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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... when James Tassie made two medallions of him that we have any idea of what he looked like. It is only possible to make sense of Smith's life if one accepts that he was a private and self - sufficient man who spent long periods in Kirkcaldy.
... sense and good language'.20 Miller was a good classicist and Ian Ross is surely right to suggest that Smith left school in 1737 well versed in the standard authors ; certainly he knew enough Latin and Greek to be exempted from the first ...
... sense of self - respect that comes from knowing that one is able to live an active social life at ease with one's self and with others . Above all , they taught young people the value of philosophy to public life and of public life to ...
... sense of the term , a theatre of life , as some writers put it , in which men and women were constantly engaged in the exchange of goods , services and sentiments . But it was also a world that was fragmented by party - political ...
... sense of propriety that played such an important part in securing the decencies and pleasures of ordinary life . It was a form of sociable Stoicism that would release the sort of apathaeia which , the polite Addisonian citizen thought ...
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 | |