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
Results 1-5 of 52
Page 1708
... sociable but deeply private man had lived, sapped his morale and intellectual energies and underlined what was becoming increasingly obvious — that the vast intellectual project to which he had devoted his life and of which the Wealth ...
... sociable but deeply private man had lived, sapped his morale and intellectual energies and underlined what was becoming increasingly obvious — that the vast intellectual project to which he had devoted his life and of which the Wealth ...
Page 1709
... sociability as well as a theory of ethics, providing what was in effect an account of the moral economy of a recognizably modern civil society. The Wealth of Nations formed the second part of that superstructure. It offered an account ...
... sociability as well as a theory of ethics, providing what was in effect an account of the moral economy of a recognizably modern civil society. The Wealth of Nations formed the second part of that superstructure. It offered an account ...
Page 1710
... 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 student at Glasgow studying mathematics ...
... 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 student at Glasgow studying mathematics ...
Page 1715
... bom into the middling ranks of Scottish society at a remarkable moment in the history of his class and nation, a man who would be known to his contemporaries as solitary as well as sociable, and more than a touch eccentric, and a man who.
... bom into the middling ranks of Scottish society at a remarkable moment in the history of his class and nation, a man who would be known to his contemporaries as solitary as well as sociable, and more than a touch eccentric, and a man who.
Page 1727
... of social exchange on which sociability and society depended." Smith was a pupil at the burgh school from 1731 or 1732 until 1737 at a remarkable moment in its history. The school had been transformed in 1724 as the result of the.
... of social exchange on which sociability and society depended." Smith was a pupil at the burgh school from 1731 or 1732 until 1737 at a remarkable moment in its history. The school had been transformed in 1724 as the result of 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 | |
Other editions - View all
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