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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... pupil James Boswell's Life of Johnson? – he knew very well that there were things to be learned about an author's character from his style and use of language. In the Lectures on Rhetoric he reminded his students that texts were ...
... 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 appointment of a new master, David Miller. Miller was the highly successful ...
... pupils ' ] judgements , to teach them by degrees to spell rightly , to write good write [ handwriting ] , good sense and good language'.20 Miller was a good classicist and Ian Ross is surely right to suggest that Smith left school in ...
... pupil ; it was called ' The Royal Command for Advice : or the regular education of boys the foundation of all other national improvements ' . It seems to have been about the business of a council of twelve senators who debate petitions ...
... pupils : Besides his constant lectures five days of the week on natural religion , morals , jurisprudence and government ; he had another lecture three days of the week , in which he explained some of the finest writers of antiquity ...
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 | |