商业社会的建构 _ 亚当.斯密启蒙思想研究.pdfVIP

ABSTRACT In Western Europe ，the Eighteenth –century ，not only is an enlightened century, but also a century when a commercial society is rising gradually. Just in such a background, Adam Smith sets about his travel of thinking which centers on the notion of “a commercial society”, and studies the essential principles about the mankind’s blessedness. About before 1970s, in Western academic circles, Adam Smith is only read as an economist or an ethicist. From then on, the study about him appears extraordinary splendor, but there is still no the study in which from the viewpoint of the Scottish Enlightenment, and by virtue of the theme of “a commercial society”, the ideas of Adam Smith is comprehensively surveyed as a whole. So, the above task will be as the object of the study of this treatise. In the first chapter, I will try to educe Adam Smith’s idea of “a commercial society”, from the two viewpoints of history and theory. Firstly, by describing the background of the Western Europe, especially Scotland, of the eighteenth century, I want to discuss that Adam Smith’s “commercial society” is a reflection and reconstruction of that time. Secondly, by surveying the “conjectural history” or “theoretical history” which is often used by many Scottish thinkers of that time, I want to describe Adam Smith’s the four-stages theory, that is there are in turn the nations of hunters, shepherds, husbandmen, and merchants in mankind’s history, and accordingly, I will infer that Adam Smith regards the “commercial society” as the center of his study. In the second chapter, I will try to illustrate Smith’s “commercial society” is a one where the self-interest