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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... Justice, the value of Liberty, the duty owing to ones Countrey and the Laws, are either quite omitted, or slightly passed over: Indeed they forget not to recommend frequently to [their students] what they call the Queen of all Vertues ...
... Justice, the value of Liberty, the duty owing to ones Countrey and the Laws, are either quite omitted, or slightly passed over: Indeed they forget not to recommend frequently to [their students] what they call the Queen of all Vertues ...
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... justice and force of all the metaphysical arguments, by which many have endeavoured to demonstrate the existence, unity, and perfections of the Deity.' He went on: 'Such attempts instead of conducting us to the absolute certainty ...
... justice and force of all the metaphysical arguments, by which many have endeavoured to demonstrate the existence, unity, and perfections of the Deity.' He went on: 'Such attempts instead of conducting us to the absolute certainty ...
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... justice and the overriding need to submit to government, for these were the forms of understanding on which political life and sociable living depended. Pufendorf thought that life in the family made men aware of their natural ...
... justice and the overriding need to submit to government, for these were the forms of understanding on which political life and sociable living depended. Pufendorf thought that life in the family made men aware of their natural ...
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... justice and morality and come to think of them as right in themselves and incumbent on every virtuous and godfearing citizen. In which case there was also a reasonable chance that citizens would have learned the foundational lesson that ...
... justice and morality and come to think of them as right in themselves and incumbent on every virtuous and godfearing citizen. In which case there was also a reasonable chance that citizens would have learned the foundational lesson that ...
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... Justice lopt and bound; Nay, where the People would be great, As necessary to the State, As Hunger is to make 'em eat. Bare Virtue can't make Nations live In Splendor; they, that would revive A Golden Age, must be as free, For Acorns ...
... Justice lopt and bound; Nay, where the People would be great, As necessary to the State, As Hunger is to make 'em eat. Bare Virtue can't make Nations live In Splendor; they, that would revive A Golden Age, must be as free, For Acorns ...
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