ECONOMIC SENTIMENTS

One must look hard to find a work so adept at doing the vigorous hermeneutics required to truly understand what drove the 18th-century Enlightenment and how that era impacts our thinking today. Rothschild roams across the landscape of thinkers and historical events focusing on Condorcet as an example of the 'cold, universalistic enlightenment of the French Revolution' and on Smith, who appears as the more conservative proponent of the 'reductionist enlightenment of laissez-faire economics.' Along the way the reader is challenged to rethink the positive-normative dichotomy commonly taught in economics, the meaning and role of Smith's 'invisible hand' and the self-serving manner in which 19th-century interpreters framed Smith's ideas...Thereis exceptional depth to this book...[It] has interdisciplinary appeal, systematically relying on literary, philosophical, political, economic, natural science, and sometimes theological disciplines to build arguments. Highly recommended.