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Fri Mar 31 17:19:23 2006 |
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<a06200718c048501818e1@[192.168.1.47]> |
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Kevin Quinn's comments lead me to what is true, I think, in political
science (my field). Part of studying the history is to discover why
we are asking today the questions we are asking in the way that we
are asking them; and, reciprocally, is to discern what questions and
answers are being ignored (and perhaps to ask, why?)
At a most superficial level, I -- who frequently teach Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations in a modern political philosophy course -- am
struck by how Smith, who recognizes the need for government and the
role it plays in structuring the market and taking care of market
failures (such as grinding poverty, ignorance, and dissension), seems
to have no theoretical sense of how to link what he says about
government to what he says about human action (human nature? human
propensities?) in the social and economic realm. (I am also,
obviously, struck by how many of Smith's concerns in Book V seem to
have been ignored by many later economists who claim him as a
forebear.)
Peter G. Stillman
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