Isaac de Pinto
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Isaac de Pinto (10 April 1717 – 13 August 1787) was a Dutch merchant and banker of Portuguese
Life
Pinto had his
Pinto was a man of broad learning, but he did not begin to write until nearly forty-five, when he acquired a reputation by defending his co-religionists against Voltaire. In 1762, he published his Essai sur le Luxe at Amsterdam. In the same year, Pinto published Apologie pour la Nation Juive, ou Réflexions Critiques and sent a manuscript copy of this work directly to Voltaire. Antoine Guenée reproduced the Apologie at the head of his Lettres de Quelques Juifs Portugais, Allemands et Polonais, à M. de Voltaire.
In 1761, Isaac and his brother Aron went
Pinto opposed Raynal after the publication of Raynal's book on global colonization L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (The Philosophical and Political History of the Two Indies).[7] He disagreed with Hume, Vivant de Mezague and Mirabeau. His treatise was twice reprinted, besides being translated into English by Philip Francis (politician)[8] and into German by Carl August von Struensee, the Prussian minister of finance. His Précis des Arguments Contre les Matérialistes was published at The Hague in 1774. He seems also to have had Jean-Paul Marat pushed from the stairs and ordered to leave his house.[9] In 1776, he wrote against the American Revolution; he did, however, approve of the Boston Tea Party. Around 1780, he wrote against an alliance of the Dutch Republic with France, although this alliance was later realized in the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1785).
Legacy
Various authors, both contemporary and later, commented on Pinto's writings. One of them, Karl Marx, derisively referred to Pinto - whom he regarded as a major exponent of the free-market liberalism he criticized - as the "Pindar of the Amsterdam stock exchange" for his glorification of the Dutch financial system.
References
- ^ POPKIN, R. H. (1970). Hume and Isaac de Pinto. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 12(3), p. 430.
- ^ J.S. Wijler (1923) Isaac de Pinto, Sa vie et ses oeuvres, p. 108
- ^ Hume's Political Economy edited by Margaret Schabas & Carl Wennerlind
- ^ Jews and Modern Jewish Identity: Rethinking the Enlightenment by Harvey Mitchell
- ^ Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James A. Harris
- ^ POPKIN, R. H. (1970). Hume and Isaac de Pinto. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 12(3), 417–430. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40754109
- ^ Koen Stapelbroek, ‘Raynal, Luzac and Pinto: Global Trade, the Dutch Republic and the History and the Constitution of the Commercial State’, in Antonella Alimento en Gianluigi Goggi, eds., Autour de l’Abbé Raynal: Genèse et Enjeux Politiques et l’Histoire des deux Indes (Centre International D’étude du XVIIIe Siècle; Ferney Voltaire, 2018) 45-61.
- ^ An essay on circulation and credit: in four parts; and a letter on the jealousy of commerce. From the French of Monsieur de Pinto. Translated, with annotations, by the Rev. S. Baggs, M.A. Traité de la circulation et du crédit. English (http://ota.ox.ac.uk/id/5030) by Pinto, Isaac de, 1715-1787., licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).
- ^ J.S. Wijler (1923) Isaac de Pinto, Sa vie et ses oeuvres, p. 20
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Pinto". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
- Didot, Nouvelle Biographie Générale, p. 282;
- Barbier, Dictionnaire des Anonymes;
- Dictionnaire d'Economie Politicale, ii.;
- Quérard, La France Littéraire, in Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung, 1787, No. 273.
- Nijenhuis, I.J.A.(1992) Een joodse "philosophe". Isaac de Pinto (1717-1787) en de ontwikkeling van de politieke economie in de Europese Verlichting.