A short presentation of David Ricardo's Utilitarian connection. It is argued that his relationship with James Mill and Bentham was complex, related to specific issues and with a strong 'practical' dimension. It was more the relationship between partners in a battle for shared policy goals than a tutor-pupil relation

Cremaschi, Sergio Volodia Marcello

English

PhilPapers

479  RICARDO, DAVID (1772-1823)  David Ricardo was born in London to an affluent Jewish Portuguese-Italian-Dutch family.  After private education he went into business as a stock-jobber. Later, he became a “hearer” of the Unitarian minister Thomas Belsham, published a few papers on monetary policy, which provided the occasion for meeting James Mill and Thomas Robert Malthus, wrote a book on economic theory, and was elected to Parliament.  He died suddenly at a rather young age at his estate at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire. Ricardo’s is a tricky case in the history of Utilitarianism, since in Mill’s dreams he should have been in charge of the School’s economic branch, and the dream turned into legend in histories of Utilitarianism by Stephen (1876) and Halévy (1901-4). As a reaction, later historians of economic analysis, such as Schumpeter (1954) and Hollander (1979), tried hard to detect in Ricardo  a purely ‘scientific’ contribution free from philosophical considerations. Sraffa, the editor of Ricardo’s Works, shared the same attitude, but at least pointed at Ricardo’s acquaintance with natural science as a possible source of methodological inspiration. A partial return to Halévy’s position was staged by Hutchinson (1978, pp. 26-57)  (followed by Depoortère, 2008), even if with intentions opposite to Halévy.  Hutchinson sought to prove that more than a Benthamite, Ricardo was the follower of James Mill’s methodology and the protagonist of a   “scientific revolution” yielding a more abstract “economic science” than that offered by Smithian “political economy”.  One of Halévy’s myths is that Mill schooled Ricardo in Cartesian methodology by teaching him Dugald Stewart’s philosophy. Thanks to Sraffa we have abundant evidence now that Mill taught Ricardo party-politics and publishing policies but not “Method”.  Moreover, it is most unlikely  Mill  would have taught Ricardo both Stewart’s philosophy and Cartesianism, since Stewart was, no less than Hume and Adam Smith, an anti-Cartesian. As early as 1899, Patten suggested a more balanced picture,  while de Marchi has argued that it is “unlikely that James Mill tutored Ricardo in method” and contended that the relationship between Mill and Ricardo concerned political  matters not theory (1983, p. 175), a conclusion reached also by Hollander. Further, it  is as well to keep in mind that what constituted Utilitarianism in Ricardo’s day was not entirely clear, and many were prepared to accept utilitarian legal philosophy who rejected its moral and psychological postulates, and held back from its democratic conclusions. The following may be a few plausible conclusions on Ricardo’s ‘philosophy’.  Prior to his relationship  with Mill, Ricardo was exposed to Belsham’s philosophical ideas. Among these were arguments for a limited scepticism, according to which knowledge of essences and causal connections is impossible, with the implication  that law-like explanations were to be preferred to  causal explanations.  In addition, Ricardo opted  for simplification at the price of the lesser realism of hypotheses, and stressed the need for the explicit definition of terms. His ethical theory was a blend of intuitionist and consequentialist elements, matching psychological eudemonism with universal benevolence, and assuming the greatest happiness to be the goal for action.  On the other hand, after reading Mill’s History of British India, Ricardo raised objections  to the idea of utility as a mark of rational action and to the possibility of measuring and comparing the utility of different goals for action ( Works, vol. 7, p.242). Also his quest for an invariable measure of value (vol. 1, p.429; vol. 7, p.185) reflects misgivings about the Benthamite doctrine of utility.  Ricardo refers twice in his correspondence to the principle of utility.  In a letter to Francis Place in defence of 480  Malthus’s use of the words “right” and “law of nature”, he argued that these amounted roughly to “utility” or “the good of the whole”, and added: “I as well as you am a disciple of the Bentham and Mill school” (Works, vol. 9, p.52).  When writing  to Maria Edgeworth, he declared that he would have supported any policy encouraging cultivation of potatoes if he were convinced that this would be a remedy to famines, concluding that he would fight “till death in favor of the potatoe, for my motto, after Mr. Bentham, is ‘the greatest happiness to the greatest number”’(ibid., pp.238-9). Yet, it is as well to  reflect that in the former case  Ricardo was arguing that differences in theory between Benthamite Utilitarianism and Malthusian natural law was irrelevant in practice, and in the latter  his intention was to poke fun at Bentham and Mill.  Bibliography de Marchi, Neil B. “The Case for James Mill”, in Alfred W. Coats, ed., Methodological Controversy in Economics (London, 1983), pp.155-84.  Deporteère, Christophe. “On Ricardo’s Method: The Scottish connection considered”, History of Political Economy, 40 (2008): 73-110. Halévy, Elie. La formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vols., ed. M. Canto-Sperber (1901-4; Paris, 1995). Hollander, Samuel. The Economics of David Ricardo (Toronto, 1979). Hutchinson, Terence. On Revolutions and Progress in Economic Knowledge (Cambridge, 1988). Ricardo, David. The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols., ed. P. Sraffa, (Cambridge, 1951-73).  — Notes on Mr. Malthus’s ‘Measure of Value’, ed. P.L. Porta (Cambridge,1992).  Patten, Simon. The Development of English Thought, in Early Histories of Economic Thought, vol., 7, ed. R.E. Backhouse (1899; London, 2000). Schumpeter, Joseph A. History of Economic Analysis (1954; London, 1994). Stephen, Leslie. The English Utilitarians, 2 vols. (1876; Bristol, 1994).  Further Reading Belsham, Thomas. Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, and of Moral Philosophy (London, 1801). Cremaschi, Sergio. “Ricardo and the Utilitarians”, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 11 (2004): 377-404.   Sergio Cremaschi  See also  BENTHAM JEREMY; ECONOMICS; HALÉVY ELIE; MALTHUS THOMAS ROBERT; MILL JAMES; POLITICAL ECONOMY.  

Ricardo, David (1772-1823)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

PhilPapers