Papers by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023
What explains the ambition to get rich? Adam Smith is clear that commercial ambition, the passion... more What explains the ambition to get rich? Adam Smith is clear that commercial ambition, the passionate desire for great wealth, is not simply a desire to satisfy one's material needs. His argument on what underlies it, however, is not obvious. I review three possibilities suggested by Smith's work and the scholarly literature-vanity, the love of system, and the desire for tranquility-and conclude that none of them captures the underlying motive of commercial ambition. Instead, I argue that Smith understands commercial ambition as a misguided desire for excellence. Ambitious pursuers of wealth are driven by the desire to deserve and to enjoy recognition for their excellence, but their judgment of what is truly excellent is corrupted by the standards of a wealth-worshipping society.
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Intellectual History Review , 2022
This article reconstructs Adam Smith’s contribution to the conversation on the nature and value o... more This article reconstructs Adam Smith’s contribution to the conversation on the nature and value of free government in the eighteenth century. Smith contributes to this conversation in two ways. First, by embedding the idea of free government in a narrative of the progress of government, which traces the interplay between natural progress and social circumstances, and culminates in the establishment of modern free government in Britain. Second, by offering a theory of the form of free government fit for modern commercial states. Drawing on the “rational system of liberty” established in Britain, the Smithian model of free government is based on a “happy mixture” of republicanism and monarchism. Looking beyond the rational system, it merges the traditional concern for constitutional security against arbitrary power with a new science of policy intended to moderate the oppressive inclinations of legislators. The article contests Duncan’s Forbes’s reading of Smith as questioning the relation between individual liberty and free government, and brings Smith closer to Quentin Skinner’s work on the neo-Roman understanding of liberty. It suggests that Smith’s work may offer insight into some of the ways in which neo-Roman ideas were being creatively reformulated in the eighteenth century.
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The Review of Politics, 2021
Scholars have emphasized Adam Smith's critique of the dangers of patriotism, but have not paid cl... more Scholars have emphasized Adam Smith's critique of the dangers of patriotism, but have not paid close attention to its potential value. This article recovers from Smith's work an attractive model of patriotism without nationalism. The potential value of patriotism lies in inspiring individuals to realize an ideal of impartial beneficence, which consists in overcoming selfishness and other subpolity partialities and in promoting the greater happiness of all fellow citizens. Smith defends virtuous patriotism against strong cosmopolitanism by arguing that a global division of labor, which directs individuals to benefit their compatriots, more effectively serves the interests of humanity than directly trying to promote global happiness. This article illuminates aspects of Smith's work that contrast with the “invisible hand” argument and favor the conscious pursuit of public interest in some contexts. It contributes to recent discussions of patriotism a distinctive way of understanding its relation to impartiality.
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Journal of Political Ideologies, 2021
This article aims to situate Isaiah Berlin’s influential conceptualization of the liberal idea of... more This article aims to situate Isaiah Berlin’s influential conceptualization of the liberal idea of liberty in negative terms in the history of political ideologies, thus contributing to the understanding of the development of liberalism as an ideological tradition. More specifically, the article contributes to the understanding of two central themes in the ideological history of negative liberty. First, it shows that negative liberty has repeatedly served as an ideological weapon against radical democratic politics, while also pointing to an important shift in the manner of its employment: between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, we argue, negative liberty had turned from a deflationary device associated with excessive democracy into a moderate ideal endangered by totalitarian democracy. The second theme that we highlight and account for is the late development of the association of the liberal conception of liberty with the idea of negativity.
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Modern Intellectual History, 2022
Scholars have been paying increasing attention to the republican theory of liberty developed by ... more Scholars have been paying increasing attention to the republican theory of liberty developed by the eighteenth-century British radical Richard Price. This article studies his narrative of a revolution of liberty, which consists in the downfall of oppressive powers, the establishment of republican institutions, and the introduction of a utopian age. In distinction from work that has focused on the millennial aspects of Price's narrative of emancipation, I highlight its political contexts and functions, situating its early development in utopian speculations about agrarian equality and population, demonstrating how the American Revolution had transformed it into a rallying cry for revolutionaries, and reconstructing its role as a source of politically mobilizing hope. This study differs from much of the scholarship on Price in looking beyond the Anglo-American context and presenting his work as part of a European conversation on the prospects of republican utopia, a conversation whose participants included Rousseau, Turgot, Mirabeau, and Condorcet.
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Citizenship Studies, 2020
The scholarship on republicanism has moved away from perfectionist and communitarian to neo-Roman... more The scholarship on republicanism has moved away from perfectionist and communitarian to neo-Roman interpretations of the tradition, but the scholarship on citizenship in Israel has taken a different turn: republican citizenship has come to be identified with an unusual, ethnicized conception of it, sometimes described as ‘ethnorepublicanism’. This article critically discusses the ethnicization of the concept of republican citizenship in Israel Studies. The first part reconstructs how the concept of ethnorepublican citizenship, originally used to criticize the unequal status of Palestinian citizens in Israel, has morphed into an ideological justification of unequal citizenship. The second part argues that ethnorepublicanism rejects the republican commitment to the equal liberty of citizens and thus constitutes a perverse form of republicanism. The development of Israeli ethnorepublicanism illustrates the worrying potential of republican citizenship to be integrated into agendas of exclusionary nationalism and calls for further work on republicanism in multi-ethnic societies.
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Journal of the History of Ideas , 2015
This article reconsiders Bentham’s theory of liberty in relation to republican and democratic ide... more This article reconsiders Bentham’s theory of liberty in relation to republican and democratic ideas in the Age of Revolution. It reinterprets his jurisprudential definitions of liberty as ideological weapons intended to “cut the throat” of pro-American and proto-democratic discourse. In particular, his negative definition of individual liberty and his democratic and international definitions of political liberty were designed and used to caricature and draw to absurdity the republican ideal of self-government. The early Bentham, according to this interpretation, was a subversive critic of republicanism, who occupied its language of liberty and security while trying to neutralize its democratic potential.
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History of Political Thought, 2014
This article examines Adam Ferguson's critique of democratic participation in government and inte... more This article examines Adam Ferguson's critique of democratic participation in government and interprets it in the context of an eighteenth-century debate on the role of the people in the modern free state. By reconstructing the inegalitarian logic of the Scottish philosopher's theory of modern liberty, the article resolves the problem of consistency between his participatory ideals and his critique of democratic politics. Rather than being caught in a dilemma between republicanism and conservatism, as several scholars have argued, Ferguson drew on neoclassical and proto-liberal ideas in constructing a constitutionalist, civic-minded and elitist vision of the modern commercial and representative state
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Book Reviews by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר
The Political Science Reviewer, 2022
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Books by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר
Democracies are in crisis. Can republican theory contribute to reforming our political norms and ... more Democracies are in crisis. Can republican theory contribute to reforming our political norms and institutions? The 'neo-republican turn' has seen scholars using the classical republican tradition in reconstructing and developing a vision of public life as an alternative to liberalism. This volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on how republicanism can help transform democratic theory and respond to some of its most pressing challenges. Drawing on this recent revival of republican political thought, its chapters reflect on such issues as the republican definition of freedom as nondomination and its relation to democracy and populism, the ideal of the common good, domination in the workplace and in the family, republicanism in a globalized world, and radical republican politics. It will appeal to researchers and students in political theory, political philosophy and the history of ideas, and anyone interested in gaining greater insight into the prospects and challenges of republican democracy in today's world.
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Papers by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר
Book Reviews by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר
Books by Yiftah Elazar יפתח אלעזר