| The Virtue of Profit? searches for the origins of positive attitudes toward profit (the acquisitive ethos) displayed by both the landed and intellectual elite in 18th-century Britain. Views of trade and profit during the early Middle Ages, mercantilism, and the 18th century are reviewed. The question of the shift in attitudes is approached predominantly from the perspectives of historical materialism, idealism, and less significantly from neoclassicism. From the idealist paradigm, the acquisitive ethos is portrayed variously as the product of developments in intellectual history, including political philosophy (Machiavelli), literature (16th-century bourgeois hero-tales), logic (nominalism), and natural philosophy. These explanations are rejected in favour of historical materialism, from which the ethos is depicted as the result of changes in material production. Thus the spontaneous development of agrarian capitalism amongst the traditional landed aristocracy is traced, and linked to the shift in economic values. |
