Eric Allison
About Me
I am a PhD. Candidate in Political Theory and American Politics at Michigan State University. I study the moral and philosophic foundations of economic life and commercial society. My research and teaching interests span American and European political thought.
I hold degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Philosophy) and St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD (Great Books), and was previously Associate Director at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University. My co-edited volume, Economic Morality: Ancient to Modern Readings was published by Lexington Press in 2015.
Research: Ancient vs. Early Modern views of Commercial Society and Economic Life
In my dissertation titled “Justice in the Marketplace: Socrates and John Locke on the Morality of Economic Life,” I examine the moral and political critique that Socrates makes of commercial society and economic activity through close readings of Plato’s Apology and Republic and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and then contrast those with the defense of economic life and commercial society presented by John Locke in his famous Second Treatise and his less well known writings on money.
In examining the morality of economic life, we examine moral evaluations of commercial society—such as the one we live in today. Both the ancient and the modern conceptions of economic life underly our current policy debates on questions of equality and inequality, business regulation and anti-trust, on the extent of the welfare state, and such trendy but not actually new proposals as the ‘universal basic income’ (Xenophon argued for one version of this). By understanding the original, and in many ways, most fundamental form of these debates, we can see more clearly the moral premises that inform our current policy positions.
Socrates—traditionally regarded as the founder of political philosophy—criticizes economic life in a way characteristic of ancient thought. Economic life, he says, is harmful to the individual because it distracts from the things that are truly important—the philosophic life, which is best life for human beings. Pursuit of wealth leads to honoring of the goods of the body (health and wealth) over the more important goods of the soul. Furthermore, economic life is closely tied to the desiring part of the soul—the lowest part of our natures, which we have in common with the unthinking animals. If we allow our desires to rule us, the rational part of our soul—that most connected with the divine—is suppressed. Pursuing economic goods is like a “fever” that consumes us, making us unhappy and restless, cowardly, and soft.
For Socrates, economic life is likewise harmful for societies because it leads to massive inequality, which in itself destabilizes the political order. In seeking more and more—a city can no longer be self-sufficient; it must grow continuously and militarily dominate its neighbors in order to take control of their resources. More abstractly, economic life is tied to the love of one’s own at the expense of the common good of the whole community; the more a society is built around economic life, the less its citizens are inclined to act in the interest of the common good. Drastic measures must be taken if these anti-social impulses are to be contained.
By contrast, for John Locke, the foundational figure of the modern understanding of commercial society, economic life is a positive good rather than a necessary evil. As free and equal self-owning beings, we have a property right in everything that we mix our labor with, and a life of productive work is intimately tied to our authorship of our selves. Rather than undermining the political order, the full unleashing of our economic desires leads to the radical improvement of the human condition through the actions of the “industrious and rational.”
In Locke’s conception of commercial society, men compete with each other over making profits—instead of killing each other as had been the case in the state of nature, or dominating each other with political ambition. Beyond this, economic production is positive sum; when one person gets ahead by making a better mousetrap, everyone else benefits too. And with the historically unprecedented rise in material living conditions that the early commercial society brought about—Locke tells us that a lowly day laborer in the England of his day lived better than the “Kings” of the indigenous peoples of North America—comes fundamental changes in human life—a new age of freedom, equality, and prosperity. The rational application of labor to what nature has given us increases its value by almost 10,000-fold.
Research and Teaching Interests
Political Theory:
History of Political Thought, PPE (“Philosophy, Politics, and Economics”), Contemporary Political and Social Theory.
American Politics:
American Founding Era, “Liberalism,” “Conservatism,” and contemporary “Post-Liberalism” in American political thought, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Dewey and Walter Lippmann.
Contact
Department of Political Science
Michigan State University
239 South Kedzie Hall
368 Farm Ln, East Lansing, MI 48823
Email:
alliso72@msu.edu
