Speaker
Description
In the Wealth of Nations, Smith points out that because of the expansion of the division of labour, “Every man (…) becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society” (L. I, c. 4). The understanding and implications of these ideas about the merchant’s job and the idea of “commercial society” has had, among Smith's scholars, different approaches. Recently, J. Regan has posed an interesting challenge around this topic. Using digital tools, he pointed out that although Smith’s thought is usually related with the idea of “commercial society”, he uses this expression very few times in his entire works. In this paper I will revisit the question of the importance of the idea of “commercial society” focussing on the concept of “merchants”, and trying to put Smith’s thought in dialogue with other intellectual traditions, and in a special way, with the Franciscan scholastic tradition. In the 13th century, these theologians challenged the traditional opinion about the merchant´s work; later, Grotius, Pufendorf and Heineccius developed some of their thesis. In my presentation, I will use a textual approach to analyse this connection between these Scholastic authors and Grotius’s, Pufendorf’s, Heineccius’ and finally with Smith’s texts. Inspired by the ideas of Oakeshott, who suggested that intellectual life should be conceived as a “conversation”, I would like to show that Smith's ideas about the merchant’s job and his idea of “Commercial Society” could be better understood if it is conceived as part of a larger and older “conversation” around these topics. As I will try to show, if we look at this textual tradition we can argue that maybe Smith was not rejecting but developing in an original way some ideas that posed by this Scholastic tradition were continued by Grotius, Pufendorf and Heineccius.
