Bio:

Eric Schliesser’s (PhD, The University of Chicago, 2002) research encompasses a variety of themes, ranging from economic statistics in classical Babylon, the history of the natural sciences and forgotten 18th-century feminists (both male and female) to political theory and the history of political theory and the assumptions used in mathematical economics. Schliesser’s interest in the influence of Chicago school of economics has increasingly moved his research toward the study of the methodology and political role of economists as experts. He was previously affiliated with Syracuse University, Leiden University, and Ghent University among others. Schliesser  has published prolifically on Newton, Huygens, Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Adam Smith and Sophie De Grouchy. His publications include his monograph, Adam Smith: Systematic philosopher and Public Thinker (OUP, 2017). He has edited numerous volumes including (inter alia)  Newton and empiricism. (OUP, with Zvi Biener, 2014); Sympathy, a History of a Concept (OUP, 2015); Ten Neglected Classics of philosophy (Oxford, 2017). Right now, he is working on a translation and critical edition of Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy (together with Sandrine Berges). He keeps a daily blog Digressionsnimpressions.

Abstract:

By now it is a trope in the secondary literary that Adam Smith influenced Kant’s moral philosophy to some degree. It seems to have escaped notice that Smith had a major impact on Kant’s political philosophy. In particular, in the first part of this presentation I argue that Kant’s plan for perpetual peace has unmistakable debts to Smith’s federal project for an Atlantic parliament developed in Wealth of Nations. In the second part, I show the surprising pre-history of these ideals in the works of Thomas More, Spinoza, Rousseau, and Hume.

Event Contacts
Kaveh Pourvand
kpourvand@email.arizona.edu