Dennis C. Rasmussen

Perhaps the philosopher of the Enlightenment, a Scottish thinker.

Um, one book on him which a lot of people like is by Dennis Rasmussen, whom I know you've worked with, The Infidel and The Professor, the relationship between Hume and Adam Smith, the founder of, of, of the modern social science of economics.

Uh, we had, actually, Dennis Rasmussen on the show recently, um, talking about Frederick Douglass, uh, who he described in very enigmatic terms, uh, when it comes to race and the history of America and perhaps Jefferson's legacy, the constitutional legacy.

Back to Hume, Andrew, uh, and particularly the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith.

How much of your book and your analysis brings capitalism in? Because of course, many people, particularly on the left, Marxists see the history of race or of racism and scientific racism very much in the context Of the history of capitalism and its emergence at about the same time.

It's this sort of idealization of a world that actually never existed in some respects.

And I think if you read, in fact, it was the political scientist Dennis Rasmussen who wrote a fantastic book about commercial society and Rousseau and Smith.

And I draw on that quite a bit because it really shows how Smith is trying to answer Rousseau's objections to the Mercial Society.

So he says things like, well, you should think about the fact that this world of the noble savage that you're eulogizing is also a very cold world and lots of people die really early.