ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith both had a modern theory of history as one of evolution, largely driven by the unintended consequences of human action. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith used his invisible hand metaphor to further dramatize the position that the deception involved in estimating the utility generated by wealth is a good thing for humankind. This chapter reviews Smith’s arguments concerning the cause for the increase in wealth at the very beginning of The Wealth of Nations. It discusses Smith’s ‘Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review'. The chapter provides a note on Bernard Mandeville’s second volume of his Fable of the Bees arguing that the work emphasizes the length of time and unintended consequences of human behaviour in the development of human society. Rousseau’s discourse on the origins and development of human inequality in his society is thus essentially a conjectural history of the largely unintended consequences of human actions, hence, of human evolution.
