The disambiguation of the Royal Academy of Arts

This article uses Jeremy Bentham's notion of disambiguation, which links language to power and ‘sinister interest’, to analyse criticisms of the Royal Academy of Arts by Benthamites and Philosophic Radicals at the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures of 1835/6. This practice of disambiguation aimed to produce a distinction between the Royal Academy of Arts and the publicly funded art school. I situate this activity within the linguistic turn taken by Bentham's ethics, and its relevance to a dilemma of pedagogy in commercial society framed by Adam Smith. Smith's dilemma turns on the conflict between the requirement for a pedagogy that conforms to the principle of free trade, and an equally binding requirement for a virtue ethical model of pedagogy that offers a remedy for the corrupting effects of commerce on character. Adam Smith's support for private academies of art asserted a hierarchy of virtue ethics over utility, thus safeguarding autonomous ethical reasoning within capitalist forms of social life. Bentham's thought, in contrast, eschews the link between ethics and character, and places ethics itself within normative rules of language and cognition.     

Is absolute secularity conceivable?

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the prospects for thoroughly secular thought. It does so in relation to recent theories of secularization (and especially Charles Taylor’s and Hans Blumenberg’s) as well as by attending to two very different intellectual projects, one mounted by Jeremy Bentham (in particular his concept of felicity or happiness), the other by Michael Oakeshott. It argues that Bentham’s utilitarian account of happiness depends on a Christian conceptual structure, and that Oakeshott’s understanding of philosophy as a practice of questioning presents a brighter hope for thoroughly secular thought.     

Nudges and the limits of appropriate interference: reading backwards from J.S. Mill’s harm principle to Jeremy Bentham’s indirect legislation

ABSTRACT

The starting point of the present paper is the nudge phenomenon. The most disturbing element of nudge is its potential for individual manipulation, that is, for relying on initiatives that go beyond the acceptable limits of interference in individual choice. This feature is not ignored by nudge advocates, who discuss it extensively to justify the overriding benefits of such initiatives. In this discussion, they acknowledge the seminal importance of J.S. Mill’s harm principle, which is introduced in On Liberty. Academics without hidden agendas must look into Mill’s theories from an intellectual history perspective and study to what extent Mill’s harm principle lends support to the interference of government and society in private lives. This paper first unveils some contradictions in the interpretation of Mill’s harm principle in order to show that it is an unlikely source of philosophical justification for nudge proponents. The paper argues further that Mill was familiar with Jeremy Bentham’s writings on indirect legislation, presented in the Traités de legislation civile et pénale. It pinpoints elements of indirect legislation that are discussed by Mill in On Liberty, without ever naming them as such. The paper contends that Mill’s presentation of the harm principle can be read as a discussion with Bentham in relation to the appropriate limits of government intervention in people’s lives. This double reading of Mill and Bentham through the lens of indirect legislation makes it possible to pinpoint the main differences between the authors as regards the appropriate degree of government interference. Bentham’s theories appear to be a more appropriate source of philosophical justification for the use of nudges than Mill’s harm principle.     

论亚当·斯密的帝国思想

亚当·斯密的帝国理论的核心是其殖民地自由贸易理论.他认为,殖民地是母国的负担,对母国没有益处,主张放弃对殖民地的贸易垄断;改革英国对殖民地的统治政策,让殖民地按其人口比例选派代表参加帝国议会.     

The siege of Barbastro 1064–65: a reassessment

In 1064 a large army of foreign troops, especially Normans and Catalans, fought against the Muslims at the fortress city of Barbastro, located in Zaragoza. The siege of Barbastro is, for several reasons, one of the most controversial battles of the early reconquest in Spain. Some of the problems that historians of the crusades and the reconquest have struggled with are: the indulgence letter that Alexander II allegedly granted to the soldiers at Barbastro and whether this makes Barbastro the ‘First’ crusade preceding the one called by Pope Urban II. In addition, the extent of involvement by Pope Alexander and the Cluniacs in propagating the ‘crusade’ has been debated. Equally problematic has been the identification of the leader of the Christian soldiers. Candidates chosen for the enigmatic leader have been Duke William VIII of Aquitaine, William of Montreuil, and the Norman, Robert Crispin. A review of the secondary and primary sources reveals that many long-held conclusions are in need of re-evaluation. A complete reassessment of these and other related problems is the intent of this study.     

‘A Great People Struggling for Their Liberties’: Spain and the Mediterranean in the Eyes of the Benthamites

Summary

This article examines the relationship of Jeremy Bentham and some of his disciples within Romantic Liberalism in the Mediterranean in the early 1820s. By studying the content of Bentham's correspondence with his collaborators and some Spanish political leaders, the text sheds light on Bentham's ideas on constitutional rule, the independence of Latin America and religious tolerance.     

‘The apostle of free trade:’ Adam Smith and the nineteenth-century American trade debates

This paper examines the diversity of uses of Adam Smith’s ideas in nineteenth-century American debates about the tariff. Legislative debates about American trade policy ran almost uninterrupted from the 1820s to the end of the century; as a result, they provide an abundance of examples of the ways in which legislators marshaled economic ideas to shape political discourse and influence policy. Smith’s causal ideas about free trade and its effects were referenced in policymaking, and Smith’s intellectual authority was often invoked as a legitimating device for partisan ideology. These uses, I argue, contributed to the sloganizing of Smith as the ‘apostle of free trade’ and his enduring popularity as a political icon in American politics.     

In search of the physical: George Adam Smith's journeys to palestine and their importance

By any standard, George Adam Smith's was a remarkable career. Having established a reputation for himself as the first minister of a new congregation of the Free Church of Scotland in the west of Aberdeen, where he consolidated his liberal evangelical pulpit between 1882 and 1892, Smith went on to become a foremost Old Testament scholar in the Free Church College in Glasgow (1892-1910) and Principal of Aberdeen University (1910-1935). More than one student of the period has linked his name with that of A.B. Davidson and W.R. Smith, succeeding them as one of Scotland's leading Old Testament scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

L'illusion métabiologique

In this article, I explore the complex and unappreciated relationship between the moral and political thought of Cicero and Adam Smith. Cicero’s views about justice, propriety, and the selfish love of praise find new expression in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I illustrate the important ways in which Smith adopts – often without attribution – Cicero’s precepts and moral judgments. I then go on to demonstrate how Smith strips those Ciceronian conclusions from their original justifying grounds in teleology and natural law. In their place, Smith injects his own psychology based in sentiments as a new account of why it is that we prefer virtue and justice to their opposites. By exploring this relationship, I hope to shed light on an important dynamic whereby modern thought has creatively adapted classical moral and political concepts.     

“经济利益不是生活的全部”——理查德·亨利·托尼的资本主义批判

托尼的《宗教与资本主义的兴起》与韦伯的《新教伦理与资本主义精神》齐名,但是却反映了两种立场。与韦伯标榜中立的学术研究态度不同,托尼在他一系列学术著作和政论文中对资本主义进行了尖锐批评,也在他的政治活动和毕生关注的工人教育中努力实践自己的社会公平理想。在托尼看来,资本主义在本质上是与人的尊严相抵触的,是对财富的顶礼膜拜,是把一部分人看做充当工具的阶级,同时允许另一部分人利用他人为工具来达到致富目的。在资本主义不平等的社会结构中,教育不平等是其中的一个重要环节。把教育当做赚钱的勾当就等于把上帝的天赐拿去卖钱。他对哈耶克的经济自由主义进行了反驳,认为真正让人们奴化的,包括让专业人士和知识分子猥琐化的,恰恰是资本主义制度固有的贪婪。     

隋唐宫廷绘画机构概述

唐代是中国宫廷绘画发展的第一个高峰期。其间名家辈出,名作累累。以往美术史界对其制度与机构的研究甚少。本文首次对唐代宫廷绘画的制度与机构作了较全面的介绍与分析。     

'J'y Suis, J'y Reste': The Parliamentary Statue of Oliver Cromwell by Hamo Thornycroft

The conservation of the statue of Cromwell by Hamo Thornycroft in 2009 (for full details and images see http://www.parliament.uk/about/visiting/exhibitions/cromwell_conservation.cfm ) provided an opportunity to review the history of this most controversial of parliamentary statues both within the context of the proposed statue programme for the new palace of Westminster and the development of British sculpture which the Royal Commission for the Fine Arts hoped to encourage with its commissioning programme. Whilst 2009 marked the 350th anniversary of Cromwell's death it was the tercentenary of his birth in 1899 which brought forward a clutch of statues, including parliament's, reflecting the Victorian reassessment, and indeed repopularisation of Cromwell, as a historical figure.     

The man within the breast,the supreme impartial spectator,and other impartial spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer (because unnecessary, just as we speak of ‘the world’). Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ (all new to edition 6), we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed (purported), not sup-pos’d (posited).     

Wem gehört Adam Smith? Gedanken zur Auseinandersetzung um das geistige Erbe des schottischen Philosophen und Ökonomen

Smith's appropriation by neoliberal theorists as the progenitor of economic liberalism and capitalism has recently been challenged by a phalanx of counter‐positions. In a concerted effort ?to salvage the real Smith’?, they rediscover the enlightenment philosopher who was very critical of ostentatious display of wealth and envisioned a society based on moral concerns rather than on the pursuit of self‐interest. This article discusses recent developments in the battle over the economist's and philosopher's heritage.