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Audio:

Recommended Reading:

Powerpoint presentation
Complete texts of works discussed in the lecture:
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
- “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu
- Candide by Voltaire
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu
Candide by Voltaire
In the lecture, I identified Richard Cantillon as a physiocrat; not all historians class him thus, but he was writing in France before Quesnay and the other important members of the school. Cantillon’s Essay on the Nature of Trade in General (1755) is highly significant and recommended; see Mark Thornton’s article on it here.

The Enlightenment, Part II – Quiz

The thought of the 18th-century physiocrats was anticipated in some ways by the __________ philosophers of the late Middle Ages.
Adam Smith identified the _________________ as the thing that made nations wealthy.
Edward Gibbon controversially blamed _______________ in part for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
________________ wrote famous satires questioning the optimism of many Enlightenment thinkers.
The 28-volume ________________, edited by __________________, purported to be the summation of all human knowledge and challenged many traditional institutions of European society.
________________ was the most famous of the philosophes.

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