(print) | LCCN 2019033303 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509518227 | ISBN 9781509518234 (pb) | ISBN 9781509518265 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Adam, 1723-1790. | Economists--Great Britain--Biography.
Classification: LCC HB103.S6 E36 2020 (print) | LCC HB103.S6 (ebook) | DDC 330.15/3092 [B]--dc23
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LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033303
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Acknowledgements
When I was first approached to contribute a volume on Adam Smith to the Polity Classic Thinkers series, I decided that I would attempt to produce a work that both introduced readers to the whole of Smith’s body of thought and, at the same time, made the case for reading that body of thought as a consistent and coherent intellectual project. In writing the book, I have received much valued support and guidance from the editorial team at Polity, particularly George Owers and Julia Davies, and from the comments of three anonymous readers. Christopher J. Berry, Maria Pia Paganelli, and Kate Spence kindly agreed to read the draft manuscript and offered helpful constructive criticism. The book is a result of fifteen years teaching Adam Smith to undergraduate and postgraduate students. My position as Adam Smith Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow has allowed me to teach Smith to an interdisciplinary group of students drawn from Politics, Sociology, History, and Philosophy. Many of the formulations and examples included here first sprang from that classroom experience. As a result, this book is dedicated to the students of my courses on the Scottish Enlightenment and the Wealth of Nations at the University of Glasgow.
Abbreviations for Smith’s Works
All references to Smith’s works will be to the standard scholarly edition, the Glasgow Edition published by Oxford University Press, and will refer to the volume by title and page. Other notes will direct the reader to helpful secondary material listed in the bibliography that further explores the issues at hand.
Ancient Physics: ‘The Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of the Ancient Physics’, in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 [1795], pp. 106–17.
Astronomy: ‘The Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of Astronomy’, in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 [1795], pp. 31–105.
Correspondence: Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds Ernest Campbell Mossner & Ian Simpson Ross, rev. edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Imitative Arts: ‘Of the Nature of that Imitation which Takes Place in What Are Called the Imitative Arts’, in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 [1795], pp. 176–213.
Jurisprudence: Lectures on Jurisprudence, eds R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, & P. G. Stein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Moral Sentiments: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds D. D. Raphael & A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 [1759].
Rhetoric: Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, eds R. H. Campbell & A. S. Skinner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 [1776].
1 Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment
Adam Smith (1723–90) is unusual among philosophers from over two hundred years ago. He is unusual because his work is still widely read and discussed today. But more significant than this, his name is still widely known by the general public. Smith has become one of the few world historical figures who have entered into the common intellectual landscape of our culture. Unfortunately the ‘Adam Smith’ that exists in the popular imagination is somewhat different from the Adam Smith who lived and wrote in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Smith and his thought have become the focus of increasing interest among scholars since the publication of a critical edition of his writings in the late 1970s. Part of the aim of this scholarship has been to dispel the mythology and correct the caricature that has arisen around Smith. Adam Smith the first economist, the father of capitalism, the defender of laissez-faire economics, the advocate of selfishness, and the prophet of the invisible hand of the market has been seized upon by both advocates of free market economics and critics of capitalism. Smith has been set up as both the hero of the libertarian right and the villain of neo-liberalism. This caricature is something that Smith scholars have sought to correct by careful study of what he actually wrote. While such views are commonplace among the general public, those who read Smith’s two great books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, quickly see that there is much more to the man and his thought. That said, many of those who do this are then struck by the apparent tension between the discussion of sympathy in the former and the analysis of self-interest in the latter. This seeming contrast between a description of humans as benevolent in one book and selfish in the other led some of Smith’s nineteenth-century German readers to regard his thought as self-contradictory. As we will see, the so-called ‘Adam Smith Problem’ has been dismissed by Smith scholars, but its residue lingers on in the popular imagination.
The present volume is intended to be a contribution to these tasks of dispelling a caricature and dismissing an accusation of inconsistency. Its aim is to present a reading of the whole of Smith’s work, to indicate the systematic and interconnected nature of his writings on topics as diverse as economics, moral philosophy, science, and literature. In so doing, it will present a reading of Smith that is unified by his consistent application of a particular methodology, a way of doing philosophy or science, which acts as a powerful tool when applied across a range of what are now distinct academic disciplines. In addition to providing an argument that focuses on Smith’s texts, we will trace his intellectual context and explain why he was interested in the particular ideas and subjects that he discussed.
Understanding where Smith came from, how
