ABSTRACT
This chapter is the result of work begun a few years ago,1 starting from the intention to retrace the intellectual and historical background of a particular use of the term “benevolence” in economic contexts. I was surprised, in fact, by the parallelism between the famous “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (Smith 1976:1.ii.2), and a sentence of the Latin philosopher Seneca who, in De beneficiis (1982), states that a merchant who sells his corn produces no benefit, although he really saves the life of a man or of a whole city. None of the persons helped by his act is in debt towards him because he did not think to comfort them, but only to look after his own interests (Seneca, De beneficiis VI, 14, 3-4).2 Another passage from the same work has a vaguely Smithian flavour, as it explains that whatever is done for the sake of gain is not a benefit: ad alienum commodum pro suo veniunt (“they [merchants] give advantage to others in order to have their own”) (Seneca, De beneficiis IV, 13, 3). They produce a positive outcome without having this purpose in mind as a sort of “unintended consequence” with which the ancient world, too, was acquainted in its own way.
