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 1715
... teaching of Scotland's two leading universities and confident enough to be able to see himself as the heir of Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf, who had set out to develop philosophical accounts of the principles of law and govemment which ...
... teaching of Scotland's two leading universities and confident enough to be able to see himself as the heir of Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf, who had set out to develop philosophical accounts of the principles of law and govemment which ...
Page 1728
... teach them by degrees to spell rightly, to write good write [handwriting], good sense and good language'.2° Miller was a good classicist and Ian Ross is surely right to suggest that Smith left school in 1737 well versed in the standard ...
... teach them by degrees to spell rightly, to write good write [handwriting], good sense and good language'.2° Miller was a good classicist and Ian Ross is surely right to suggest that Smith left school in 1737 well versed in the standard ...
Page 1729
... teaching is to be found in a contemporary account of his use of theatre as a vehicle of civic education. This was a relatively common humanist technique in the more avant-garde schools of central Scotland. The High School of Dalkeith ...
... teaching is to be found in a contemporary account of his use of theatre as a vehicle of civic education. This was a relatively common humanist technique in the more avant-garde schools of central Scotland. The High School of Dalkeith ...
Page 1730
Nicholas T. Phillipson. Miller's sophisticated, politically correct curriculum strongly suggests that his teaching had a solid ethical core, the texts used in similar avant-garde classical schools in Scotland suggest that it was probably ...
Nicholas T. Phillipson. Miller's sophisticated, politically correct curriculum strongly suggests that his teaching had a solid ethical core, the texts used in similar avant-garde classical schools in Scotland suggest that it was probably ...
Page 1733
... teaching of the ancients could be adapted for use by moderns living in a free commercial society, a form of civilization completely unknown to antiquity. Addison's title - The Spectator — was deliberately borrowed from Epictetus and ...
... teaching of the ancients could be adapted for use by moderns living in a free commercial society, a form of civilization completely unknown to antiquity. Addison's title - The Spectator — was deliberately borrowed from Epictetus and ...
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