The Other Adam Smith: Popular Contention, Commercial Society, and the Birth of Necro-Economics

412 Pages·2014·30.624 MB·English

by  Hill, Mike, Montag, Warren, Smith, Adam

THE OTHER ADAM SMITH

The O T H E R
A DA M SM I T H
Mike Hill and Warren Montag
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hill, Mike, author.
The other Adam Smith / Mike Hill and Warren Montag.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-9194-6 (cloth : alk. paper) --
isbn 978-0-8047-9294-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Smith, Adam, 1723-1790. 2. Philosophy, Modern. I. Montag, Warren, author.
II. Title.
b1545.z7h55 2014
192--dc23
2014025816
isbn 978-0-8047-9300-1 (electronic)
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Short Forms ix
Introduction
“A Tendency to Absence”: Which Other Adam Smith? 1
1 “The Pleasing Wonder of Ignorance”:
Adam Smith’s Divisions of Knowledge 27
2 “Tumultuous Combinations”:
The Transindividual from Adam Smith to Spinoza 105
3 “Numbers, Noise, and Power”:
Insurrection as a Problem of Historical Method 147
4 “Immunity, the Necessary Complement of Liberty”:
The Birth of Necro-Economics 235
Notes 343
Index 385

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Emily-Jane Cohen for her steadfast support of
this project in its incomplete stages, and her patience throughout the book’s de-
velopment and completion. Among several readers of our early drafts, we would
like to single out Eric Schliesser and Michael Shapiro for constructive early
readings. Nancy Armstrong’s comments on The Other Adam Smith in its earli-
est stages were both formidable and formative. We thank Tania Flores for her
assistance with the manuscript, as well as the editorial team at Stanford—Emily
Smith and Jennifer Gordon, especially. Any errors that remain are of course
entirely our own.
In addition, Mike Hill would like to thank the following colleagues and
friends who read and commented on portions of the manuscript at various
stages, or were otherwise supportive in its completion: Richard Barney, Kevin
Frye, Laura Hill, Melvin Jackson, Tony Jarrells, Devoney Looser, Mort School-
man, and Clifford Siskin. During the writing of most of this book, Hill was chair
of the English Department at the University at Albany, SUNY. He wishes to
thank his colleagues there for allowing the necessary distractions from admin-
istrative duties to keep the scholarship going. Dean Elga Wulfert of the College
of Arts and Sciences at UAlbany also granted him a semester’s leave to complete
work on the book. Finally, Hill would like to thank the graduate students who
offered comments and challenges in several seminars on the Enlightenment
over the last several years.
Warren Montag would like to thank Richard Barney, Timothy Campbell,
Roberto Esposito, David McInerney, Robert Markley, and Christian M arouby—
all of whom contributed ideas and inspiration. He is grateful to Jorge Gonzalez,
vice president of academic affairs at Occidental College, for his generous sup-
port for this project.

ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS,
AND SHORT FORMS
Many of the more commonly cited works in The Other Adam Smith are abbrevi-
ated or referred to in a shortened form. Often these abbreviations, acronyms, or
short forms appear in parentheses with page numbers for the specific reference.
“AL” “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith”
AT An Abstract of . . . A Treatise of Human Nature
BP The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge
BR Barbarism and Religion: Narratives of Civil Government
CCP Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain
CEN Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Realism, Probability, Magic
CL The Constitution of Liberty
Companion The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith
Correspondence Correspondence of Adam Smith; vol. VI of The Glasgow
Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith
Dialogues Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
E Ethics [Spinoza; plus part number and specific proposition]
EB The Enlightenment and the Book
EBA Essays upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities
EC Elements of Criticism
ECH Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“EDWN” “‘Early Draft’ of Part of The Wealth of Nations”
EHU An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
EML Essays, Moral and Literary
EMPL Essays Moral, Political, Literary