ABSTRACT
If the privileged source of knowledge is rejected, there can be no science of Good and Evil. Locke insisted: ‘it appears not that God has ever given any such Authority to one Man over another, as to compel any one to his Religion’;1 he added that ‘no Peace and Security, no not so much as Common Friendship can ever be established or preserved amongst Men, so long as this Opinion prevails, that Dominion is founded in Grace, and that Religion is to be propagated by force of Arms’.2 Nevertheless, until belief in manifest truth is accepted, the danger of a revival of the ‘privileged point of view on the world’ should not be underestimated. The only defense against this danger is to give up that belief and uproot the plant that nourishes the claim of a science of Good and Evil. This is what Mandeville, Hume and Smith did with the advance of the market and the birth of an open society.
