This collection of thirty-seven readings (from thirty-three writers) brings together some of the most significant pre-Adam Smith writings on the political and cultural dimensions of capitalism.
To modern readers, these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discussions of commerce and economic life in general are surprising because they are so closely integrated to moral and cultural issues. Though we may have forgotten how extensively such issues were once discussed, it is uncanny what a contemporary ring many of these issues have. Part of the value of this book is in reminding us that many of our own concerns are not without precedent and earlier reflection.
The selections come both from now-unfamiliar authors who were influential in their own time, as well as from such well-known writers as Rousseau, Defoe, Fielding, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. The essays emphasize the human meaning of the market; they were selected to provide a sense of the range of opinion that prevailed on the broader significance of the market economy before it became a pervasive feature of modern life.
"Commerce, Culture, and Liberty" presents rich and provocative writings on the relationship between commerce and luxury, virtue, nobility, agriculture, the state, religion, civility, and liberty. The book restores the voice of a rich body of reflections on the larger import of the birth of the modern economy that has been largely silent in academic discourse on the topic. Moreover, it presents significant though hard-to-find writings by a host of well-known authors, including a little-known essay by Rousseau. It also presents important writings that have been preempted by Adam Smith, writings that say as much about our age as about the age in which they were written.
Henry C. Clark is Visiting Professor in the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University. He has published two books and several articles, mainly on the French and Scottish Enlightenments.

This collection of thirty-seven readings (from thirty-three writers) brings together some of the most significant pre-Adam Smith writings on the political and cultural dimensions of capitalism.
To modern readers, these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discussions of commerce and economic life in general are surprising because they are so closely integrated to moral and cultural issues. Though we may have forgotten how extensively such issues were once discussed, it is uncanny what a contemporary ring many of these issues have. Part of the value of this book is in reminding us that many of our own concerns are not without precedent and earlier reflection.
The selections come both from now-unfamiliar authors who were influential in their own time, as well as from such well-known writers as Rousseau, Defoe, Fielding, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. The essays emphasize the human meaning of the market; they were selected to provide a sense of the range of opinion that prevailed on the broader significance of the market economy before it became a pervasive feature of modern life.
"Commerce, Culture, and Liberty" presents rich and provocative writings on the relationship between commerce and luxury, virtue, nobility, agriculture, the state, religion, civility, and liberty. The book restores the voice of a rich body of reflections on the larger import of the birth of the modern economy that has been largely silent in academic discourse on the topic. Moreover, it presents significant though hard-to-find writings by a host of well-known authors, including a little-known essay by Rousseau. It also presents important writings that have been preempted by Adam Smith, writings that say as much about our age as about the age in which they were written.
Henry C. Clark is Visiting Professor in the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University. He has published two books and several articles, mainly on the French and Scottish Enlightenments.

"My Thoughts" provides a unique window into the mind of one of the undisputed pioneers of modern thought, the author of "The Spirit of the Laws". From the publication of his first masterpiece, "Persian Letters", in 1721, until his death in 1755, Montesquieu maintained notebooks in which he wrote and dictated ideas on a wide variety of topics. Some of the contents are early drafts of passages that Montesquieu eventually placed in his published works; others are outlines or early versions of projected works that were ultimately lost, unfinished, or abandoned. These notebooks provide important insights into his views on a broad range of topics, including morality, religion, history, law, economics, finance, science, art, and constitutional liberty. Montesquieu called these notebooks, "Mes Pensees" (My Thoughts), and they appear in their entirety in English for the first time in this Liberty Fund edition. Editor and translator Henry C Clark provides readers with translations of most of the footnotes contained in the 1991 French edition by Louis Desgraves, while adding new notes and other aids to understanding the text and translation. These features provide the frame for a revealing portrait of one of the most influential figures of the eighteenth century.

"My Thoughts" provides a unique window into the mind of one of the undisputed pioneers of modern thought, the author of "The Spirit of the Laws". From the publication of his first masterpiece, "Persian Letters", in 1721, until his death in 1755, Montesquieu maintained notebooks in which he wrote and dictated ideas on a wide variety of topics. Some of the contents are early drafts of passages that Montesquieu eventually placed in his published works; others are outlines or early versions of projected works that were ultimately lost, unfinished, or abandoned. These notebooks provide important insights into his views on a broad range of topics, including morality, religion, history, law, economics, finance, science, art, and constitutional liberty. Montesquieu called these notebooks, "Mes Pensees" (My Thoughts), and they appear in their entirety in English for the first time in this Liberty Fund edition. Editor and translator Henry C Clark provides readers with translations of most of the footnotes contained in the 1991 French edition by Louis Desgraves, while adding new notes and other aids to understanding the text and translation. These features provide the frame for a revealing portrait of one of the most influential figures of the eighteenth century.

For the 250th anniversary of the founding of Dartmouth College, the Political Economy Project at Dartmouth assembled a stellar cast of junior and senior scholars to explore the systemic conditions facing those seeking to found a new college two hundred fifty years ago. What were the key political, economic and religious parameters operating in the Atlantic world at the time of the College's founding? What was the religious scene like at the moment when the Rev. Samson Occom of the Mohegan nation and the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock of Connecticut, two men from very different backgrounds whose improbable meeting occurred during the Great Awakening of the early 1740s, set about establishing a new school in the northern woods in the 1760s? How were the agendas of contemporaries differently mediated by the religious beliefs with which they acted, on the one hand, and the emerging thought world of political economy, very broadly understood, on the other? These are among the rich and variegated topics addressed in Dartmouth and the World, which breaks the mold of the traditional commemorative volume.

Enlightenment and Secularism is a collection of twenty eight essays that seek to understand the connection between the European Enlightenment and the emergence of secular societies, as well as the character or nature of those societies. The contributors are drawn from a variety of disciplines including History, Sociology, Political Science, and Literature. Most of the essays focus on a single text from the Enlightenment, borrowing or secularizing the format of a sermon on a text, and are designed to be of particular use to those teaching and studying the history of the Enlightenment within a liberal arts curriculum.

This volume provides an integrated and wide-ranging set of primary-source readings on the relationship between moral values and economic activity, as articulated by some of the leading figures in Western civilization. From the ancient Greeks to the present, Economic Morality: Ancient to Modern Readings offers substantial coverage to each major period of history: classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern era. Everything from Aristotle to Adam Smith, from Marx to Hayek, and from Proudhon to Nozick has been brought together in one comprehensive survey. The perspectives represented in our volume include those of Christians and Muslims; Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; believers and non-believers; capitalists and socialists; conservatives and libertarians. They emphasize both law and mores, as well as history, philosophy, religion, and economics. This is a genuinely interdisciplinary volume, and one that invites a catholic and humanistic conversation. In preparing this collection, the contributors aim to recover something of the range of moral opinion that first accompanied the rise of "economics" in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The loss of that range of opinion has left a troubling void in our academic and public discourse. Those who broadly embrace the modern economic project tend to view it pragmatically but not morally, while those who are more critical of it often end up in a moral monologue that is unsatisfying to all sides. By showing the optimistic pragmatists the rich tradition of moral criticism and the pessimistic critics the equally rich tradition of (qualified) moral approbation, this volume seeks to facilitate conversation and bring much-needed mutual comprehension to a perennial debate.

Enlightenment and Secularism is a collection of twenty eight essays that seek to understand the connection between the European Enlightenment and the emergence of secular societies, as well as the character or nature of those societies. The contributors are drawn from a variety of disciplines including History, Sociology, Political Science, and Literature. Most of the essays focus on a single text from the Enlightenment, borrowing or secularizing the format of a sermon on a text, and are designed to be of particular use to those teaching and studying the history of the Enlightenment within a liberal arts curriculum.

Compass of Society rethinks the French route to a conception of 'commercial society' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry C. Clark finds that the development of market liberalism, far from being a narrow and abstract ideological episode, was part of a broad-gauged attempt to address a number of perceived problems generic to Europe and particular to France during this period. In the end, he offers a neo-Tocquevillian account of a topic which Tocqueville himself notoriously underemphasized, namely the emergence of elements of a modern economy in eighteenth century France and the place this development had in explaining the failure of the Old Regime and the onset of the Revolution. Compass of Society will aid in understanding the conflicted French engagement with liberalism even up to the twenty-first century.

Compass of Society rethinks the French route to a conception of "commercial society" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry C. Clark finds that the development of market liberalism, far from being a narrow and abstract ideological episode, was part of a broad-gauged attempt to address a number of perceived problems generic to Europe and particular to France during this period. In the end, he offers a neo-Tocquevillian account of a topic which Tocqueville himself notoriously underemphasized, namely the emergence of elements of a modern economy in eighteenth century France and the place this development had in explaining the failure of the Old Regime and the onset of the Revolution. Compass of Society will aid in understanding the conflicted French engagement with liberalism even up to the twenty-first century.