Self-Interest before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Ideas in Context, Series Number 68) - Hardcover

Force, Pierre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521830605 ISBN 13: 9780521830607

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Pierre Force studies the history of the concept of self-interest to understand its meaning by the time that Adam Smith used it as an axiom in The Wealth of Nations. He demonstrates that Smith, unlike many of his predecessors and contemporaries, never endorsed the idea that self-interest is the motivation behind all human action, although the "selfish hypothesis" did have a place in his doctrine. This book provides insight on classic puzzles of economic theory and is a major work from an outstanding scholar.

About this title

About the Author

Pierre Force received his academic training in France, where he was a fellow of the École normale supérieure. He took his BA (1979), doctorate (1987), and habilitation (1994) at the Sorbonne. He first came to the United States in 1984 as a lecturer at Yale University, and he joined the Columbia faculty in 1987. His field of research is seventeenth and eighteenth-century intellectual history. He is the author of Le Problème herméneutique chez Pascal (Paris: Vrin, 1989), Molière ou Le Prix des choses (Paris: Nathan, 1994), and Self-Interest before Adam Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521830605
• ISBN 13: 9780521830607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 298