Hava'hā-yi nafsānī va manāfi': Persian 1401

In The Passions and the Interests, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the 17th and 18th centuries to illuminate the complex ideological transformation that took place, in which the pursuit of material gain—long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice—was taking place. - Determined the role of restraining rebellious and destructive human emotions. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation of the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuity between the old and the new, as opposed to the assumption of sharp discontinuity that is a common feature of Marxian and Weberian thought. Among the insights offered here is the ironic finding that capitalism was originally intended to do precisely what was soon condemned as its worst feature: the suppression of emotion in favor of "harmless," albeit one-dimensional, benefits of business life. Hirschman draws on the writings of a wide range of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Stewart, and Adam Smith, to portray this long ideological shift as an endogenous process. With a new afterword by Jeremy Edelman and a foreword by Amartya Sen, this classic Princeton edition sheds light on the complex ideological evolution from which capitalism emerged victorious, confirming Hirschman's place as one of our most influential and provocative thinkers.