Publication details
Taming the superlative, embedding the comparative: a form of subjectivation for a post growth society. Working Paper Series of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’ 02/2015.
Working paper
Author(s): Comtesse, Dagmar
Year of publication: 2015
Abstract: Adam Smith formulated a fundamental critique of economic growth in his philosophical oeuvre The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in the year 1759. What might seem to be irony concerning the history of ideas – irony in the sense of the exclamation “he of all people” – is actually not irony at all. Smith wrote a substantial review of Rousseau’s Second Discourse, referring to Rousseau’s critique of commercial society. Additionally, one of the principal topics of Rousseau’s critique, the deformation of fundamental needs to passions in service of the satisfaction of self-love, is a major subject in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. But whereas Rousseau suggests egalitarian politics, Smith proposes individual stoicism: “In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.” Nevertheless, both authors and analysts of pre-capitalist society identify the difference between fundamental needs and desires as having been born out of comparison as both a source of unhappiness and of economic development.
Keywords: Rousseau; Society; Subjectivation; Superlative
Research area: Research Area 2: The Dynamics of Normative Orders: Rupture, Change, ContinuityResearch project: The Normativity of Formal Knowledge: The Exact Sciences, Equality and Situated Universalism in the 18th Century
Subject(s): philosophy
urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-386473
Full text: http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/files/38647/Comtesse_Taming_the_Superlative.pdf
