ABSTRACT
The “new science” of political economy, that of the physiocrats, was attacked in its epistemological foundations by many authors of the Enlightenment, who saw it as a work of metaphysical mystification. Some of them, such as the philosophes Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785), and the lawyer, journalist and maverick Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet (1736–1794), also faced directly the political doctrines and economic policies of Quesnay and his disciples during the 1760–70 decades. This chapter first reveals fundamental divergences between the understandings of human behaviour and the social pact of Rousseau, Mably and Linguet, on the one hand, and of political economists on the other hand. It then turns to the contrasting positions of these authors concerning the main debate of the 1760s, that of the grain trade. Lastly, it considers the opposing ideals of a wealthy large-scale agricultural system governed by an absolute monarch, that of the physiocrats, versus the virtuous and democratic societies of their opponents.
