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The Turgot Collection
This outstanding book was ten years in the making, but it is finally here and the result is startling. It is a pocket edition, super economical, 525 pages of Turgot – the bulk of his life’s work, all beautifully organized.
He might have been the key influence on Jefferson but, in any case, he certainly was the great French liberal of the 18th century, not only a proto-Austrian but also a fantastic defender of human liberty in every respect.
Of course the book includes his famed and pioneering "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth." But this volume covers economics, history, social theory, philosophy, and even religion. It also includes his correspondence with Voltaire, Hume, Condorcet, and others.
You will find yourself wrapped up in his worldview and thinking like a liberal French aristocrat of the time. Murray Rothbard's brilliant essay on Turgot is the preface. David Gordon wrote the lucid and helpful introductions to each section. Here you find not only his economics but his theory of history and life itself.
Turgot might be the greatest, least known of the enlightenment liberals. This volume should certainly contribute to making a revival possible.
As Murray Rothbard writes:
"Not only was Turgot a busy administrator, but his intellectual interests were wide-ranging, and most of his spare time was spent reading and writing, not in economics, but in history, literature, philology, and the natural sciences. His contributions to economics were brief, scattered, and hasty. His most famous work, “Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth” (1766), comprised only fifty-three pages. This brevity only highlights the great contributions to economics made by this remarkable man. In the history of thought, the style is often the man, and Turgot’s clarity and lucidity of style mirrors the virtues of his thought, and contrasts refreshingly to the prolix and turgid prose of the physiocrat school.
He might have been the key influence on Jefferson but, in any case, he certainly was the great French liberal of the 18th century, not only a proto-Austrian but also a fantastic defender of human liberty in every respect.
Of course the book includes his famed and pioneering "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth." But this volume covers economics, history, social theory, philosophy, and even religion. It also includes his correspondence with Voltaire, Hume, Condorcet, and others.
You will find yourself wrapped up in his worldview and thinking like a liberal French aristocrat of the time. Murray Rothbard's brilliant essay on Turgot is the preface. David Gordon wrote the lucid and helpful introductions to each section. Here you find not only his economics but his theory of history and life itself.
Turgot might be the greatest, least known of the enlightenment liberals. This volume should certainly contribute to making a revival possible.
As Murray Rothbard writes:
"Not only was Turgot a busy administrator, but his intellectual interests were wide-ranging, and most of his spare time was spent reading and writing, not in economics, but in history, literature, philology, and the natural sciences. His contributions to economics were brief, scattered, and hasty. His most famous work, “Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth” (1766), comprised only fifty-three pages. This brevity only highlights the great contributions to economics made by this remarkable man. In the history of thought, the style is often the man, and Turgot’s clarity and lucidity of style mirrors the virtues of his thought, and contrasts refreshingly to the prolix and turgid prose of the physiocrat school.
534 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
87 books11 followersLouis XVI appointed French economist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as controller general in 1774 but, after he proposed unpopular reforms with the aristocracy, dismissed him in 1776.
People today best remember this baron de Laune, a statesman, as an early advocate for liberalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Ro...
People today best remember this baron de Laune, a statesman, as an early advocate for liberalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Ro...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 5, 2020
useful for studying
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
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[Turgot - wikipedia]
[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne; 10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781), commonly known as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Originally considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to be the first economist to have recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.]
[In 1760, while travelling in the east of France and Switzerland, he visited Voltaire, who became one of his chief friends and supporters.]
[He was fond of verse-making, and tried to introduce into French verse the rules of Latin prosody, his translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid into classical hexameter verses being greeted by Voltaire as "the only prose translation in which he had found any enthusiasm."]
[As minister of the navy from 1774 to 1776, he opposed financial support for the American Revolution. He believed in the virtue and inevitable success of the revolution but warned that France could neither financially nor socially afford to overtly aid it. French intellectuals saw America as the hope of mankind and magnified American virtues to demonstrate the validity of their ideals along with seeing a chance to avenge their defeat in the Seven Years' War.]
[Turgot, however, emphasized what he believed were American inadequacies. He complained that the new American state constitutions failed to adopt the physiocratic principle of distinguishing for purposes of taxation between those who owned land and those who did not, the principle of direct taxation of property holders had not been followed, and a complicated legal and administrative structure had been created to regulate commerce.]
---
[In character Turgot was simple, honourable and upright, with a passion for justice and truth. He was an idealist, his enemies would say a doctrinaire, and certainly the terms "natural rights," "natural law," frequently occur in his writings. His friends speak of his charm and gaiety in intimate intercourse, but among strangers he was silent and awkward, and produced the impression of being reserved and disdainful. On one point both friends and enemies agree, and that is his brusquerie and his lack of tact in the management of men; August Oncken [de] points out with some reason the schoolmasterish tone of his letters, even to the king.]
[Encyclopedia Brittannica 1911]
Schumpter on Turgot
[wiki]
[Schumpeter's scholarship is apparent in his posthumous History of Economic Analysis,[23] although some of his judgments seem idiosyncratic and sometimes cavalier[according to whom?]. For instance, Schumpeter thought that the greatest 18th century economist was Turgot, not Adam Smith, as many consider, and he considered Léon Walras to be the "greatest of all economists", beside whom other economists' theories were "like inadequate attempts to catch some particular aspects of Walrasian truth".]
[Schumpeter criticized John Maynard Keynes and David Ricardo for the "Ricardian vice." According to Schumpeter, Ricardo and Keynes reasoned in terms of abstract models, where they would freeze all but a few variables. Then they could argue that one caused the other in a simple monotonic fashion. This led to the belief that one could easily deduce policy conclusions directly from a highly abstract theoretical model.]
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Books
Douglas Dakin - Turgot and the Ancien Regime in France - Methuen 1939
Peter D. Groenewegen - Eighteenth-Century Economics: Turgot, Beccaria and Smith and their Contemporaries - Routledge 2002
Steven L. Kaplan - Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV - Nijhoff 1976
Ronald L. Meek - Social Science and the Ignoble Savage - Cambridge 1976
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot - The Turgot Collection: Writings, Speeches, and Letters of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune - Mises Institute 2011
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
---
[Turgot - wikipedia]
[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne; 10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781), commonly known as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Originally considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to be the first economist to have recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.]
[In 1760, while travelling in the east of France and Switzerland, he visited Voltaire, who became one of his chief friends and supporters.]
[He was fond of verse-making, and tried to introduce into French verse the rules of Latin prosody, his translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid into classical hexameter verses being greeted by Voltaire as "the only prose translation in which he had found any enthusiasm."]
[As minister of the navy from 1774 to 1776, he opposed financial support for the American Revolution. He believed in the virtue and inevitable success of the revolution but warned that France could neither financially nor socially afford to overtly aid it. French intellectuals saw America as the hope of mankind and magnified American virtues to demonstrate the validity of their ideals along with seeing a chance to avenge their defeat in the Seven Years' War.]
[Turgot, however, emphasized what he believed were American inadequacies. He complained that the new American state constitutions failed to adopt the physiocratic principle of distinguishing for purposes of taxation between those who owned land and those who did not, the principle of direct taxation of property holders had not been followed, and a complicated legal and administrative structure had been created to regulate commerce.]
---
[In character Turgot was simple, honourable and upright, with a passion for justice and truth. He was an idealist, his enemies would say a doctrinaire, and certainly the terms "natural rights," "natural law," frequently occur in his writings. His friends speak of his charm and gaiety in intimate intercourse, but among strangers he was silent and awkward, and produced the impression of being reserved and disdainful. On one point both friends and enemies agree, and that is his brusquerie and his lack of tact in the management of men; August Oncken [de] points out with some reason the schoolmasterish tone of his letters, even to the king.]
[Encyclopedia Brittannica 1911]
Schumpter on Turgot
[wiki]
[Schumpeter's scholarship is apparent in his posthumous History of Economic Analysis,[23] although some of his judgments seem idiosyncratic and sometimes cavalier[according to whom?]. For instance, Schumpeter thought that the greatest 18th century economist was Turgot, not Adam Smith, as many consider, and he considered Léon Walras to be the "greatest of all economists", beside whom other economists' theories were "like inadequate attempts to catch some particular aspects of Walrasian truth".]
[Schumpeter criticized John Maynard Keynes and David Ricardo for the "Ricardian vice." According to Schumpeter, Ricardo and Keynes reasoned in terms of abstract models, where they would freeze all but a few variables. Then they could argue that one caused the other in a simple monotonic fashion. This led to the belief that one could easily deduce policy conclusions directly from a highly abstract theoretical model.]
---
Books
Douglas Dakin - Turgot and the Ancien Regime in France - Methuen 1939
Peter D. Groenewegen - Eighteenth-Century Economics: Turgot, Beccaria and Smith and their Contemporaries - Routledge 2002
Steven L. Kaplan - Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV - Nijhoff 1976
Ronald L. Meek - Social Science and the Ignoble Savage - Cambridge 1976
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot - The Turgot Collection: Writings, Speeches, and Letters of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune - Mises Institute 2011
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