In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual
climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate
the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the
pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin
of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and
destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new
interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the
continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of
a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian
thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding
that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what
was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the
passions in favor of the "harmless," if one-dimensional, interests
of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as
an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large
number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and
Adam Smith.
Featuring a new afterword by Jeremy Adelman and a foreword by
Amartya Sen, this Princeton Classics edition of "The Passions and
the Interests" sheds light on the intricate ideological
transformation from which capitalism emerged triumphant, and
reaffirms Hirschman's stature as one of our most influential and
provocative thinkers.
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