Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Chapter One The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe
- Chapter Two The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision
- Chapter Three The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation
- Chapter Four Against the Chinese Model: The Debate on Cultural Facts and Physiocratic Epistemology
- Chapter Five “Le superflu, chose très nécessaire”: Physiocracy and Its Discontents in the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate
- Chapter Six François Véron de Forbonnais and the Invention of Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Seven Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Forbonnais's ‘Est modus in Rebus’ Vision
- Chapter Eight Physiocrat Arithmetic versus Ratios: The Analytical Economics of Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin
- Chapter Nine Galiani: Grain and Governance
- Chapter Ten “Live and Die Proprietors and Free”: Morellet Dismantles the Dialogues and Defends the Radical Liberal Break
- Chapter Eleven “Is the Feeling of Humanity not More Sacred than The Right of Property?”: Diderot's Antiphysiocracy in His Apology of Abbé Galiani
- Chapter Twelve De facto Policies and Intellectual Agendas of an Eighteenth-Century Milanese Agricultural Academy: Physiocratic Resonances in the Società patriotica
- Chapter Thirteen Sensationism, Modern Natural Law and the “Science of Commerce” at the Heart of the Controversy between Mably and the Physiocrats
- Chapter Fourteen ‘One Must Make War on the Lunatics’: The Physiocrats’ Attacks on Linguet, the Iconoclast (1767–1775)
- Chapter Fifteen The Grain Question as the Social Question: Necker's Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Sixteen Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
- Chapter Seventeen Spain and the Economic Work of Jacques Accarias de Serionne
- Chapter Eighteen Captured by the Commercial Paradigm: Physiocracy Going Dutch
- Chapter Nineteen Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies
- Chapter Twenty No Way Back to Quesnay: Say's Opposition to Physiocracy
- Chapter Twenty-One “A Sublimely Stupid Idea”: Physiocracy in Italy from the Enlightenment to Fascism
- Chapter Twenty-Two Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
- Index
Chapter Twenty-Two - Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Chapter One The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe
- Chapter Two The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision
- Chapter Three The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation
- Chapter Four Against the Chinese Model: The Debate on Cultural Facts and Physiocratic Epistemology
- Chapter Five “Le superflu, chose très nécessaire”: Physiocracy and Its Discontents in the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate
- Chapter Six François Véron de Forbonnais and the Invention of Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Seven Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Forbonnais's ‘Est modus in Rebus’ Vision
- Chapter Eight Physiocrat Arithmetic versus Ratios: The Analytical Economics of Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin
- Chapter Nine Galiani: Grain and Governance
- Chapter Ten “Live and Die Proprietors and Free”: Morellet Dismantles the Dialogues and Defends the Radical Liberal Break
- Chapter Eleven “Is the Feeling of Humanity not More Sacred than The Right of Property?”: Diderot's Antiphysiocracy in His Apology of Abbé Galiani
- Chapter Twelve De facto Policies and Intellectual Agendas of an Eighteenth-Century Milanese Agricultural Academy: Physiocratic Resonances in the Società patriotica
- Chapter Thirteen Sensationism, Modern Natural Law and the “Science of Commerce” at the Heart of the Controversy between Mably and the Physiocrats
- Chapter Fourteen ‘One Must Make War on the Lunatics’: The Physiocrats’ Attacks on Linguet, the Iconoclast (1767–1775)
- Chapter Fifteen The Grain Question as the Social Question: Necker's Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Sixteen Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
- Chapter Seventeen Spain and the Economic Work of Jacques Accarias de Serionne
- Chapter Eighteen Captured by the Commercial Paradigm: Physiocracy Going Dutch
- Chapter Nineteen Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies
- Chapter Twenty No Way Back to Quesnay: Say's Opposition to Physiocracy
- Chapter Twenty-One “A Sublimely Stupid Idea”: Physiocracy in Italy from the Enlightenment to Fascism
- Chapter Twenty-Two Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
- Index
Summary
As we have seen, the economic turn deeply transformed the European world, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Scandinavian tundra, from the Andes to the Urals. It spawned a new consciousness, a kind of “economizing” of minds and practices. It was powerful enough even to inflect the Enlightenment, which too became increasingly economic. Rather than a passing or circumstantial swerve, the economic turn was in many ways irrevocable. The French Revolution grappled with its implications, the industrial revolution later embodied the finest and most worrisome of its promises. One of the lasting contributions of the economic turn was its didactic capacity and inspirational vocation: it stirred men to think and write about almost everything that mattered to people in society. The agenda was staggering in range and richness, and even Diderot marveled at the ways in which his own Encyclopedia had to adjust. Among the leading voices in the mapping out of the Economic Enlightenment were the well organized and extremely influential group of thinkers who appropriated the title of “économistes,” or Physiocrats, and a much looser constellation of economic writers, administrators and merchants—the alter-economists—who contested both the symbolic hegemony of the Physiocrats and their doctrine.
The great debates opposing Physiocrats and alter-economists during the economic turn posed some of the deepest and most abiding questions of the social and human sciences. Perhaps the inaugural question concerns the nature of society itself. This issue matters enormously to all the alter-economists. If they do not necessarily articulate a passage from the state of nature to society, their notion of transition bears a strong Hobbesian whiff that never vanishes. For if the resulting social order is less overtly turbulent than the state of nature, it remains obstinately fragile. This vulnerability, this brittleness is perhaps the major (de-)structuring force in their conception of the social.
The state of nature narrative is less telling for the Physiocrats, for whom the decisive idea is that only nature can found and sustain society. They focus on the solidity rather than the fragility of society: anterior to any form of social or political organization, natural law, if fully respected, must issue in the first of the many equilibria that mark Physiocratic equations of life.
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- The Economic TurnRecasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, pp. 735 - 748Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019