Human Interest

Usury from Luther to Bentham

Bibliographic Data

ID2353271
AuthorsA Bradley (0000-0003-1017-1076, Lancaster University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume42
Issue7-8
Pages17-32
Publication date2023-11-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02632764231203559
OpenAlexW3128782388
LanguageEN
References cited17

This article revisits a set of classic political, theological and economic scenes in the (early) modern debate on usury from Luther to Bentham. To summarize, I argue that this theory of usury - which polemically mobilizes counter-Aristotelian tropes of the breeding, reproduction and husbandry of money - might also be read as a theory of what Foucault famously calls pastoral power. If this debate nominally concerns the 'repeal' of the ancient prohibition against money-lending at interest, I argue that what is really at stake here is the pastoral production of a new theory of the subject as 'human interest': a self whose allegedly intrinsic self-interest expresses itself paradigmatically through financial interest. In conclusion, I situate this genealogy of human interest within the larger history of the self-interested, capitalist and indebted subject from Hirschman, through Foucault, to Lazzarato

Economics · Environmental ethics · Law and economics · Original sin · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Self-interest · Subject (documents · Theology · Usury · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Theology and Philosophy of Evil