A Victorian Polymath: An Analysis of William Stanley Jevons's Thought

This work is a study of William Stanley Jevons’s thought. My thesis is: Jevons’s thought needs to be seen in the light of its anthropological foundations to enhance the understating of his works. The study of the anthropological foundations of his thought puts emphasis on some aspects of his thought which have been neglected, such as his religious views. Particular stress is also devoted to historical contextualisation, enabling us to understand how a number of Jevons’s concerns are rooted in his cultural background. In the first chapter of my thesis, I focus on Jevons’s epistemology and religious thought. Here I argue that his account of probability and natural laws had a theological foundation. I go on to further analyse Jevons’s logic and ontology by comparing his work with the tradition of the ars combinatoria. In the second chapter, I present Jevons’s moral and political thought. In the first part I again consider Jevons’s religious beliefs, focusing on his allegiance to Unitarianism. I then consider Jevons’s political thought in the light of a fundamental question: how could a society composed of selfish individuals be conceived? In the last part of the second chapter, I argue that Jevons appealed to Herbert Spencer’s theory of evolution to reconcile individuals and society. In the third chapter I address Jevons’s economic theory, arguing that it was strongly influenced by the other spheres of his thought. In the first part of the third chapter, I link Jevons’s economic thought to his moral and political philosophy. In the second part of this chapter, I focus on the role of mathematics in Jevons’s economic works. In the last part of the third chapter, I investigate Jevons’s representation of the economic subject.