Henry C. Clark on 1776 and the French and Scottish Enlightenments - Deep Dive
May 1, 2022
1776 and the years surrounding it were full of ideas and actions that still matter today. Great Antidote guest Henry C. Clark and host Juliette Sellgren talks about the history that led to that moment and how things have changed (and not changed) since then. You'll also find out, as always, the one thing Clark thinks young people today should know and something he's changed his mind about.
1776 and the years surrounding it were full of ideas and actions that still matter today. Great Antidote guest Henry C. Clark and host Juliette Sellgren talks about the history that led to that moment and how things have changed (and not changed) since then. You'll also find out, as always, the one thing Clark thinks young people today should know and something he's changed his mind about.
In this episode of The Great Antidote, guest Henry C. Clark and host Juliette Sellgren discuss the intellectual influences of 1776 and the French and Scottish Enlightenments. The discussion has a special focus on the people (like Montesquieu and David Hume) and ideas that Adam Smith responds to and is influenced by (like physiocratic beliefs and the economics of religion.). Clark also speculates about what Adam Smith would think of this lasting legacy and why Smith remains a preeminent thinker today.
Henry C. Clark has been a visiting professor in the Political Economy Project at Dartmouth College since 2014. He is a Senior Lecturer and the Program Director of the Political Economy Project.
Listen to this episode
Henry Clark on the Enlightenments
About the podcast
Introducing The Great Antidote Podcast with Juliette Sellgren | Adam Smith Works
About the podcast
Introducing The Great Antidote Podcast with Juliette Sellgren | Adam Smith Works
The guest: Henry C. Clark
- Dartmouth profile, OLL profile, Amazon author page
- Book by Clark: Liberty Matters: Montesquieu on Liberty and Sumptuary Law
- Book translated by Clark: Baron de Montesquieu's My Thoughts (Mes Pensées)
- Books edited by Clark
Other Liberty Fund content by Henry C. Clark
- An Interview with Henry C. Clark | Online Library of Liberty (libertyfund.org)
- Book reviews and articles by Clark at Law & Liberty
- Liberty Fund Books Videos
Related Liberty Fund content
- Introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment | Adam Smith Works
- A Hotbed of Genius: An Introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment | Adam Smith Works
- Main Figures of the Scottish Enlightenment | Adam Smith Works
- Adam Smith and the American Founding: The Theory of Moral Sentiments as a Field Guide to the Pursuit of Happiness | Adam Smith Works
- 1776 and All That: Thomas Jefferson on Adam Smith [1] | Adam Smith Works
- Montesquieu and the Separation of Powers | Online Library of Liberty (libertyfund.org)
Related books
- Vernier, Richard B., “Political Economy and Political Ideology: The Public Debt in Eighteenth-Century Britain and America,” Oxford University D.Phil., 1993.
- Appleby, Joyce, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton 1978).
- Clark, Henry C., Commerce, Culture, and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam Smith (Indianapolis, 2003)
- Young, Jeffrey T., “Adam Smith and the Physiocrats,” History of Economic Ideas,10, 3 (2002), pp. 7-28.
People, places, and things mentioned in this episode
- David Hume
- Adam Smith
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
- King Louis XVI
- Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
- Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws
- Jacques Turgot (The French Adam Smith)
- Jacques Necker
- Physiocrats
- Deirdre McCloskey
- Thomas Robert Malthus (Malthusian trap)
- Book IV, Wealth of Nations (Emergence of towns/cities; Changes in property law)
- Max Weber
- Hume’s History of England and Political Essays
- Book V, Wealth of Nations (What governments should do about religion)
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments
- Frank Trentmann’s Free Trade Nation
- G. K. Chesterton
Resources compiled by Christy Lynn