ABSTRACT

The young Persian's successful assimilation within this world of commercial sociability is set in contrast to the fate of Usbek, his older travelling companion, whose philosophical essentialism insists on the principle of transparency in social relations. To understand the cosmopolitan world of commercial sociability portrayed in the Persian Letters, it is first necessary to review Montesquieu's version of commercial politics, as outlined in The Spirit of the Laws. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, however, commercial sociability did exist, at least at the level of discourse and, as the Persian Letters demonstrates, this mode of social relations was conceived in cosmopolitan terms. That being said, it is equally true that the cosmopolitan world of commercial sociability stands opposed to essentialized modes of constructing the world and therein, perhaps, lies its continuing value. Scott Breuninger contextually examines the contributions of two key Irish thinkers, George Berkeley and Francis Hutcheson, to early eighteenth-century debates concerning human sociability.