Abstract

This dissertation offers a historically sensitive, analytical account of the usage of economic reasoning in the emergence of the contemporary concept of justice. Using the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Rawls as textual foci, the dissertation examines the way the practice of economic exchange has been understood as the site of asymmetric power relations and the way social inquiry into the economic sphere has been used to expose and criticize forms of domination. The model of political economy that I uncover is quintessentially moral, rooted in social practices, and geared towards the unmasking of hidden forms of power relations