Political Theory

Not long after 1700 it struck a number of thinkers that patronage politics and the increasingly grubby pursuit of private gain might ill match the ideal of civic virtue expected of the political elite. The range of reactions to this are explored through four closely related essays. Mandeville found the new(?) condition deeply humourous. Bolingbroke took the problem seriously enough to propose a utopian solution. Hume took the problem so seriously as to fail to say anything very significant about it beyond a weak defence of aristocracy. Smith had little to add by way of a solution but was astute enough to urge that public actions should not be allowed to impinge much upon the private gains to be had from the whole sorry story, marginalizing any actual or potential political elite and, ultimately, marginalizing politics itself. Virtue is forever lost; social order and prosperity may still flourish despite moral bankruptcy. I found most of this quite compelling. But this is not only an impressive piece of imagination and scholarship; it is also, until one encounters the moving postscript, very funny.