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 1713
... intellectual biography, one which traces the development of his mind and character through the making of those texts, one that is set in a country that was generating its own forms of Enlightenment. And it is here that the biographer is ...
... intellectual biography, one which traces the development of his mind and character through the making of those texts, one that is set in a country that was generating its own forms of Enlightenment. And it is here that the biographer is ...
Page 1714
... intellectual and aesthetic as well as material needs. But the notes are of considerable biographical value too for the light they shed on Smith's intellectual development. For although they record the lectures he gave at the end of his ...
... intellectual and aesthetic as well as material needs. But the notes are of considerable biographical value too for the light they shed on Smith's intellectual development. For although they record the lectures he gave at the end of his ...
Page 1715
... intellectual world in which he found himself. It is the story of a man bom into the middling ranks of Scottish society at a remarkable moment in the history of his class and nation, a man who would be known to his contemporaries as ...
... intellectual world in which he found himself. It is the story of a man bom into the middling ranks of Scottish society at a remarkable moment in the history of his class and nation, a man who would be known to his contemporaries as ...
Page 1716
... would help to make the complexities of the modern world intelligible and manageable. And this is why this story takes the shape of an intellectual biography. 1 A Kirkcaldy Upbringing Adam Smith was born, or baptized,
... would help to make the complexities of the modern world intelligible and manageable. And this is why this story takes the shape of an intellectual biography. 1 A Kirkcaldy Upbringing Adam Smith was born, or baptized,
Page 1725
... it must make a figure'.12 Oswald kept in close contact with Scottish intellectual life and remained another of Smith's lifelong friends. As his son wrote: It is well known that an uninterrupted friendship and intercourse.
... it must make a figure'.12 Oswald kept in close contact with Scottish intellectual life and remained another of Smith's lifelong friends. As his son wrote: It is well known that an uninterrupted friendship and intercourse.
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