Hanging with History

Adam Smith Part 2; Morality Unlike Ours

June 03, 2021 Harald Hansen Season 1 Episode 63
Hanging with History
Adam Smith Part 2; Morality Unlike Ours
Show Notes

Private Vices are public virtues, so says Mandeville in the Fable of the Bees.  No, David Hume argues, the frame is wrong.  Strong boundaries of vice and virtue cannot be drawn in consumer behavior.  

This is our introduction to the problem of leaving medieval morality behind us.  The Church did not place the economic advancement of the poor high up the list of concerns and even saw it as a great danger.  How did we ever escape this kind of thinking?