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
Results 6-10 of 40
Page
... depended. Pufendorf thought that life in the family made men aware of their natural weaknesses and taught them the need for co-operation, long before they realized the need to submit to a political sovereign. In his view, so far from ...
... depended. Pufendorf thought that life in the family made men aware of their natural weaknesses and taught them the need for co-operation, long before they realized the need to submit to a political sovereign. In his view, so far from ...
Page
... depended, all systems of taste, morality and politics, all philosophy and art, all progress in the arts, sciences and commerce, all language even, were driven by need, by a hunger for social approval and by the ever-contemptible ...
... depended, all systems of taste, morality and politics, all philosophy and art, all progress in the arts, sciences and commerce, all language even, were driven by need, by a hunger for social approval and by the ever-contemptible ...
Page
... depended. This cynicism appalled Hutcheson and he retumed to it continually in his writing and, it was said, in nearly every lecture, Mandeville, he said, was the most dangerous of those philosophers who would 'rather twist Self-Love ...
... depended. This cynicism appalled Hutcheson and he retumed to it continually in his writing and, it was said, in nearly every lecture, Mandeville, he said, was the most dangerous of those philosophers who would 'rather twist Self-Love ...
Page
... depended. In so doing, it would help to provide all men with those extensive views of creation on which an understanding and love of the Creator depended. For it was the virtuous, discriminating love of the deity, rather than the ...
... depended. In so doing, it would help to provide all men with those extensive views of creation on which an understanding and love of the Creator depended. For it was the virtuous, discriminating love of the deity, rather than the ...
Page
... depended. Hutcheson's subtle, nuanced analysis of the workings of the moral sense showed Smith that the study of sociability and society must begin with the process of social interaction as it is experienced in everyday life, and should ...
... depended. Hutcheson's subtle, nuanced analysis of the workings of the moral sense showed Smith that the study of sociability and society must begin with the process of social interaction as it is experienced in everyday life, and should ...
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 | |
Other editions - View all
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