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The Homo Oeonomicus, Merchant Ethos, and Liberalism in Spain Under Enlightened Absolutism

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The Honorable Merchant – Between Modesty and Risk-Taking

Part of the book series: Ethical Economy ((SEEP,volume 56))

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Abstract

The following article deals with the formation of economic discourse in eighteenth century Spain. It argues that concepts such as common welfare or honorable businessman supported the establishment of economic thinking in the context of Bourbon Reformism – the predominant political current throughout the eighteenth century. A particular instance of this development are the Discursos mercuriales de Juan Enrique Graef: While Graef ran into serious trouble with censorship, he was also the first economic journalist and founder of the genre of economic press in Spain. With the introduction of liberal thought by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and others, the concepts mentioned lost their prevalence, whereas the opposing notion of individual economic interest became an important reference point of economic thinking at the end of Enlightenment Spain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vogl (2012), p. 46. See also Vogl (2004), pp. 346–351.

  2. 2.

    Ibid.

  3. 3.

    Agamben (2013a).

  4. 4.

    It is revealing that Agamben (2013b) in his interview with the FAZ, which is frequently qualified, does not differentiate the conception of the economy, but rather allows it to exist as an antithesis of a culturally diverse and historically aware Europe: For more than two centuries, human energy has been focused on the economy. There are many indications that the moment has perhaps come for homo sapiens to reorganize human actions beyond this single dimension. It is precisely here that the Old Europe can make a decisive contribution to the future.”

  5. 5.

    On this point and the following, see Schoepp (2015).

  6. 6.

    Goytisolo (1979), p. 190.

  7. 7.

    In Américo Castro’s main work España en su historia (1938) the opening chapter contains a sketch of a tradition which can be described as non-economic. See specifically Castro (2001), p. 28, where a quote from Alonso Cartagena (1384–1456, Spanish humanist and Bishop of Burgos) is remarked on by Castro as follows: “El espíritu nobiliario unido al desdén por las actividades comerciales marcan ya el abismo que separará a España de la Europa capitalista: para este judío archiespañol, Cosme de Médicis no era sino un vil mercader.”

  8. 8.

    See Geisler (2013), p. 18f. Cf. the description of the economic development of Spain under Habsburg rule in Haebler (1888).

  9. 9.

    Cf. also the historical model in Hirschman (1980), in which, however, references to the Spanish cultural area are in short supply (cf. e.g. ibid., p. 67). See Max Weber ibid., p. 138. See also Pocock (1993), pp. 60–96.

  10. 10.

    Jovellanos (1987), p. 188. Predecessors here would not only be the Neo-Scholastics, but also the arbitristas, i.e. “project makers” of the seventeenth century, who have been wrongly forgotten, not least because of Quevedos satire in Buscón.

  11. 11.

    Vicens Vives (2 1974), p. 165.

  12. 12.

    See ibid., p. 164.

  13. 13.

    Elorza (1970), p. 34 (italics in the original).

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Uztáriz (3 1757), p. 1.

  16. 16.

    Campillo y Cossío (1789, p. 68f).

  17. 17.

    Uztáriz (3 1757), from the prologue, not paginated. The reference to the Fall of Man is not uncommon in the tradition of Spanish economic treatises. It can be found in Tomás de Mercado, cf. Geisler (2013), p. 47.

  18. 18.

    Uztáriz (3 1757, p. 1).

  19. 19.

    See Thomas von Aquinas (1954): “sicut et corpus hominis et cuiuslibet animalis defluenet, nisi esset aliqua vis regitiva communis in corpore, quae ad bonum commune omnium membrorum intenderet.” The Spanish tradition will come back to this, e.g. Pedro Fernández de Navarrete in his text Conservación de monarquías y discursos políticos (1626), see Geisler (2014), p. 61.

  20. 20.

    See Once again Thomas (1954): “Nam unus homo per se sufficienter vitam transigere non posset. Est igitur homini naturale quod in societate multorum vivat.”

  21. 21.

    Mensching (2007), p. 83.

  22. 22.

    See Geisler (2013), p. 35.

  23. 23.

    Vogl (6 2012), p. 117. Following Geisler (2013), p. 32, it is undoubtedly worth remembering that the Aristotelian subsistence economy within the oikos was largely based on slave labor, which, for its part, was not subject to any appreciation or value creation. On the other hand, this ideology-critical view leaves out the form in which the Aristotelian distinction between regular economy and crematism is shaped by a cultural viewpoint, in which the anthropological primacy of the political community is inescapable and, moreover, is embedded in a specific form of the ancient cyclical conception of time (see Vogl, p. 122f.).

  24. 24.

    See Geisler (2013), p. 37.

  25. 25.

    See Geisler (2014), p. 62ff.

  26. 26.

    Weber (3 2010), p. 185.

  27. 27.

    Mercado (1977), not paginated [chapter VII]. See Geisler (2013), p. 45. According to this, Mercado’s significance lies in the renunciation of the scholastic doctrine of “fair price,” but above all in the knowledge that wealth is created by investing in goods. Mercado thus goes beyond the idea of a mere subsistence economy (cf. ibid.). In all this, it cannot be overlooked that Mercado’s entire treatise is permeated by the maxims of Christian natural law, which play a central role in his arguments.

  28. 28.

    See Geisler (2013), p. 53–70.

  29. 29.

    See Sánchez-Blanco (1990), Witthaus (2014), pp. 265–316.

  30. 30.

    Graef (1996), p. 191.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 213.

  32. 32.

    See ibid., p. 206.

  33. 33.

    For a similar conception in Jacques Savary, see the contribution of Christoph Strosetzki in this volume.

  34. 34.

    For similar conceptions in France, see the work of Gipper (2002), especially with regard to Abbé Pluche: pp. 244–258.

  35. 35.

    Graef (1996), p. 191.

  36. 36.

    See Isidore of Seville (1911), not paginated: V, 4: “ut viri et feminae coniunctio, liberorum sucessio et educatio, communis omnium possessio, et omnium una libertas, adquisitio eorum quae caelo, terra, marique capiuntur.”

  37. 37.

    Graef (1996, p. 207). The skeptical use of the term “los intereses” may also be attributed to the traditional meaning of interés as monetary interest.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., P. 203f. (in italics in the text).

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 202.

  41. 41.

    See Machiavelli (1986), p. 136: “Non può, pertanto, uno signore prudente, né debbe, osservare la fede, quando tale osservianza li tornio contro e che sono spente le cagioni che la feciono promettere.”

  42. 42.

    Graef (1996), p. 205.

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Recourse to the Jesuit Father Pedro de Ribadeneira. See Maravall (2001), p. 58.

  45. 45.

    See Heckscher (1932), Vol. 2, pp. 3–20.

  46. 46.

    On “policey in Spain, see Witthaus (2011), pp. 213–219.

  47. 47.

    The discussion concerning the true author of Nuevo sistema (see also Navarro García 1983), to which is linked a further discussion about the supposed plagiarism of the text by Bernado Ward in his Proyecto económico (the American part of Ward is largely identical to the Nuevo sistema) is rather enigmatic for our purposes. Incidentally, in my view the topic of the “policey” in Nuevo sistema suggests a later transcript, presumably at a time when Campillo was no longer alive. Therefore, there should be a lot of skepticism about whether Campillo is the real author of the Nuevo sistema.

  48. 48.

    See Bernecker (2002), p. 88f.

  49. 49.

    Campillo y Cossío (1789), S. 3.

  50. 50.

    See Campillo y Cossío (1789), p. 89–93. In Ward (1779), p. 257, this section – again, whose wording is almost identical – is entitled “Sobre los Indios.”

  51. 51.

    Ibid., p. 131.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., p. 134f.

  53. 53.

    Hirschman (1980), p. 20 and passim.

  54. 54.

    It thus seems apparent that an investigation of the discourses on affects and interests within the framework of the policey is still missing.

  55. 55.

    Campillo y Cossío (1789), p. 150.

  56. 56.

    In reference to the scientific-political domain of the Bourbons, see Lafuente and Peset (1988), pp. 29–79.

  57. 57.

    See Cladera (1787), pp. 458–461, 475–479. For a comparison to the French original, see Lüsebrink and Mussard (1994), pp. 71–95.

  58. 58.

    Cladera (1788), p. 865.

  59. 59.

    See Elorza (1970), p. 131f.

  60. 60.

    Locke, however, derives these rights from the Decalogue, which in turn has a natural relationship to human reason. See Waldron (2002), p. 97.

  61. 61.

    Foronda is cited from the original source in Espíritu: Cladera (1788), p. 593.

  62. 62.

    Ibid. See 2. Corinthians 3:3.

  63. 63.

    See ibid., p. 565.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., p. 593f.

  65. 65.

    See Jovellanos (2 1998), p. 235.

  66. 66.

    Particularly if one compares this with a detailed examination of economic historical events from the third book of Wealth of Nations.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., p. 243. It is possible that Jovellanos is responding here to Rousseau, where in the second discourse the self-preservation instinct qua amour de soi plays a central role in the state of nature, even though the civilizational process is viewed critically and as existing under the banner of self-love, amour-propre.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., p. 244f.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., p. 245.

  70. 70.

    Even if the architecture of this article – raison d’etat, policey, liberalism – is owed to the sequence of government models in Foucault (2004), in the last section the peculiarity of the Spanish development should nevertheless be more strongly outlined.

  71. 71.

    See Urban (2014).

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  1. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Jan-Henrik Witthaus

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  1. Chair of Business Ethics, Technical University of Munich, München, Bayern, Germany

    Christoph Lütge

  2. Romanisches Seminar, Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

    Christoph Strosetzki

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Witthaus, JH. (2019). The Homo Oeonomicus, Merchant Ethos, and Liberalism in Spain Under Enlightened Absolutism. In: Lütge, C., Strosetzki, C. (eds) The Honorable Merchant – Between Modesty and Risk-Taking. Ethical Economy, vol 56. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04351-3_9

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