Abstract
The notion of ‘interest’ and its terminological derivatives have gained intellectual prominence in early modern Europe in two ways. First, by suggesting a more realistic conceptualization of human nature and human action; and second, by providing a conceptual basis for new forms of political, social and economic theory. The term interest was initially used for describing a particular type of behavior. Interest-driven acts were opposed to more virtuous deeds or drives, and the use of the word was embedded in a sceptical view of human affairs. Gradually, however, the term received both a more general and a more positive meaning. Despite its amoral connotations, interests came to be seen as a realistic basis for politics and as a more stable and reliable motive than the passions. The notion of interest thus provided an anthropological foundation upon which various political and social theories could be constructed.
Quoiqu’il soit vrai de dire que les hommes n’agissent jamais sans intérêt, on ne doit pas croire pour cela que tout soit corrumpu. Nicolas d’Ailly, Pensées diverses
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Notes
E. G. Hundert, The Enlightenment’s Fable. Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1.
For an overview see James S. Coleman and Thomas J. Farrao (eds.), Rational Choice Theory: Advocacy and Critique (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1992).
For critical assessments see Jane Mansbridge ed., Beyond Self-interest, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990
Robin M. Hogarth and Melvin W. Reder (eds.), Rational Choice: the Contrast Between Economics and Psychology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986).
For an interesting attempt to meet criticisms of rational choice theory while maintaining some of its basic assumptions see Abram de Swaan, ‘Rational Choice as Process” (Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, 1995) (papers in progress).
Milton L. Myers, The Soul of Modern Economic Man. Ideas of Self-interest, Thomas Hobbes to Adam Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). As the title of his book indicates, Myers’ perspective is not only an economic one, he has also limited his research to England, and his analysis is unsatisfactory for both reasons.
Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 248.
Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)
Hans-Jürgen Fuchs, Entfremdung und Nazissmus. Semantische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der “Selbstbezogenheit” als Vorgeschichte von französisch “amour-propre” (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1977).
For brief accounts of the conceptual history of the term, see especially Hans -Jürgen Fuchs, “Interesse,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Band 4. Herausgegeben von J. Ritter und K. Gründer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), pp. 480–485
Albert O. Hirschman, “The Concept of Interest: From Euphemism to Tautology,” in his Rival Views of Market Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 35–55.
Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State. The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), Translated by Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965).
See the remarks in Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 292.
See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
A. Enzo Baldini, ‘Botero et Lucinge’ in Yves Charles Zarka (ed.), Raison et déraison d’Etat. Théoriciens et théories de la raison d’Etat aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 67–99.
Yves Charles Zarka, ‘Raison d’Etat et figure du prince chez Botero’, in ed. Y. C. Zarka, Raison et déraison d’Etat (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 101–120.
This was a standard view during the sixteenth century. For an illuminating example see Montaigne, “De l’inconstance de nos actions” in Essais (II, 1). Edition de Maurice Rat (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1962), vol 1, pp. 365–372.
On the intellectual history of anthropology see Wilhelm Dithey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970)
Arthur O. Lovejoy, Reflections on Human Nature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961).
Quoted in Etienne Thuau, Raison d’Etat et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu, (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966,) p. 312.
J.A.W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 42.
Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: on the Theory of Liberal Democracy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 53.
Richard Tuck, “The ‘Modern’ Theory of Natural Law, in ed. A. Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 99–119.
Istvan Hont, “The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical foundations of the ‘Four-Stages Theory’” in ed. Anthony Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
Robert Wokler, “Rousseau’s Pufendorf: Natural Law and the Foundations of Commercial Society”, History of Political Thought 15 (1994), 373–402.
For a recent overview see Alexander Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth Century France (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977).
See René Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965); Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle (1948) (Paris: Gallimard, 1988).
Hume concluded that the Jesuits are the “tyrants of the people, and the slaves of the court,” whereas the Jansenists “preserve alive the small sparks of the love of liberty which are to be found in the French nation.” David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), p. 79.
Jean Mesnard, La culture du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), pp. 259–260.
W.F. Church, “The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660–1789,” French Historical Studies 5 (1967), 1–40.
P.O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 20–68.
In her important study, Nannerl Keohane distinguishes three currents of thought: absolutism, constitutionalism and individualism. Most moralists are labelled “individualists” and are thought to be mainly preoccupied with “private moralities.” See N.O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.)
Quoted in H. Friedrich, Montaigne (Bern: A. Francke Verlag, 1949), p. 220.
For useful overviews of the moralist tradition see Jürgen von Stackeiberg, Französische Moralistik im Europäischen Kontext (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982)
Louis van Delft, Le moraliste classique. Essai de définition et de typologie (Genève: Droz, 1982).
In his analysis of the civilizing process, Norbert Elias indicated related changes in the understanding and self-understanding of human beings. The increased constraint to self-restraint brought about not only new forms of behavior but also new modes of observation and cognition. Human conduct became the object of a more secular and a more psychological outlook which contributed to the rise of new conceptions of human beings. See especially Norbert Elias, Die höfische Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 159–164, and Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1981) (especially chapter 5 of the summary).
H.-J. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle (1598–1701), (Genève, Droz, 1969), pp. 826–830 and 1074.
La Rochefoucauld , Maximes. Edition établie par J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1967), (“maximes postumes” no. 51) p. 172. Madame de Staël later rephrased this remark by saying that in Germany one studies books, whereas in France one studies people. See Madame de Staël, De l’Allemagne (1810), (Paris: Garnier Frères), n. d., vol 1, p. 74.
For art see B. Rogerson, “The Art of Painting the Passions,” Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1953), 68–94. The fashionable character books form a good example of widespread interest in human psychology
see Louis van Delft, Littérature et anthropologic Nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993).
Dieter Steland, Moralistik und Erzählkunst von La Rochefoucauld und Mme de Lafayette bis Marivaux (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984).
F. Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und Böse” (par. 254). in Werke. Herausgegeben von K. Schlechta (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 721–23.
For general overviews see See A. Levi, French Moralists. The Theory of the Passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)
A.J. Krailsheimer, Studies in Self-Interest. From Descartes to La Bruyère (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
La Rochefoucauld , Maximes. Edition établie par J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1967), , p. 15.
Vivien Thweatt, La Rochefoucauld and the Seventeenth-Century Concept of the Self (Genève: Droz, 1980), p. 164.
Philippe Sellier, ‘“La princesse de Clèves’: Augustinisme et préciosité au paradis des Valois,” in Images de La Rochefoucauld. Actes du Tricentenaire 1680-1980 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), pp. 217–228.
See N. Ivanoff, La marquise de Sablé et son salon (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1927)
Jean Lafond, “Madame de Sablé et son salon,” in Images de La Rochefoucauld (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 201–216.
Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siècle (1948) (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), p. 118.
See Serge Doubrovsky, “Vingt propositions sur l’amour-propre: de Lacan à La Rochefoucauld,” Cahiers Confrontation III (1980), 51–67.
See, for example, Bourdieu’s reflections on ‘interest’ and ‘habitus’, cf. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
Madame de Sablé, “Maximes” (1678), in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle. Edition établie sous la direction de Jean Lafond (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992) p. 249.
On La Rochefoucauld’s receptivity to Jansenist arguments see especially Jean Lafond, La Rochefoucauld. Augustinisme et littérature (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977).
Wolf Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969)
Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV. The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
La Rochefoucauld , Maximes. Edition établie par J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1967), p. 76 (maxim 305).
See Hans-Jürgen Fuchs, Entfremdung und Narzissmus. Semantische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der ‘Selbstbezogenheit’ als Vorgeschichte von französisch ‘amour-propre’, (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1977). The work of Fuchs appeared in the same year as Hirschman’s book, but whereas the latter has rightly become well known, Fuchs’ study is still largely ignored.
Fuchs has mainly drawn on earlier French work, most explicitly an article by Marcel Raymond, “Du jansénisme à la morale de l’intérêt”, Mercure de France no. 1126 (1957), pp. 238–255.
The significance of Augustinianism has been stressed in many recent works. Of particular importance were especially Philippe Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970)
Jean Lafond, La Rochefoucauld. Augustinisme et littérature (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977). An American specialist of Jansenism also published recently on Pierre Nicole, but without referring to most of the literature mentioned above. See Dale Van Kley, “Pierre Nicole, Jansenism, and the Morality of Enlightened Self-interest,” in Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. Edited by Alan Charles Kors and Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 69–85.
Pascal , Pensées, no. 153 in the recent edition by Philippe Sellier (number 121 in the Lafuma edition; number 418 in the Brunschvicg edition) (Paris: Gamier, 1991).
Pascal , Pensées, no. 153 in the recent edition by Philippe Sellier, number 163 (130 in the Lafuma edition; 420 in the Brunschvicg edition).(Paris: Gamier, 1991).
E.D. James, Pierre Nicole, Jansenist and Humanist (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), p. 1.
Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France (Paris: Bloud, 1925), vol. IV, p. 420.
Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France (Paris: Bloud, 1925), vol. IV, p. 471.
Pierre Nicole, Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), p. 181.
Pierre Nicole, Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), p. 181. The same point can be found in other writers of the same group. Madame de Sablé, for example, notes
“La société, et même l’amitié de la plupart des hommes, n’est qu’un commerce qui ne dure qu’autant que le besoin.”
Madame de Sablé, “Maximes,” in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Laffont, 1992), p. 254.
Pierre Nicole, Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), pp. 199–200.
Nicolas d’Ailly, “Pensées diverses” in Moralistes du XVIIe siècle. Edition établie sous la direction de Jean Lafond (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), p. 261. This anthology contains many original texts, with introductions and useful notes, but nothing by Pierre Nicole or Jacques Esprit.
Pierre Nicole, “De la civilité chrétienne,” in Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), p. 368.
Pierre Nicole, “De la civilité chrétienne,” in Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), p. 199.
Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité (3. 1), in Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), p. 244 (and the corresponding note on p. 1441).
This is the core of Honigsheim’s interpretation of Jansenism, cf. Paul Honigsheim, Die Staats- und Sozial-Lehren der französischen Jansenisten (1914) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969).
On Boisguilbert see Gilbert Faccarello, Aux origines de l’économie politique libérale: Pierre de Boisguilbert (Paris: Anthropos, 1986)
ed. Jacqueline Hecht, Boisguilbert parmi nous. Actes du Colloque international de Rouen (1975) (Paris: INED, 1989). On Boisguilbert as the founder of “egalitarian liberalism” and the “break” this implied with mercantalism
see Simone Meyssonnier, La balance et l’horloge. La genèse de la pensée libérale en France au XVIIIe siècle (Montreuil: Editions de la passion, 1989).
See also Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique (XVIIe—XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 1992), especially pp. 333–355.
Domat writes: “Cette lumière de la raison que Dieu donne à tous les hommes et ces bons effets qu’il tire de leur amour-propre sont des causes qui contribuent à soutenir la société des hommes par les hommes eux-mêmes.” Quoted in Simone Meyssonnier, La balance et l’horloge. La genèse de la pensée libérale en France au XVIIIe siècle (Montreuil: Editions de la passion, 1989)., p. 47.
Nicolas d’Ailly, Sentiments et maximes sur ce qui se passe dans la société civile (Paris: Louis Josse, 1697).
Werner Strube, “Interesselosigkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Grundbegriffs der Ästhetik,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 23 (1979), 148–174.
On disinterestness in science, see Peter Dear, “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992), 619–623.
Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism From Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
For a broader perspective on the very same question see Johan Goudsblom, Nihilism and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
As is proposed in Thomas M. Lennon, “Jansenism and the Crise pyrrhonienne,” Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977), 297–306.
Keith Michael Baker,”Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a Conceptual History,” in Willem Melching and Wyger Velema (eds.), Main Trends in Cultural History (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 95–120.
For the reception of Mandeville in England and France see Paulette Carrive, La philosophie des passions chez Bernard Mandeville (Lille/Paris: Didier Erudition, 1983), pp. 65–113.
See D. W. Smith, Helvétius. A Study in Persecution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
Vauvenargues, Introduction à la connaissance de l’esprit human (1746). Edition par Jean Dagen (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), pp. 85–87.
This is Cassirer’s interpretation, see Ernst Cassirer, Le problème Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1932) (Paris: Hachette, 1987).
See Volker Gerhardt, Vernunft und Interesse. Inaugural-Disseratation Münster, 1974 (unpublished), pp. 319–335.
W. H. Schrader, Ethik und Anthropologie in der Englischen Aufklärung (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1984).
Auguste Comte, Correspondance générale et confessions (Paris: Mouton, 1981), vol. 4, p. 168.
I. Kant, “Idee zu einer algemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” (1784), in Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik. Werkausgabe, Band XI, herausgegeben von W. Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), p. 37.
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Heilbron, J. (1998). French Moralists and the Anthropology of the Modern Era: On the Genesis of the Notions of ‘Interest’ and ‘Commercial Society’. In: Heilbron, J., Magnusson, L., Wittrock, B. (eds) The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity. Sociology of the Sciences, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5528-1_3
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