Category : 2 – 16th-18th Century

  • The Conflicting Orientations of the Early American Republic

    The Conflicting Orientations of the Early American Republic

    Is the economy a driving force behind democracy or its gravedigger? – Article 3 American independence and the adoption of the federal Constitution constitute two successive and distinct moments in the birth of the United States. From the resolutions of the First Continental Congress in 1774, through the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to the Constitution…

  • Modern Conceptions and Practices of Political Liberty and Equality

    Modern Conceptions and Practices of Political Liberty and Equality

    Is the economy a driving force behind democracy or its gravedigger? – Article 2 Political liberty and equality are the two cardinal principles of contemporary democracies. Their meaning may seem familiar, yet it is far from self-evident. Liberty may refer, among other things, to independence from domination, protection against arbitrary power, participation in collective government,…

  • How Interests and Values Rose and Virtue Declined (16th–18th Centuries)

    How Interests and Values Rose and Virtue Declined (16th–18th Centuries)

    In The Passions and the Interests (1977), the historian Albert O. Hirschman shows how, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept of interest established itself as the pivot of justificatory frameworks in political economy.1 His enquiry draws in particular on 17th-century moral philosophy, as well as on Montesquieu, Hume, and Smith. Building on those…

  • Interests as the driving forces of social recomposition in eighteenth-century Great Britain

    Interests as the driving forces of social recomposition in eighteenth-century Great Britain

    At the Origins of the Valorisation of the Economy (15th–19th Centuries) – Article 4 In eighteenth-century Great Britain, the word “interest” condenses heterogeneous realities that we now distinguish in order to avoid confusion. First, there is financial interest, an instrumental category and the primary one etymologically, which designates the temporal cost of a debt. It…

  • Wealth as a Political Principle: England, 17th–18th Centuries

    Wealth as a Political Principle: England, 17th–18th Centuries

    At the Origins of the Valorisation of the Economy (15th–19th Centuries) – Article 3 From the mid-16th to the 18th century, European power underwent a profound transformation. The strength of a state was no longer conceived only in terms of dynastic lineage, military glory, or defence of the true faith. Wealth ceased to be a…

  • Progress and Limits of Freedom of Thought in Europe from the 16th to the 18th Century

    Progress and Limits of Freedom of Thought in Europe from the 16th to the 18th Century

    Since the 19th century, Western intellectuals have studied the development of individualization, as opposed to the primacy of society over the individuals who compose it. Probably, the idealizations of the individual as well as the political tensions related to socialism and conservatism have contributed to favouring this angle of analysis. Here, we will focus on…