BRLSI 8th July 2015
Dr Chris Brooke, Historian, Department of Politics and
International Studies (POLIS), University of Cambridge
Notes by William Gaskell
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712 and moved soon to Paris
after his mother died when he was very young and was then educated with books.
Eventually he was a secretary to the Ambassador of France in Venice in
1743-1744.
He was famously friends with the French philosopher Diderot.
He then wrote and published a famous essay that became popular and started many
further conversations by correspondence with people writing to him to respond
to his essay and him then spending much of his time responding to those
letters.
His idea stated in The
Social Contract that values were the causes of people becoming very bad
deriving from the Biblical theology of the Original Sin. After publishing this
essay he was then forced in to exile in 1762 in England.
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kircaldy, Scotland. He died
in 1790 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
He wrote the seminal piece The Wealth of Nations in 1776 after a European tour as a tutor of
an aristocrat.
Whilst in Paris he spoke to some “physiocrats”, philosophers
who were the leading economic thinkers of the day.
Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733)
He came to England with William of Orange when William took
the English throne as husband of Queen Mary.
Argued if people became too honest economy and society will
collapse.
·
Economic theory: We Need Vice!
“The Selfish Hypothesis”
Smith and Rousseau argued that humans are more complicated
than pure selfishness. Being human involves keeping up appearances so
appearances are important in gaining benefits from economic endeavours.
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Thought that monarchy and aristocracy are reliant on each
other – I think perhaps because of the Palace of Versailles culture in the
Kingdom of France at the time.
He wrote the subtitle of the Social Contract in Emile where
he neglects to talk about principles of political right which is what Rousseau
talks about in that essay.
Smith and Rousseau
never actually met but we think that there works are both still relevant today
because of the stereotypes outlined in their theories.
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