Jeremy Gilkison

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This was the power of self-interest. Hume was careful to distinguish it from mere selfishness. Self-interest was instead the passionate desire to improve our material circumstances that beats in every human heart and fills every human mind, even in the most barbarous and primitive societies. As Kames put it, “Men thirst after opulence.” That thirst, Hume realized, was the driving engine of social and economic change.
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
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