Transcendental economics: The quest to harmonize economic and moral law in nineteenth-century American social thought

This dissertation argues that the dominant strain of nineteenth-century political economy in the United States was closely linked to the moral philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Because Emerson assumed that the natural universe was a metaphorical manifestation of the human mind, he believed that the laws of natural science ultimately would prove to the synonymous with the moral laws of the human conscience. "Transcendental Economists," such as Henry C. Carey, Henry George, and John Bates Clark, applied Emerson's concept of harmony between science and morality to political economy. They argued that the social laws revealed by economic theory were both natural and moral.;The philosophical assumptions of Transcendental Economists differed from the assumptions of classical economists such as John Stuart Mill and from the assumptions of revolutionary economists such as Karl Marx. Classical economists argued that "the niggardliness of nature" imposed strict limits on economic progress. Revolutionary economists argued that a socialist revolution could overcome these limits. Transcendental economists denied the existence of any limits to economic progress within capitalist societies. They believed that the harmony and abundance of nature automatically would produce a market society of perpetual economic development without a social revolution.;The dissertation follows the attempts of several transcendental economists to prove this ambitious thesis throughout the nineteenth century in the face of the disconcerting consequences of America's economic development. The first four chapters focus on the work of Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Carey during the antebellum period. Emerson and Thoreau articulated the underlying philosophical assumptions of transcendental economics. Carey translated these assumptions into a formal economic theory. The last four chapters focus on the "crisis of transcendental economics," which occurred when Carey's antebellum predictions of social harmony proved false during long depression from 1873-1897, a period of increasing class conflict. During this crisis, George, Clark, and Thorstein Veblen, each in his own way, sought to reconstruct transcendental belief in moral harmony between science and economics. Although the project of the transcendental economists ultimately failed, it has had a deep influence on American economic theory and on our understanding of the American economic system.