Eighteenth-century liberalism trusted natural competition to yield harmony
Evidence
The liberalism of the eighteenth century set the individual on his own two feet, and he could go quite as far as they would carry him. The theory left it up to the natural order of things to see to it that unlimited competition among individuals would yield a harmony of all interests, that the whole would fare best in the setting of ruthless individual strivings for advantage. That is the metaphysic with which eighteenth-century optimism about nature socially justified free competition. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 542
Categorization
- DEFINE: Precise statement of the laissez-faire metaphysic underlying the free competition both forms of individualism economically entail.
- XREF: connects to: The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory
Related
- Eighteenth-century individualism turned freedom-inequality tension into an ethical and religious paradox (similarity 0.79)