Historicizing Self-Interest in the Modern Atlantic World

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<p>This volume historicizes the use of the notion of self-interest that at least since Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith¿s theories is considered a central component of economic theory.</p><p>Having in the twentieth century become one of the key-features of rational choice models, and thus is seen as an idealized trait of human behavior, self-interest has, despite Albert O. Hirschman¿s pivotal analysis of self-interest, only marginally been historicized. A historicization(s) of self-interest, however, offers new insights into the concept by asking why, when, for what reason and in which contexts the notion was discussed or referred to, how it was employed by contemporaries, and how the different usages developed and changed over time. This helps us to appreciate the various transformations in the perception of the notion, and also to explore how and in what ways different people at different times and in different regions reflected on or realized the act of considering what was in t