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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... friends and patrons , who controlled the burgh of Dysart and much of the politics of south Fife , and with the Fergusons of Raith , whose pretty and improved estate butted onto the burgh . They were close neighbours of one of the ...
... friends . As his son wrote : It is well known that an uninterrupted friendship and intercourse existed betwixt them for the greater part of their lives . In his early days [ the author ] remembers well to have heard Dr. Smith dilate ...
... friendship of strangers who belonged to different walks of life . In the last resort it was simply a matter of cultivating good manners and politeness , of learning to be a spectator as well as an actor in the theatre of the world . The ...
... friends and relations began to run the city . It is striking , for example , that between 1740 and 1790 nearly every Provost of Glasgow was a tobacco lord and that the merchant oligarchy went out of its way to make sure that the city ...
An Enlightened Life Nicholas Phillipson. Hutcheson's friend and colleague William Leechman commented that this ' rational enthusiasm for the interests of learning , liberty , religion , virtue and human happiness ' penetrated all of ...
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 | |