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. |
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... Union. And it made it possible for the Earl of Islay, the future 3rd Duke of Argyll and one of Sir Robert Walpole's closest political advisers, to take effective control of city govemment and the management of the university from 1725 ...
... Union. And it made it possible for the Earl of Islay, the future 3rd Duke of Argyll and one of Sir Robert Walpole's closest political advisers, to take effective control of city govemment and the management of the university from 1725 ...
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... Union the tobacco trade had been entirely illegal and possible only because the Glaswegians were skilful smugglers who were good at evading the trade restrictions imposed on them by the English Navigation Acts, which had placed ...
... Union the tobacco trade had been entirely illegal and possible only because the Glaswegians were skilful smugglers who were good at evading the trade restrictions imposed on them by the English Navigation Acts, which had placed ...
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... Union, the tobacco trade took some time to build up strength. By the 1710s, the Glaswegians were still only legally importing 1.4 million lbs per year, and less than 3 million lbs in the 1720s, compared with the 8 million lbs landed in ...
... Union, the tobacco trade took some time to build up strength. By the 1710s, the Glaswegians were still only legally importing 1.4 million lbs per year, and less than 3 million lbs in the 1720s, compared with the 8 million lbs landed in ...
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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