Romanticism ( )

An international artistic and a philosophical movement which redefined the fundamental ways in which people thought about themselves and the world in Western Cultures. Period overview:

Economic Paradigms: In the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain, most notably by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. Economic liberalism was a product of the Enlightenment in its emphasis on universal laws governing economy and affirmation of self-interest. Formulation of “scientific rules” governing economy was against the absolute control of government over economy. These champions of economic rules believed that individual freedom was best safeguarded by the reduction of government powers to a minimum. They wanted to impose constitutional limits on government, to establish the rule of law, and to sweep away restrictions on individual enterprises, specifically, the state regulation of economy.

Economic Paradigms: National wealth comes from labour: the produce that requires labour to produce. In England labour at the time of Adam Smith was primarily invested in landed produce. The value of the landed produce made by the farmer was the basis of national wealth and wealth distribution: the farmer would use that wealth to purchase tools, goods made by artisans/handicraftsmen, and other non-agricultural products. Their purchases would keep the national industry and other trades going. Thus if high tariffs were levied on imported goods, it meant part of the value produced by the farmers would be used to pay the tariff, and less money would be used to purchase the above mentioned goods. Higher tariffs would also lead to less investment on the farm hence farmer could not raise crop yield the following year, and that would decrease the tax base for state. Higher tariffs will also lead to 1) trade monopoly in England that raised prices of the non-agricultural goods, and 2) depletion of farmers’ resources because they now had to spend so much more on purchasing non-agricultural goods. In the long run, this would decrease the value of farm produce and hurt national industries since the farmers would buy less and less.

Philosophical Paradigms: Utilitarianism was a reaction against the Enlightenment principles and the French Revolution. It sought to be concrete rather than abstract. The word utility meant anything that was not abstract; something tangible and mundane. It came in the wake of the English industrial Revolution. Its founder, Jeremy Bentham, decided it meant quantifiable pleasure and that government should promote the greatest pleasure of the greatest number of people. John.Stuart.Mill ( )

Philosophical Paradigms: Born into the family of a leading member of the British Utilitarian school, James Mill, John Stuart Mill championed the utilitarian theory but modified it to include not just quantitative but also qualitative happiness/pleasure. Like the other Utilitarians, he was hoping to replace traditional mores and values with this concept of happiness, a happiness one pursued not just for oneself, but also for others because of the natural human sentiment of sympathy. Indeed, sympathy was central to Mill's argument for a less politically restrictive society, because humans were by nature altruistic as a result of the natural sentiment of sympathy. And only when political restrictions and social conventions were relaxed could humans do good things for the sake of goodness, instead of just avoiding legal punishment and social condemnation. Mill is usually regarded as the champion of political liberalism, marked especially by his treatise On Liberty (1859). There he gave the most systematic treatment of why, even a democratic representative government had to restrict its power. Reasons he included were the bias of the voters and that not every one was equally politically active, therefore decisions were often made on behalf of those who were most politically active. Unlike the Enlightenment philosophers who championed rights such as liberty and equality but did not extend them to women, and not always to the poor, Mill had a greater respect to the sanctity of individual freedom, and treated women as equals.