Center for the Study of Representative Institutions: “Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy”
On March 3, 2021, the Center for the Study of Representative Institutions at Yale University, a JMC partner program, will be hosting Greg Collins to discuss Edmund Burke and his economic beliefs.
Although many of Edmund Burke’s speeches and writings contain prominent economic dimensions, his economic thought seldom receives the attention it warrants. Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy stands as the most comprehensive study to date of this fascinating subject. In addition to providing rigorous textual analysis, Collins unearths previously unpublished manuscripts and employs empirical data to paint a rich historical and theoretical context for Burke’s economic beliefs. Collins integrates Burke’s reflections on trade, taxation, and revenue within his understanding of the limits of reason and his broader conception of empire. Such reflections demonstrate the ways that commerce, if properly managed, could be an instrument for both public prosperity and imperial prestige. More importantly, Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy raises timely ethical questions about capitalism and its limits. In Burke’s judgment, civilizations cannot endure on transactional exchange alone, and markets require ethical preconditions. There is a grace to life that cannot be bought.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 • 4:00 PM EST
A virtual event • Yale University
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Gregory Collins is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University. His book on Edmund Burke’s economic thought, titled Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Collins’s scholarly and teaching interests include the history of political thought, the philosophical and ethical implications of political economy, American political development, constitutional theory and practice, and the political theory of abolition. He has published articles on Burke’s economic thought in Review of Politics; Frederick Douglass’ constitutional theory in American Political Thought; Burke’s and Adam Smith’s views on Britain’s East India Company in Journal of the History of Economic Thought; Burke’s plan for the abolition of the slave trade in Slavery & Abolition; and Burke’s intellectual relationship with Leo Strauss and the Straussian political tradition in Perspectives on Political Science. His current book project is a comparative study of the political thought of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and Burke that addresses questions regarding empire, commerce, morality, and historiography.
Collins is a JMC fellow.
Learn more about Gregory Collins >>
The Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions (YCRI) at Yale University is an interdisciplinary pilot program, established for the purpose of developing the study of the theory and practice of representative government in the Anglo-American tradition. It is hosted by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
Click here to learn more about the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions >>
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