Spinoza, Metaphysics and Political Economy: Ethical Conduct, Social Control, and Public Policy (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

Spinoza is generally recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the early modern period; less well known are his observations regarding private ethical conduct, social control including state intervention in the market, and public policy including welfare. This book explores these political economy dimensions of Spinoza’s though setting them in the context of his own wider work and the broader intellectual history landscape.The discussion in the book takes account of Spinoza’s relation with his contemporary Thomas Hobbes regarding constitutional matters as well as public policy; compares his stance respecting ethical conduct with that of Immanuel Kant, who came a century later, and with utilitarianism; and examines the objections to Spinozan doctrine by the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Bayle and thereafter by David Hume, and the nineteenth-century critics G.W.F.Hegel and J.S. Mill. More specifically, this book points to a hitherto unnoticed adjustment by Spinoza