From Prudence to Voluptuousness: Rousseau's Epicurean Economics

This paper shows that Rousseau did not dismiss all economic activity as being morally wrong but that he developed an original approach to virtuous economics, inspired by the Epicurean philosophy, advocating an art of living based on simple pleasures. In a world where political virtue, or citizenship, has become impossible to reach, economic virtue may be the only solution to withstand moral corruption and its aftermath, moral servitude.

European Journal of Political Theory, 2018

This article argues that in order to understand the form of modern political freedom envisioned by Rousseau, we have to understand his theory of taste as refined Epicureanism. Rousseau saw the division of labour and corrupt taste as the greatest threats to modern freedom. He identified their cause in the spread of vulgar Epicureanism – the frenzied pursuit of money, vanity and sexual gratification. In its place, he advocated what he called ‘the Epicureanism of reason’, or refined Epicureanism. Materially grounded on an equitable proportion of needs and faculties, this was a hedonist theory of self-command designed to cultivate the temperate enjoyment of sensual pleasure. I argue that Rousseau hoped that a shift from vulgar to refined Epicureanism would secure political freedom in modernity by grounding the politics of the general will in an economics of balanced growth and a reinvigorated appreciation of natural beauty. This perspective provides a new way of both clarifying the role of economic justice and aesthetic judgment in Rousseau's republican state theory, and of assessing the consistency of his moral and political thought.

The American Political Science Review, 1980

History of European Ideas, 2010

2012

El contenido de la presente publicación se encuentra protegido por las normas internacionales y nacionales vigentes sobre propiedad intelectual, por tanto su utilización, reproducción, comunicación pública, transformación, distribución, alquiler, préstamo público e importación, total o parcial, en todo o en parte, en formato impreso, digital o en cualquier formato conocido o por conocer, se encuentran prohibidos, y sólo serán lícitos en la medida en que se cuente con la autorización previa y expresa por escrito del autor o titular. Las limitaciones y excepciones al Derecho de Autor, sólo serán aplicables en la medida en que se den dentro de los denominados Usos Honrados (Fair use), estén previa y expresamente establecidas, no causen un grave e injustificado perjuicio a los intereses legítimos del autor o titular, y no atenten contra la normal explotación de la obra.

2001

This article is a critical review of Adam Smiths notion of an economic agent. Using Jean Jacques Rousseaus arguments, I show the shortcomings of Smiths hypothesis regarding individuals economic behaviour within market society. The morals of sympathy, understood as a social theory and beyond the limitations Smith himself acknowledges, attempts to present the economic agent as a natural and unthreatening figure restricted to market transactions. A careful reading of Rousseau shows the historical character of Smiths construction, and thereby its failure to recognise the influence of social, cultural and economic development on the formation of this economic agent. Rousseau refuses the possibility of constructing economic theory based on this agent and denounces it as a way of justifying irresponsibility and tyranny. Two possible paths in economics are thus open: economics as an independent field of action or economics as a field regulated by politics.

Philosophy in Review, 2021

European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2017