering methodological and theoretical contributions of the present findings. (shrink)

This book is the first extended attempt to explain Plato's ethics of natural law, to place it accurately in the history of moral theory, and to defend it against the objections that it is totalitarian. Wild provides a clarification of Plato's ethical doctrine and a defense of that doctrine based not only of his analysis of the dialogues but on the belief that Plato must acknowledged as the founder of the Western tradition of the philosophy of natural law. (...) The book begins with a presentation of the major objections raised against Plato by modern authors, Toynbee, Karl Popper and others, who have condemned the so called totalitarianism of Plato's thought. Wild answers these objections point by point and with a wealth of evidence taken from Plato's own arguments. He then presents a historical study of the ethics of natural law, defining the theory and showing through an examination of relevant dialogues that Plato held such a theory. The work concludes with a systematic study of his realistic ethics and its bearing on contemporary problems. This is a reprint of the 1953 Chicago edition. (shrink)

Because of an error in calculation of coefficients reported in the article “Sex Differences in the Association of Family and Personal Income and Wealth with Fertility in the United States”.