It is no secret that a humanities scholar must always engage in a dialogue with uncertainty. For world-class scholars, however specialised or broad their field of research, the threat of having to resort to handouts from Kela corrodes the soul. We scholars of early modern political classics have a secret weapon though: we are able to compare the theories we study for our own pleasure to the world we live in. This doesn’t make us Teflon-coated smartasses, but it does create a certain Kafkaesque undertone that usually enables us to smile at the world even when our interlocutors present as their own the arguments we had just used.

The strategy of smiling at the world is applicable to junior football competitions in Espoo or, let’s say, reflecting on the human tragedy which resulted from the bursting of the Argentinian dollar bubble from the perspective of the Hobbesian state of nature hypothesis. I myself specialise in applying the Mandevillean worldview to daily life. What do I mean by that? The best way to find out is to read my book, Mandeville and Hume, Anatomists of civil society, with imagination. But I can present a shortened answer here as well. People value their self-worth (and pride) higher than their life and money.