Publication: Piketty misreads Austen and ignores Smith
Loading...
Files
Official URL
Full text at PDC
Publication Date
2015-04
Authors
Advisors (or tutors)
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Citations
Exportar
Abstract
El gran éxito editorial de Thomas Piketty, El capital en el siglo XXI, utiliza referencias literarias, y en particular las novelas de Jane Austen, para ilustrar el problema de la desigualdad. Su análisis es insatisfactorio en dos aspectos principales. En primer lugar, presenta una visión distorsionada de los escritos de Austen, quien de hecho reconoció que la sociedad de su tiempo era más dinámica y móvil que lo que sugiere Piketty. En Segundo lugar, Piketty ignora a un pensador tan relevante como Adam Smith, que está presente en las obras de Jane Asten a través de un principio clave de su teoría del comportamiento y del crecimiento económico: los seres humanos no procuran ser iguales, sino mejores.
Thomas Piketty’s best-seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, utilizes literary references, and particularly Jane Austen’s novels, to illustrate the problem of inequality. His analysis is unsatisfactory in two major aspects. First, he presents a distorted picture of Austen’s writings. Austen, in fact, recognized that the society of her time was more dynamic and socially mobile than what Piketty suggests. Second, Piketty ignores a thinker as relevant as Adam Smith, which is present in Jane Austen’s works through a key principle of his theory of conduct and of economic growth: human beings do not strive to be equal, but to be better.
Thomas Piketty’s best-seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, utilizes literary references, and particularly Jane Austen’s novels, to illustrate the problem of inequality. His analysis is unsatisfactory in two major aspects. First, he presents a distorted picture of Austen’s writings. Austen, in fact, recognized that the society of her time was more dynamic and socially mobile than what Piketty suggests. Second, Piketty ignores a thinker as relevant as Adam Smith, which is present in Jane Austen’s works through a key principle of his theory of conduct and of economic growth: human beings do not strive to be equal, but to be better.
Description
UCM subjects
Unesco subjects
Keywords
Citation
Auerbach, Nina 1972. O Brave New World: Evolution and Revolution in Persuasion, English Literary History, Vol. 39, Nº 1, March, 112-128.
Austen, Jane 1982 (AW). The Works of Jane Austen, introduction by John Gilbert, London: Spring Books.
Austen, Jane 2003. Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, M. Drabble ed., London: Penguin.
Batho, Edith C. 1933. The Later Wordsworth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benditt, Theodore 2003. The Virtue of Pride: Jane Austen as Moralist, The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 37, Nº 2, 245-257.
Brodey, Inger Sigrun 1999. Adventures of a Female Werther: Jane Austen’s Revision of Sensibility, Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 23, Nº 1, April, 110-126.
Butler, Marilyn 1975. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chamberlain, Shannon 2014. The economics of Jane Austen, The Atlantic, 3 August. http://goo.gl/qMlTaJ Accessed 15 October 2014.
Chwe, Michael Suk-Young 2013. Jane Austen, Game Theorist, Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Clune, Michael W. 2014. Piketty Envy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 August. http://goo.gl/HZs9Ug Accessed 5 November 2014.
Copeland, Edward 2011. Money, in E. Copeland and J. McMaster eds., The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 127-143.
Craig, Sheryl 2010. Northanger Abbey: Money in the Bank, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, Nº 32, June, 144-153.
Dadlez, E.M. 2009. Mirrors to one another. Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Daiches, David 1948. Jane Austen, Karl Marx and the Aristocratic Dance, American Scholar, Vol. 17, Nº 3, Summer, 289-98.
Duckworth, Alistair M. 1994. The Improvement of the Estate. A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels, Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ellis, Markman 2005. Trade, in J. Todd ed.. Jane Austen in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 415-424.
Fergus, Jan 2005. Biography, in J. Todd ed.. Jane Austen in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-11.
Fergus, Jan 2011. The professional woman writer, in E. Copeland and J. McMaster eds., The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-20.
Fricke, Christel 2014. The Challenges of Pride and Prejudice: Adam Smith and Jane Austen on Moral Education, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Nº 269 (3), 343-372.
Gallop, David 1999. Jane Austen and the Aristotelian Ethic, Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 23, Nº 1, April, 96-109.
Kirkham, Margaret 1983. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction, Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press.
Lane, Maggie 1995. Jane Austen’s England, London: Robert Hale.
Knox-Shaw, Peter 2005. Philosophy, in J. Todd ed.. Jane Austen in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 346-356.
MacDonagh, Oliver 1991. Jane Austen. Real and Imagined Worlds, New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Mansell, Darrel 1973. The Novels by Jane Austen. An Intetrpretation, London: Macmillan.
McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen 2014. Measured, Unmeasured, Mismeasured, and Unjustified Pessimism: A Review Essay of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twentieth Century, Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics, Vol. 7, Issue 2, 73-115, Autumn.
McMaster, Juliet 2011. Class, in E. Copeland and J. McMaster eds., The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 111-126.
Michie, Elsie B. 2000. Austen’s Powers: Engaging with Adam Smith in Debates about Wealth and Virtue, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 34, Nº 1, Fall, 5-27.
Moler, Kenneth L. 1967. The Bennet Girls and Adam Smith on Vanity and Pride. Philological Quarterly, Vol. 46, Nº 4, October, 567-9.
Newman, Karen 1983. Can This Marriage Be Saved: Jane Austen Makes Sense of an Ending, English Literary History, Vol. 50, Nº 4, Winter, 693-710.
Piketty, Thomas 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Roberts, Warren 2005. Nationalism and empire, in J. Todd ed.. Jane Austen in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 327-345.
Rodríguez Braun, Carlos 2004. Spencer’s Law. In An Eponymous Dictionary of Economics: A Guide to Laws and Theorems Named After Economists, J.Segura and C.Rodríguez Braun eds., Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Ryle, Gilbert 1968. Jane Austen and the Moralists, in B. C. Southam ed., Critical Essays on Jane Austen, London: Routledge, 286-301, reprinted from The Oxford Review, Nº 1, 1966.
Sales, Roger 1994. Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England, London and New York: Routledge.
Shuchman, Daniel 2014. Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century, Wall Street Journal, 21 April. http://goo.gl/hHxtYr Accessed 25 September 2014.
Selwyn, David 2011. Making a living, in E. Copeland and J. McMaster eds., The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 144-158.
Skwire, Sarah and Horwitz, Steven 2014. Thomas Piketty’s Literary Offenses, The Freeman, September 11. http://goo.gl/EEdjvA Accessed 20 November 2014.
Smith, Adam 1759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments reprinted in D.D.Raphael and A.L.Macfie eds. 1982, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
Smith, Adam 1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, reprinted in R.H.Campbell, A.S.Skinner and W.B.Todd eds. 1981, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
Smith, Adam 1896. Lectures on Jurisprudence, reprinted in R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein eds. 1982, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Southam, Brian 2005. Professions, in J. Todd ed.. Jane Austen in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 366-376.
Trepanier, Lee 2014. Marriage and the Marketplace in Jane Austen’s Emma and Mansfield Park, in L. Trepanier ed., The Free Market and the Human Condition. Essays on Economics and Culture, Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
Viner, Jacob 1927. Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 35, Nº 2, 198–232.
Zietlow, Paul N. 1965. Luck and Fortuitous Circumstances in Persuasion: Two Interpretations, English Literary History, Vol. 32, Nº 2, June, 179-195.
Weinsheimer, Joel 1972. Chance and the Hierarchy of Marriages in Pride and Prejudice, English Literary History, Vol. 39, Nº 3, September, 404-419.