The Opinion of Mankind

Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith

Bibliographic Data

ID19933727
AuthorsPaul Sagar (0000-0002-8076-7927, Ministry of Economy, corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages280
Publication date2018-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueOpinion of Mankind (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPrinceton University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1515/9781400889808
OpenAlexW2789221323
Open LibraryOL29367465M
ISBN9781400889808
LanguageEN
Citations received32

How David Hume and Adam Smith forged a new way of thinking about the modern stateWhat is the modern state? Conspicuously undertheorized in recent political theory, this question persistently animated the best minds of the Enlightenment. Recovering David Hume and Adam Smith's long-underappreciated contributions to the history of political thought, The Opinion of Mankind considers how, following Thomas Hobbes's epochal intervention in the mid-seventeenth century, subsequent thinkers grappled with explaining how the state came into being, what it fundamentally might be, and how it could claim rightful authority over those subject to its power. Hobbes has cast a long shadow over Western political thought, particularly regarding the theory of the state. This book shows how Hume and Smith, the two leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, forged an alternative way of thinking about the organization of modern politics. They did this in part by going back to the foundations: rejecting Hobbes's vision of human nature and his arguements about our capacity to form stable societies over time. In turn, this was harnessed to a deep reconceptualization of how to think philosophically about politics in a secular world. The result was an emphasis on the "opinion of mankind," the necessary psychological basis of all political organization. Demonstrating how Hume and Smith broke away from Hobbesian state theory, The Opinion of Mankind also suggests ways in which these thinkers might shape how we think about politics today, and in turn how we might construct better political theory

Adam smith · Economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Whitehead's Philosophy and Applications · 1723-1790 · adam Smith (1723-1790) · david Hume (1711-1776) · Political Science_Philosophy · Smith, Adam · thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

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