Carl Schmitt famously argued that politics is grounded in the friend-enemy distinction. In doing so, he was building upon a Hobbesian legacy that frames (the potential for) conflict and enmity as the primordial conditions of human association. In this tradition, political society is primarily a safeguard, a necessary construct where humans gather to protect themselves from one another, leaving...
The original “Adam Smith Problem” has rightly been dismissed by contemporary scholars as a red herring spurred by facile interpretations of Smith’s philosophy, especially his account of self-love in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.* Still, the connection between Smith’s two great works remains an enduring subject of interest. This paper ventures new answers about this connection through an...
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is often assumed to advocate the doux-commerce thesis, suggesting that commerce could lead to international peace. Smith's cosmopolitanism was considered to be at odds with earlier political economists, known as mercantilists. Smith himself criticized what he called the "mercantile system." Unlike the later categorization of mercantilism,...
