Adam Smith: An Enlightened LifeThis fascinating intellectual biography of Adam Smith dramatically rewrites the economist’s life and offers new insight into his iconic concepts The great eighteenth-century British economist Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated as the founder of modern economics. 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 biography shows the extent to which Smith's great works, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of one of the most ambitious projects of the Euruopean Enlightenment, a grand “Science of Man" that would encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics, and which was only half complete on Smith’s death in 1790.Nick Phillipson reconstructs Smith’s intellectual ancestry and shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith’s ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume. |
From inside the book
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Page 1737
... Oxford from 1740 to 1746. His student life at Glasgow and Oxford is almost completely undocumented, nevertheless it is clear that these were crucial years in his intellectual development. By the time he retumed to Scotland in 1746, fed ...
... Oxford from 1740 to 1746. His student life at Glasgow and Oxford is almost completely undocumented, nevertheless it is clear that these were crucial years in his intellectual development. By the time he retumed to Scotland in 1746, fed ...
Page
... Oxford nor Balliol could hope to extend, question or supplant the teaching Smith had received at Glasgow. But it did have the Snell exhibitions, which were reserved for former Glasgow students and allowed the exhibitioners to spend up ...
... Oxford nor Balliol could hope to extend, question or supplant the teaching Smith had received at Glasgow. But it did have the Snell exhibitions, which were reserved for former Glasgow students and allowed the exhibitioners to spend up ...
Page
... Oxford, Leechman left a portrait of the moderate Presbyterian minister which nicely catches the elements of the civic personality that Glasgow's Molesworthians set out to inculcate in lay as well as clerical students. The modem minister ...
... Oxford, Leechman left a portrait of the moderate Presbyterian minister which nicely catches the elements of the civic personality that Glasgow's Molesworthians set out to inculcate in lay as well as clerical students. The modem minister ...
Page
... Oxford colleges, with two large courts, a common hall, a wellstocked library and lodgings for students, regents and professors. When Smith matriculated in 1737, a line of houses — or manses — for the new generation of professors had ...
... Oxford colleges, with two large courts, a common hall, a wellstocked library and lodgings for students, regents and professors. When Smith matriculated in 1737, a line of houses — or manses — for the new generation of professors had ...
Page
... changing nature of political power and the problems of government in the modem world. They were matters which had exercised Pufendorf, and were ones to which Smith would return. 3 Private Study 1740- 46: Oxford and David Hume Smith.
... changing nature of political power and the problems of government in the modem world. They were matters which had exercised Pufendorf, and were ones to which Smith would return. 3 Private Study 1740- 46: Oxford and David Hume Smith.
Contents
1699 | |
1703 | |
1707 | |
1717 | |
1737 | |
4Edinburghs Early Enlightenment | |
a Conjectural History | |
9Smith and the Duke of Buccleuchin Europe 17646 | |
10London Kirkcaldy and the Making of theWealth of Nations 176676 | |
11The Wealth of Nations andSmiths Very violent attack upon the whole commercialsystem of Great Britain | |
12Humes Death | |
13Last Years in Edinburgh 177890 | |
Epilogue | |
Notes and Sources | |
Bibliography of Works Cited | |
6Professor of Moral Philosophyat Glasgow 1 17519 | |
7The Theory of Moral Sentimentsand the Civilizing Powersof Commerce | |
8Professor of Moral Philosophyat Glasgow 2 175963 | |
Index | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith agriculture Boswell Bridgeman Art Library Buccleuch Cambridge career century citizens city’s commerce contemporary Corr culture curriculum David Hume depended develop discussion division of labour Dugald Stewart Duke économistes Edinburgh edition Epictetus Essays ethical finance find first France Francis Hutcheson friends Glasgow govemment Henry Home human nature Hume’s Humean impartial spectator important improvement influence intellectual interest James Boswell jurisprudence justice Kirkcaldy language leamed lectures on rhetoric letter liberty literary live London Lord Mandeville manufactures merchants modem Montesquieu moral philosophy Moral Sentiments ofthe Oswald Oxford passions political economy Presbyterian principles Professor progress of opulence published Pufendorf Quesnay Quesnay’s reflect Ross Rousseau Scotland Scots Scottish Enlightenment sense significant sociability society teaching Theory of Moral thinking thought Tobacco Lords town Townshend trade understanding Union virtue Wealth of Nations William writing