Lisa Herzog's Inventing the market: Smith, Hegel, and political theory. Oxford University Press, 2013, 208 pp.

Abstract

As its title indicates the book analyses and compares the constructions of the market by Adam Smith and G. W. F. Hegel, and puts special emphasis on their relevance for contemporary philosophical issues.Two challenges are central to this project.First, the obvious interdisciplinary angle of this study means that it takes its subject matter, the market, from the field of economics, but the treatment it receives "has little in common with economic theory as it is [generally] practised today" (p.11).The intention of this study is rather to show how Smith's and Hegel's understanding of the market can benefit and deepen certain sterile (from the Hegelian point of view) contemporary philosophical debates such as the one on liberalism/ individualism versus communitarianism.Here Herzog's approach is certainly legitimate and deserves to be encouraged.Second, the author's sustained (and at times strained) efforts to make these historical thinkers "fruitful" for "contemporary problems" or at least current "debates" in political philosophy, lead her to advance a bold methodological programme which she calls "a post-Skinnerian approach" (pp.11-14).The merits of Quentin Skinner and in general of the 'Cambridge school' of the history of ideas are not denied or minimized, but the author does argue that such "contextual" readings may lead to neglecting "systematic questions" (p.12).This may be more contentious.Chapter 1 provides a general introduction that highlights the meaning and, indeed, the power of the market over our lives, while insisting that the market "has not figured prominently in the political theory of the last decades […] Often, the market seems to be the ghostly 'other' of the institutions political theorists focus on, something that needs to be tamed and restricted, but not itself made an issue" (p.3).By way of this diagnosis (and the criticism it implies) the general direction of this study becomes evident.The introduction also provides