Routledge Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

Product Description In this important volume, Joost Hengstmengel examines the doctrine of divine providence and how it served as explanation and justification in economic debates in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries throughout Western Europe. The author discusses five different areas in which God was associated with the economy: international trade, division of labour, value and price, self-interest, and poverty and inequality. Ultimately, it is shown that theological ideas continued to influence economic thought beyond the Medieval period, and that the science of economics as we know it today has theological origins.Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, the history of theology, philosophy and intellectual history. Review "[A] valuable book on an important topic, and one that I learnt much from. It will be especially valuable to historians of economics who lack training in theology which is necessary to come to grips with writings that emerged from the theology-soaked intellectual culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. No other work is as comprehensive and clear on the topics it covers." - Paul Oslington, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics About the Author Joost Hengstmengel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University, the Netherlands.