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 84
Page 1708
... society, but would explain the principles of government and legislation that ought to be followed by enlightened rulers who wanted to extend the liberty and happiness of their subjects and the wealth and power of their dominions. This ...
... society, but would explain the principles of government and legislation that ought to be followed by enlightened rulers who wanted to extend the liberty and happiness of their subjects and the wealth and power of their dominions. This ...
Page 1709
... society. The Wealth of Nations formed the second part of that superstructure. It offered an account of the political economy of the different types of civil society known to history, and a sharply focused analysis of the problems which ...
... society. The Wealth of Nations formed the second part of that superstructure. It offered an account of the political economy of the different types of civil society known to history, and a sharply focused analysis of the problems which ...
Page 1714
... society. They elaborate Smith's thinking about the ways in which self and society are shaped by the distribution of property and the systems of law and govemment that exist to preserve them. They alert us to the fact so often overlooked ...
... society. They elaborate Smith's thinking about the ways in which self and society are shaped by the distribution of property and the systems of law and govemment that exist to preserve them. They alert us to the fact so often overlooked ...
Page 1722
... Society for Improvement in the Knowledge of Agriculture (l723—c.45) and the patronage of the Board of Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures, an eighteenth-century quango set up in 1727 to invest the funds the Scots had been given to ...
... Society for Improvement in the Knowledge of Agriculture (l723—c.45) and the patronage of the Board of Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures, an eighteenth-century quango set up in 1727 to invest the funds the Scots had been given to ...
Page 1726
... thinking about the progress of society in a commercial state without thinking of Kirkcaldy, Fife and the activities of energetic and ambitious incomers like the Oswalds, the St Clairs and the Adams, and although he never explicitly drew.
... thinking about the progress of society in a commercial state without thinking of Kirkcaldy, Fife and the activities of energetic and ambitious incomers like the Oswalds, the St Clairs and the Adams, and although he never explicitly drew.
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