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. |
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... understanding of his character. Indeed, it is not until 1787 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 ...
... understanding of Smith's philosophy . They help us to relate the social theory and the ethics of the Theory of Moral Sentiments to the political economy of the Wealth of Nations by putting both in the wider context of Smith's unrealized ...
... understanding of naval finance . As he once put it , ' the surest way of becoming remarkable here [ in the House of Commons ] is certainly application to business , for whoever understands it must make a figure'.12 Oswald kept in close ...
... understanding and a way of life in harmony with nature . Take care then , not to die without ever being spectators of these things . 28 In learning to become a spectator , the Stoic would earn his liberty . This image of the moral agent ...
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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 | |