The Scottish Enlightenment’s Influence on the Liberalism of Luigi Einaudi

The article focuses on the understudied topic of the Scottish Enlightenment’s impact on European liberal economic-political thought in the first half of the twentieth century as interpreted principally by Luigi Einaudi. It demonstrates that the Scottish Enlightenment, primarily represented by Hume and Smith, with its original ideas on self-love, self-interest, the motivations of people’s economic behavior, and free government laid the groundwork for the development of Einaudi’s economic-political theses in his ongoing confrontation with the main liberal authors of his time, from Croce to Freiburg ordoliberalists.