Adam Smith reconsidered. History, liberty, and the foundations of modern politics

Abstract

that he wished to defend scripture and biblical history and when he compared Hinduism it was to other “paganisms”, not Christianity. He also moved away from the viewing Hinduism as a rational religion, repositioning it as “pious and sublime”, “mystical and esoteric” (268, 281). This was based on Vedānta school of Indian philosophy, which Jones viewed as like Platonism. Playing a key role in this shift is that Jones was sympathetic to the Rational Dissent of Richard Price and a believer in Christianity. Jones was neither a deist nor “spotless admirer of Hindu culture”, as his criticism of purportedly self-aggrandising, chauvinistic Brahmins indicates (280). To Jones, Hinduism was an ancient religion of a philosophical character but ultimately one of human creation, unlike Christianity. His account of Hinduism provided a “much neater complement to an ideological account of the British administration as a benevolent guardian of ‘native customs’ than Patterson’s other authors (313). Jones directed British perceptions of Indian religion away from rational religion and towards mysticism and sublimity, a position that had few heterodox implications, and indicated instead “the institutionalisation of orientalist knowledge as a branch of imperial governance” (31). Religion, Enlightenment and Empire is an exemplary work demonstrating how lesserknown figures contributed in significant ways to eighteenth-century European thought and imperial history. It is also a very fine first book. I am a little sceptical of Patterson’s definition of “Enlightenment” to describe the self-perception of individuals who believed they were living through an age of enlightenment. This untethers our notion of “Enlightenment” from the long eighteenth century and can be applied to anyone making that identification; similarly, eighteenth-century thinkers who believed they were living in an age of Enlightenment often believed that period began with the invention of print and the reformation of letters. Further, it may be a job for others, but we could have benefitted from Patterson’s assessment of how the shift in perceptions of Indian religion related to the wider practice of the “enlightened” study of religion. Thus, the “deistic” degeneration model of religious change suggests her cast were either at odds with or ignorant of progressive histories of civil society (including religion) and mainly reiterated the model of Christian mythography in deistic or universalistic guise. A similar observation could be made of the relationship between these accounts and changing “enlightened” notions of human nature, especially whether the Company Men believed that human nature was fundamentally prone to superstition or whether its existence in India was purely the result of Brahmic manipulation. These are less criticisms and more thoughts provoked by a stimulating, well-researched, and cogently argued book.