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 1710
... 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 and which he had learned to admire as a ...
... 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 and which he had learned to admire as a ...
Page 1730
... ethical core, the texts used in similar avant-garde classical schools in Scotland suggest that it was probably he who introduced Smith to the classical moralists and their modern admirers. A standard classical diet of this sort would ...
... ethical core, the texts used in similar avant-garde classical schools in Scotland suggest that it was probably he who introduced Smith to the classical moralists and their modern admirers. A standard classical diet of this sort would ...
Page 1731
... ethical primer for intelligent and wellbom schoolboys. It was one of the foundation texts of Stoic ethics. Epictetus had been a slave and had written for those who feared that they were becoming slaves to their passions and victims of ...
... ethical primer for intelligent and wellbom schoolboys. It was one of the foundation texts of Stoic ethics. Epictetus had been a slave and had written for those who feared that they were becoming slaves to their passions and victims of ...
Page 1732
... ethical value of contemplation, but he put that down to the fact that Epictetus had been brought up in a semi-barbarous slave society. Smith admired and exploited the spirit of Epictetus' ethics for sociological as well as ethical ...
... ethical value of contemplation, but he put that down to the fact that Epictetus had been brought up in a semi-barbarous slave society. Smith admired and exploited the spirit of Epictetus' ethics for sociological as well as ethical ...
Page 1733
... ethical systems have to be adapted to the needs of different peoples and places. He would almost certainly have been introduced to Cicero's ethics at much the same time as Epictetus', and would have learned how Cicero had adapted the ...
... ethical systems have to be adapted to the needs of different peoples and places. He would almost certainly have been introduced to Cicero's ethics at much the same time as Epictetus', and would have learned how Cicero had adapted 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