Adam Smith: An Enlightened LifeThis fascinating intellectual biography of Adam Smith dramatically rewrites the economist’s life and offers new insight into his iconic concepts The great eighteenth-century British economist Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated as the founder of modern economics. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This biography shows the extent to which Smith's great works, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of one of the most ambitious projects of the Euruopean Enlightenment, a grand “Science of Man" that would encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics, and which was only half complete on Smith’s death in 1790.Nick Phillipson reconstructs Smith’s intellectual ancestry and shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith’s ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume. |
From inside the book
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Page 1697
... Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 1. 1751-9 . The Theory ofMoral Sentiments and the Civilizing Powers of Commerce . Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 2. 1759-63 Smith and the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe 1764-6 10. London, Kirkcaldy ...
... Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 1. 1751-9 . The Theory ofMoral Sentiments and the Civilizing Powers of Commerce . Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 2. 1759-63 Smith and the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe 1764-6 10. London, Kirkcaldy ...
Page 1702
... Moral Sentiments (1759). (Edinburgh University Library) Page 215: Title page from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth 0fNati0ns (1776). (Glasgow University Library) Acknowledgements This book has had an ...
... Moral Sentiments (1759). (Edinburgh University Library) Page 215: Title page from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth 0fNati0ns (1776). (Glasgow University Library) Acknowledgements This book has had an ...
Page 1709
... Moral Sentiments, a theory which explained how men and women seek to satisfy their moral needs and learn to live at ease with themselves and the world around them, a theory of sociability as well as a theory of ethics, providing what ...
... Moral Sentiments, a theory which explained how men and women seek to satisfy their moral needs and learn to live at ease with themselves and the world around them, a theory of sociability as well as a theory of ethics, providing what ...
Page 1710
... Moral Sentiments to develop and refine the ethical implications of his theory of sociability. On top of this there was a lifelong love of intellectual systems and the esprit systématique he associated with true philosophical thinking ...
... Moral Sentiments to develop and refine the ethical implications of his theory of sociability. On top of this there was a lifelong love of intellectual systems and the esprit systématique he associated with true philosophical thinking ...
Page 1711
... Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, reviewing once again the arguments of the earlier works in the light of the later, would, in Smith's perfectionist hands, have become a vast intellectual undertaking, made vaster still by the ...
... Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, reviewing once again the arguments of the earlier works in the light of the later, would, in Smith's perfectionist hands, have become a vast intellectual undertaking, made vaster still by the ...
Contents
1699 | |
1703 | |
1707 | |
1717 | |
1737 | |
4Edinburghs Early Enlightenment | |
a Conjectural History | |
9Smith and the Duke of Buccleuchin Europe 17646 | |
10London Kirkcaldy and the Making of theWealth of Nations 176676 | |
11The Wealth of Nations andSmiths Very violent attack upon the whole commercialsystem of Great Britain | |
12Humes Death | |
13Last Years in Edinburgh 177890 | |
Epilogue | |
Notes and Sources | |
Bibliography of Works Cited | |
6Professor of Moral Philosophyat Glasgow 1 17519 | |
7The Theory of Moral Sentimentsand the Civilizing Powersof Commerce | |
8Professor of Moral Philosophyat Glasgow 2 175963 | |
Index | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith agriculture Boswell Bridgeman Art Library Buccleuch Cambridge career century citizens city’s commerce contemporary Corr culture curriculum David Hume depended develop discussion division of labour Dugald Stewart Duke économistes Edinburgh edition Epictetus Essays ethical finance find first France Francis Hutcheson friends Glasgow govemment Henry Home human nature Hume’s Humean impartial spectator important improvement influence intellectual interest James Boswell jurisprudence justice Kirkcaldy language leamed lectures on rhetoric letter liberty literary live London Lord Mandeville manufactures merchants modem Montesquieu moral philosophy Moral Sentiments ofthe Oswald Oxford passions political economy Presbyterian principles Professor progress of opulence published Pufendorf Quesnay Quesnay’s reflect Ross Rousseau Scotland Scots Scottish Enlightenment sense significant sociability society teaching Theory of Moral thinking thought Tobacco Lords town Townshend trade understanding Union virtue Wealth of Nations William writing