Ryan Patrick Hanley

Love is often seen by lovers as a concept that resists analysis—something we feel in our hearts, not something we think in our heads. Yet the very vastness and intensity of love render it impossible for us not to consider it philosophically, insofar as this vastness and intensity bring love into all spheres of our lives: ethical, political, spiritual, and physical. Love then is impossible for philosophers to ignore—which explains, at least in part, why love has been so central a concept of philosophical inquiry over the last several millennia, in the West and beyond. The aim of this volume is to bring to the fore, and thereby tell the story, of some of the most significant moments in the history of how philosophers have thought about love over the course of this period.

This chapter examines the ways in which three of the most prominent thinkers of the eighteenth century—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant—understood the process by which we come to appreciate, embrace and practice one of the crucial virtues for human flourishing: justice. It begins with an analysis of Rousseau’s specifically relational conception of justice. It then turns to Rousseau’s contemporary Smith and his definition of justice as a virtue of nonmalfeasance. The chapter concludes with an examination of Kant, whose anthropological understanding of the person and conception of our duties to others offer a nuanced understanding of our duty to become just which also synthesizes elements of both Rousseau’s and Smith’s positions.

Sympathy’s ubiquity in the eighteenth century is best traced to its unique status as a sophisticated philosophical response to the practical challenges of a shift from traditional and more intimate forms of community to new forms of social organization; sympathy in this sense emerged as a new and creative philosophical response to the practical problem of human connectedness in an increasingly disorienting world. In particular, sympathy emerged as an other-directed sentiment capable of sustaining the minimal social bonds needed to realize the new social order, and capable of so doing without requiring acceptance of the theistic foundations of Christian conceptions of love. The eighteenth-century theorists of sympathy not only cemented its shift from a principle primarily dedicated to explaining connections between substances to a principle dedicated to explaining connections between human individuals, but also gave birth to a novel concept intended to serve as a substitute for love.

This chapter provides an overview of the philosophy of Adam Smith by examining the place of history and the role of impartiality in his philosophy. A brief introduction to Smith and his writings is followed by discussions of impartiality and Smith’s engagement with the philosophical role of history and the historian. The section that follows focuses on Smith’s discussion of rights as providing a connection between his moral theory and history via the role of the impartial spectator. The chapter concludes with a brief description of Smith’s history of moral systems. Throughout the chapter tries to show unified philosophical commitments in Smith’s range of writings.

This paper examines three aspects of the treatment of the relationship of love to virtue in François Fénelon’s Telemachus. As one of the great French intellectual figures of the early eighteenth century, Fenelon was at first admired but then banished from the royal court. This was largely because of Telemachus, an imagined narrative of the prince’s search for his wandering father, Ulysses, during which he absorbs many moral and political lessons. The work was viewed as radical because of its stress on peace, austerity versus luxury, and an egalitarian ethical vision opposed to Louis XIV’s ruling creeds. But Telemachus above all considers the place of love in ethics and politics: first the potential conflicts necessitating a choice between love, especially eros, sexual love, and virtue; second, the work’s scheme for cultivating a different kind of love, the love of virtue; and third, its conceptual treatment of love as virtue.

Adam Smith treated the American colonial crisis as a case study that illustrates and further illuminates several of his core arguments in favor of commercial society. This essay examines his use of this case study, focusing on three elements. The first concerns economic policy and institutions, and specifically Smith’s treatment of the colonial crisis as an illustration of the pernicious effects of mercantilism and the beneficial effects of free trade. A second concerns moral theory, and specifically Smith’s treatment of the psychology of the colonial leaders as an illustration of the practical significance of the desire for respect and recognition of their “importance.” A third concerns political theory, and specifically Smith’s treatment of the efforts of the colonists to claim their place among the world’s nations as a key moment in the long transformative process that he believed would in time fundamentally reshape the global order.

This chapter chronicles the approaches to magnanimity taken by three key Enlightenment theorists, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Witherspoon. United in their concern to defend the modern relevance of magnanimity, these thinkers differed in how they approached two central questions: the standard by which magnanimity is measured, and the need to ensure that goodness and greatness coincide. Hume’s relative understanding of greatness of mind created problems which Smith sought to redress by introducing the concept of ‘absolute perfection’ as the touchstone for judgements about magnanimity and moral judgements more broadly. Against the apparent tension between magnanimity and Christian values, John Witherspoon set out to recover the virtue on specifically Christian terms. Taking Smith’s solution one step further, he identified the standard of absolute perfection with God, with merit conceived as conformity with God’s will and the desire for worldly honour displaced by a desire for worthiness of God’s esteem.

Fénelon may be the most neglected of all the major early modern philosophers. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet today even specialists rarely engage his work directly. This problem is particularly acute in the Anglophone world, for while Fénelon’s works have been published in several excellent modern French editions, only the smallest fraction of his vast and influential corpus has appeared in modern English translation. This volume aims to help remedy this by bringing to English-language audiences the first collection of his moral and political writings in translation. By so doing it hopes to make more widely available the riches of one of the leading voices of resistance to the absolutism of Louis XIV. Fénelon’s political thought will thus be of particular interest to students and scholars of French history, as well as to those today engaged in questions of political resistance and reform. But Fénelon’s reach also extends to fields well beyond politics and ethics. In the Enlightenment, Fénelon came to be celebrated not only as a humanitarian political reformer but also as a pioneering theorist of education, a prescient student of economics and international relations, and a key voice in contemporary philosophical debates—not to mention his fame as one of the seventeenth-century’s most preeminent theologians and spiritualists and masters of French prose. As such, his work will be of interest to students and scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and political science to economics, education, literature, French history, and religion.

Adam Smith is not generally considered a pioneering theorist of love. To the degree that scholars have attended to his treatment of love, they have tended to focus on his critical comments on love and sex in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This article, in contrast, focuses on Smith’s comparatively understudied treatment of love in the Lectures on Jurisprudence to argue that the lectures set forth a sophisticated theory of the ways in which the progressive development of social institutions contributed to the emergence of modern conceptions of love. Specifically, in focusing on three core elements of Smith’s treatment of domestic law—the evolution of the relations of husbands and wives, the evolution of the relations of parents and children, and the evolution of the relations of masters and slaves—it seeks to bring to light Smith’s understanding of how, through a better understanding of the processes driving the emergence and evolution of our social institutions, we can better understand how and why we today experience love in the way we do, as well as how and why our understanding of love differs from earlier understandings of love.

Pascal’s Pensées is often read as a work of religious apologetics. Yet the Pensées in fact deserves to be read philosophically, on the grounds that in the text Pascal develops a sophisticated, original, and philosophically-productive method. This method is grounded in the three discrete types of binaries in the Pensées. This essay examines Pascal’s uses of these three forms of binaries to make two points: first, the exegetical point that for all its seeming haphazardness, the Pensées is in fact organized around and grounded in a very specific methodology; and second, that this methodology, itself grounded in the use of binaries, is philosophically productive in specific ways that serve to advance Pascal’s project.

This volume chronicles the philosophical evolution of the concept of love, with each chapter providing an introduction to a discrete turning point in this evolutionary history. But it also aims to tell an interconnected story about the larger arc of this evolution, one focused on how the concepts of love bequeathed to us by ancient philosophical and religious traditions were transformed by later philosophers who operated under different conceptions of love's meaning and horizons. Specifically, where the traditional concepts of love tended to focus on love's relationship to the transcendent, more modern concepts of love have tended to focus on its relationship to the immanent. To this end, the volume is organized into three sections. The chapters of the first group examine ancient philosophical and religious ways of thinking about love, including those found in Judaic, Christian, Greek and Islamic religious and philosophical traditions. The second group examines the ways in which thinkers from the medieval period through the late enlightenment conceived of love. The final group examines the history of the concept of love from the beginning of the revolution inaugurated by romanticism through the mid-twentieth century, calling particular attention to the ways in which the concept of love came to be more explicitly and exclusively associated with sexual desire, and ever more distanced from certain more expansive traditional concepts.

Thanks to several recent studies, we now understand better than ever the place that virtue has in Smith’s larger economic and political system, the sources on which he drew in developing his theory of virtue, and the ways in which his theory of virtue can contribute to illuminating various debates in contemporary ethical theory. In what follows I touch on each of these themes. My principal goal, however, is to provide a reconstruction of the essential elements of Smith’s theory of virtue in a manner that might be of use to those working on each of these fronts, as well as others.

Scholars of eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy today tend to agree that Adam Smith, while deeply indebted to Hume, was also engaged in a comprehensive and creative transformation and extension of certain of Hume’s fundamental concepts. But what exactly did Smith take from Hume, and precisely how did he transform these concepts? This chapter traces Smith’s appropriation and transformation along five fronts: sympathy and humanity, justice and utility, judgment and impartiality, virtue and commercial society, and epistemology and religion. In so doing, it aims to provide a synthetic account of previous scholarship on the Hume–Smith relationship and to supplement these accounts with an examination of several further points of contact that have yet to receive significant attention.

Adam Smith has long been regarded as a champion of sympathy. More recently he has also been regarded as a critic of love. But how do these two sides of his thought cohere? This article argues that Smith’s defense of sympathy emerges directly out of and is indeed decisively shaped by his critique of love. Yet seeing this requires reconsidering what Smith understood love to be, as well as what he understood sympathy to be. What follows thus offers a reexamination of Smith’s well-known treatment of eros alongside an examination of his underappreciated treatment of agape in order to argue for the claim that Smith’s theory of love is not simply a critique of eros for its particularity but also incorporates an appreciation of the attractions of the universality of agape. At the same time Smith ultimately judges agape insufficient as a remedy for eros, for however admirable its scope and ambitions may be, the realization of its ambitions, Smith thinks, is compromised by our natural epistemic limits. It is this recognition, I want to argue – and not his reservations towards eros alone – that leads Smith to regard sympathy as a central principle of motivation, and to embrace it as the best available means of replicating the practical benefits of universal charity within the confines of our epistemic limits.

The essential guide to the life, thought, and legacy of Adam Smith Adam Smith (1723–90) is perhaps best known as one of the first champions of the free market and is widely regarded as the founding father of capitalism. From his ideas about the promise and pitfalls of globalization to his steadfast belief in the preservation of human dignity, his work is as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth century. Here, Ryan Hanley brings together some of the world's finest scholars from across a variety of disciplines to offer new perspectives on Smith's life, thought, and enduring legacy. Contributors provide succinct and accessible discussions of Smith's landmark works and the historical context in which he wrote them, the core concepts of Smith's social vision, and the lasting impact of Smith's ideas in both academia and the broader world. They reveal other sides of Smith beyond the familiar portrayal of him as the author of the invisible hand, emphasizing his deep interests in such fields as rhetoric, ethics, and jurisprudence. Smith emerges not just as a champion of free markets but also as a thinker whose unique perspective encompasses broader commitments to virtue, justice, equality, and freedom. An essential introduction to Adam Smith's life and work, this incisive and thought-provoking book features contributions from leading figures such as Nicholas Phillipson, Amartya Sen, and John C. Bogle. It demonstrates how Smith's timeless insights speak to contemporary concerns such as growth in the developing world and the future of free trade, and how his influence extends to fields ranging from literature and philosophy to religion and law.

Fénelon may be the most neglected of all the major early modern philosophers. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet today even specialists rarely engage his work directly. This problem is particularly acute in the Anglophone world, for while Fénelon's works have been published in several excellent modern French editions, only the smallest fraction of his vast and influential corpus has appeared in modern English translation. This volume aims to help remedy this by bringing to English-language audiences the first collection of his moral and political writings in translation. By so doing it hopes to make more widely available the riches of one of the leading voices of resistance to the absolutism of Louis XIV. Fénelon's political thought will thus be of particular interest to students and scholars of French history, as well as to those today engaged in questions of political resistance and reform. But Fénelon's reach also extends to fields well beyond politics and ethics. In the Enlightenment, Fénelon came to be celebrated not only as a humanitarian political reformer but also as a pioneering theorist of education, a prescient student of economics and international relations, and a key voice in contemporary philosophical debates-not to mention his fame as one of the seventeenth-century's most preeminent theologians and spiritualists and masters of French prose. As such, his work will be of interest to students and scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and political science to economics, education, literature, French history, and religion.

"Fénelon is arguably the most neglected of all the major philosophers of early modernity. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet to now we have lacked a single interpretive monograph in English devoted specifically to his thought. This monograph aims to correct this by providing the first such book-length study. In focusing specifically on Fénelon's political thought, it has three primary aims. The first is to provide a reconstruction of Fénelon's political ideas accessible to those who might be encountering Fénelon directly or at length for the first time. The second is to demonstrate the connections between Fénelon's political thought and several other fields to which he made significant and long-recognized contributions, including not only philosophy and political science but also economics, education, literature, theology, and spirituality. Third, the book aims to cut several new edges in our extant understanding and appreciation of Fénelon's political thought and its significance. On this front, it specifically argues that Fénelon is better understood as a moderate and modern thinker rather than as a radical or reactionary, and that Fénelon deserves to be seen not merely as a political thinker but as a political philosopher. Finally, The Political Philosophy of Fénelon argues for Fénelon's relevance to our political world today. Fénelon was a nuanced and insightful diagnostician of ills from egocentrism and social atomism to authoritarianism and imperialism, and our understanding of these phenomena so familiar to us today can benefit from attending to his insights"--

ABSTRACT David Hume and Adam Smith are often regarded as preeminent contributors to the eighteenth-century Scottish ‘science of man.’ For our understanding of Hume’s and Smith’s contributions to this project, scholars today are especially indebted to Nicholas Phillipson, who influentially and persuasively demonstrated how the science of man that they developed sought to account for social progress as the result of man’s natural love of improvement in the face of conditions of indigence and want. Yet Phillipson’s work also helps us see the ways in which the Scottish science of man sought to account for man’s moral development as well as our material development, and specifically the ways in which individual human beings come to develop virtue. This contribution thus extends Phillipson’s pioneering insights into the methodology of the Scottish science of man to show how Smith conceived of the love of improvement not only as the engine driving society towards civilization and opulence, but also as an important element in the ethical development of the individual.

Martha Nussbaum's latest book is a lucid and accessible study of a concept with clear contemporary relevance. In an age of resurgent nationalism, a study of the idea and ideals of cosmopolitanism is remarkably timely. But this is hardly a mere tract for the times; as its acknowledgments note, parts of the book date back to 2000. And ultimately, for all its timeliness, this is a scholarly rather than a popular study of "the long tradition of cosmopolitan political thought" and the ways this tradition can help inform current debates in political philosophy.Nussbaum's book is organized into seven chapters. The first lays out the core idea of the cosmopolitan tradition: the Cynic/Stoic insight "that politics...