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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... town, with its long, winding, narrow street, more than two miles long, and the hugger-mugger of small closes and wynds that sprouted from it, was fairly typical of the old coastal burghs of Scotland. What was odd about Kirkcaldy was the ...
... town council . The old church of St Bryce , which Fleming rightly described as ' a large unshapely pile ' , had another wing tacked onto it to accommodate the town's growing population . The Town House had been enlarged in 1678 to house ...
... town's population was 2,296 , little more than half of what it had been a century before ; its position as a centre of mercantile trade had collapsed . It would be wrong , however , to think of Smith growing up in a town whose economy ...
... the colonies . The Oswalds , whose estates abutted the town , were conspicuous in this enterprise , feuing ( a Scottish form of leasing ) most of their lands in the nearby village of Dunnikier to tradesmen engaged in the linen,
... town. Stocking manufacturing began in 1773, cotton manufacturing in the 1780s and shipbuilding in 1788.10 By then the population of the town was growing fast and its housing stock was increasing rapidly. It was, in short, turning into a ...
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 | |