This book uses archival and published sources to place Say in context, at the confluence of several major currents in social philosophy. The Say that emerges from this study is far from being the one dimensional popularizer of Smith and proponent of libertarian ideology that he is often depicted as. Rather he is an eighteenth-century republican trying to knit togther support for free markets and industrial development with a profound respect for the importance of the legislator, the administrator and the educator in the creation and maintenance of civil society

PART I Introduction; A Brief Biography of Jean-Batiste Say; Jean-Baptiste Say and The Institutions of Ideologie PART II Towards a Psychology of Rational Individuals; The Science of Life in the Eighteenth Century; Physiology, Order and Chaos PART III Untilitarianism and the Body Politick; The Role of the Administrators, Legislators and Educators; On Domestic Virtue and Social Class PART IV Ideologie and The Social Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say; Rational Mechanics and Physiology as Metaphor in Jean-Baptiste Say's Social Economics; Towards an Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say TRANSLATIONS Introduction: The Public Morality Contest of Year VIII; 'Address to Potential Contestants' P-L Roederer (15 Vendemiaire VI); 'Olbie, or an essay on the means of reforming the morals of a nation' Jean-Baptiste Say (Year VIII);'If I were to rewrite my Olbie...' Jean-Baptiste Say (1826?) Notes Bibliography