Adam Smith: An Enlightened LifeAdam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas - that of the 'Invisible Hand' of the market and that 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest' - have become icons of the modern world. 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 book, by one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith's other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand 'Science of Man', one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics. |
From inside the book
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... 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 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 ...
... ethical primer for intelligent and well- born 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 ...
... 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 skill Addison wanted his readers to cultivate : the ability Robert Burns was to characterize so brilliantly as seeing ourselves as others see us . Like Cicero , Addison wrote for a free citizenry in this case , the citizenry of ...
Contents
1695 | |
1699 | |
1709 | |
1719 | |
1741 | |
Oxford and David Hume | |
Edinburghs Early Enlightenment | |
a Conjectural History | |
Smith and the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe 17646 | |
London Kirkcaldy and the Making of the Wealth of Nations 176676 | |
The Wealth of Nations and Smiths Very violent attack upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain | |
Humes Death | |
Last Years in Edinburgh 177890 | |
Epilogue | |
Notes and Sources | |
Bibliography of Works Cited | |
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow 1 17519 | |
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Civilizing Powers of Commerce | |
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow 2 175963 | |
Index | |