2014 HES PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BEES AND SILKWORMS: MANDEVILLE, HUME, AND THE FRAMING OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Mandeville and Hume advance similar framings for their political economy, using emergentist and proto-sociological lines of analysis. They are less aligned with liberalism (political, economic, or metaphysical) than mercantilism, insofar as they favor balance-of-trade arguments and urbanization. They are both methodological holists, not individualists. It is the group, not individual agents, that figures at the core of their thought.