Adam Smith's Colonial Thought on South America

More attention needs to be given to Adam Smith's view of South America. Although scholars have elucidated Smith's view of colonization, these studies have not fully clarified how Smith was influenced by the depiction of societies in South America from travel books. Though he read travel books on South America, Smith does not necessarily follow their original description of the societies found there. Instead, he sometimes distorted the original in consideration of the effects of colonization. To evaluate the impact of colonization, he supposed that societies in South America were not civilized, so colonized societies could be seen as part of the process of civilization. However, he did not belittle precolonial societies. He emphasized the moral quality of the so-called savage people. As I argue in this paper, he had at least two criteria in evaluating society. In addition to economic development, Smith also recognized moral degradation as part of social development. Smith evaluated societies according not only to their degree of economic growth but also to that of moral quality. While he saw civilization as prospering, he thought of it as morally degraded. Smith, as a moralist, was concerned about the moral consequences of civilization. Its processes for Smith denote both progress and degradation.Les positions d'Adam Smith vis-à-vis de l'Amérique du Sud méritent attention. Nonobstant les nombreux travaux sur les écrits de Smith sur la colonisation, l'influence des récits de voyage sur sa pensée demande clarification. Il est en effet intéressant de noter que Smith n'a pas nécessairement suivi la description des sociétés indigènes qu'il a pu lire dans les récits de voyage qu'il a pu consulter. Bien au contraire, il a parfois déformé les récits originaux pour les adapter aux effets de la colonisation. En effet, pour évaluer ses effets, Smith part du présupposé que les sociétés d'Amérique du Sud n'étaient pas civilisées. Ainsi, les sociétés colonisées peuvent être considérées comme faisant partie du processus de civilisation. Cependant, il ne dévalorise pas les sociétés précoloniales, soulignant la qualité morale des peuples dits sauvages. Dans cet article, je propose d'explorer les deux critères dont il disposait pour évaluer toute société. Outre le développement économique, Smith identifiait également la dégradation morale comme faisant partie du développement social. Ceci signifie que s'il considérait une civilisation comme prospère, il s'en suivait que la société était moralement dégradée. En tant que moraliste, Smith se préoccupe des conséquences morales de la civilisation dont les processus sont à la fois synonymes de progrès et de dégradation

Bringing Marxism Back In? : On Colonial Capitalism and Liberalism

書評企画１：Ince, Onur Ulas (2018) Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University PressFeature Essays 1: Ince, Onur Ulas (2018) Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Pres

Is the regularity of human behavior based on determinism? : an inquiry into an assumption of the foundation of economics in Adam Smith

論説Article

Bolingbroke and his Agnostic-Rational View of the World Searching for the Religious Foundation of the Enlightenment

This essay attempts to identify and illuminate one of the religious bases of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers assumed that the secular world was governed by rational laws and rules, which could be understood by the use of reason. They sought to identify the laws of the physical and moral world through experience and reason. However, this empiricism alone does not logically need to lead to another assumption, that is, the idea of the rationality of the world. The latter assumption has many origins. Here, I would like to concentrate on one of them, that is, the transformation of deism. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries deists assumed that the world was rational, an aspect that the Enlightenment thinkers agreed with. In addition, the deists were very eager to prove the existence of God, a goal that the Enlightenment thinkers did not, by and large, agree with. Thus, the Enlightenment thinkers presupposed an agnostic-rational view of the world that depended greatly on the ideas of deism but with which the deists themselves could not agree. For this situation to arise, it seems that the Enlightenment must have necessarily been preceded by the transformation of deism, or some part of it, into an agnostic philosophy. I will consider this aspect with reference to the work of Bolingbroke

Adam Smith’s marginalia

Article特集 : The Dissemination of Adam Smith’s Ideas to the East Asi

Adam Smith on the cyclicity of the rise and fall of civilization

As a historical framework, Adam Smith used the four-stages theory of social development, which was included in a broader one, namely, the history of civilization. First, in narrating history, Smith criticized the perspective of the historical cycle of the rise and fall of civilization adopted by Machiavelli and other writers. On that occasion, he inquired into the unique mechanism and development of the modern European civilization through comparing it with the ancient classical civilization and the uncivilized feudal past. Furthermore, Smith attributed the unique mechanism of the modern civilization to some important aspects of it: the invention of fire-arms (the military revolution), the production system based on the division of labor without slavery, and the establishment of absolute power. For Smith, the system of natural liberty suited modern civilization in which many governments were not republican. However, he regarded republican self-government as indicating the progress of society. In the long run, Smith recognized the contradictions and ambivalence in the modern civilization

Preface

Preface特集 : The Dissemination of Adam Smith’s Ideas to the East Asi