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. |
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Page 1717
... Union of 1707. It was a time when the Crown and the Scottish nobility were engaged in an internecine struggle to control the machinery of Scottish government, when the Kirk was riven with doctrinal and ecclesiological disputes, when ...
... Union of 1707. It was a time when the Crown and the Scottish nobility were engaged in an internecine struggle to control the machinery of Scottish government, when the Kirk was riven with doctrinal and ecclesiological disputes, when ...
Page 1718
... Union. They had one son, Hugh, a sickly child, who seems to have worked in the customs at Kirkcaldy until his death in 1749 or 1750. Lilias Smith died sometime between 1716 and 1718. In 1720 Smith remarried and once again married well ...
... Union. They had one son, Hugh, a sickly child, who seems to have worked in the customs at Kirkcaldy until his death in 1749 or 1750. Lilias Smith died sometime between 1716 and 1718. In 1720 Smith remarried and once again married well ...
Page 1721
... Union, which brought increased English competition, a new focus on the possibilities of trade with the Americas and the Caribbean, and the exceptionally high customs and excise duties levied on the Scots in order to bring their tax ...
... Union, which brought increased English competition, a new focus on the possibilities of trade with the Americas and the Caribbean, and the exceptionally high customs and excise duties levied on the Scots in order to bring their tax ...
Page 1722
Nicholas T. Phillipson. Union Scotland. It attracted the interest of the grandly named and aristocratic The Honourable the Society for Improvement in the Knowledge of Agriculture (l723—c.45) and the patronage of the Board of Trustees for ...
Nicholas T. Phillipson. Union Scotland. It attracted the interest of the grandly named and aristocratic The Honourable the Society for Improvement in the Knowledge of Agriculture (l723—c.45) and the patronage of the Board of Trustees for ...
Page 1723
... Union and the political and economic changes that were transforming contemporary Europe. And we need to think of his family as part of the landed and professional elite that was intent on regenerating, or, as contemporaries liked to put ...
... Union and the political and economic changes that were transforming contemporary Europe. And we need to think of his family as part of the landed and professional elite that was intent on regenerating, or, as contemporaries liked to put ...
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