Steuart, Hegel, Chamley : A case upon the nature of ‘influence’
Résumé
From July 25 to 31, 1796, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, then working as a private tutor for the aristocracy in Bern, took a mountain hike in the neighbouring Alps. Hegel travelled from Thoune to Altdorg via the Jungfrau and the Uri, a land of glaciers. As Hegel began studying economics for good, the query would reappear: in his reading of Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political economy, Hegel would make his first step into economic theorizing. In Frankfurt, Hegel was not yet a tenured Gymnasium professor. He was again a private tutor, experiencing hardships of a salaried life – though in wealthy families. Paul Chamley selected excerpts of interest based on his first assessment of the thesis that there surely exists a solid ‘system of political economy’ by Hegel. He assumed it rather than he found it as a result of his comparative study.