This essay analyzes the narrative elements of the partisan dispute concerning Hamilton’s fiscal proposals in the first years of the 1790s. Focusing especially on a sequence of letters from the summer of 1792 between Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, it proposes that we should study Hamilton’s response to his opponents as an aesthetic argument. More specifically, Hamilton crafts the nation’s economic policy by conceiving of the sublimity of capital and finance, and I propose we should read Hamilton’s writing with an eye toward Immanuel Kant’s theory of the sublime. The essay also situates Hamilton in relation to other theorists of the economic sublime, including Fredric Jameson, François Lyotard, and Max Weber.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract