Adam Smith: Biography and Much More from Answers.com
The Scotch economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) believed that in a laissez-faire economy the impulse of self-interest would work toward the public welfare.
Adam Smith was born on June 5, 1723, at Kirkcaldy. His father had died 2 months before his birth, and a strong and lifelong attachment developed between him and his mother. As an infant, Smith was kidnaped, but he was soon rescued. At the age of 14 he enrolled in the University of Glasgow, where he remained for 3 years. The lectures of Francis Hutcheson exerted a strong influence on him. In 1740 he transferred to Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained for almost 7 years, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1744. Returning then to Kirkcaldy, he devoted himself to his studies and gave a series of lectures on English literature. In 1748 he moved to Edinburgh, where he became a friend of David Hume, whose skepticism he did not share.
Theory of Moral Sentiments
In 1751 Smith became professor of logic at the University of Glasgow and the following year professor of moral philosophy. Eight years later he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's central notion in this work is that moral principles have social feeling or sympathy as their basis. Sympathy is a common or analogous feeling that an individual may have with the affections or feelings of another person. The source of this fellow feeling is not so much one's observation of the expressed emotion of another person as one's thought of the situation that the other person confronts. Sympathy usually requires knowledge of the cause of the emotion to be shared. If one approves of another's passions as suitable to their objects, he thereby sympathizes with that person.
Sympathy is the basis for one's judging of the appropriateness and merit of the feelings and actions issuing from these feelings. If the affections of the person involved in a situation are analogous to the emotions of the spectator, then those affections are appropriate. The merit of a feeling or an action flowing from a feeling is its worthiness of reward. If a feeling or an action is worthy of reward, it has moral merit. One's awareness of merit derives from one's sympathy with the gratitude of the person benefited by the action. One's sense of merit, then, is a derivative of the feeling of gratitude which is manifested in the situation by the person who has been helped.
Smith warns that each person must exercise impartiality of judgment in relation to his own feelings and behavior. Well aware of the human tendency to overlook one's own moral failings and the self-deceit in which individuals often engage, Smith argues that each person must scrutinize his own feelings and behavior with the same strictness he employs when considering those of others. Such an impartial appraisal is possible because a person's conscience enables him to compare his own feelings with those of others. Conscience and sympathy, then, working together provide moral guidance for man so that the individual can control his own feelings and have a sensibility for the affections of others.
The Wealth of Nations
In 1764 Smith resigned his professorship to take up duties as a traveling tutor for the young Duke of Buccleuch and his brother. Carrying out this responsibility, he spent 2 years on the Continent. In Toulouse he began writing his best-known work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. While in Paris he met Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, Baron Paul d'Holbach, François Quesnay, A.R.J. Turgot, and Jacques Necker. These thinkers doubtless had some influence on him. His life abroad came to an abrupt end when one of his charges was killed.
Smith then settled in Kirkcaldy with his mother. He continued to work on The Wealth of Nations, which was finally published in 1776. His mother died at the age of 90, and Smith was grief-stricken. In 1778 he was made customs commissioner, and in 1784 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Smith apparently spent some time in London, where he became a friend of Benjamin Franklin. On his deathbed he demanded that most of his manuscript writings be destroyed. He died on July 17, 1790.
The Wealth of Nations, easily the best known of Smith's writings, is a mixture of descriptions, historical accounts, and recommendations. The wealth of a nation, Smith insists, is to be gauged by the number and variety of consumable goods it can command. Free trade is essential for the maximum development of wealth for any nation because through such trade a variety of goods becomes possible.
Smith assumes that if each person pursues his own interest the general welfare of all will be fostered. He objects to governmental control, although he acknowledges that some restrictions are required. The capitalist invariably produces and sells consumable goods in order to meet the greatest needs of the people. In so fulfilling his own interest, the capitalist automatically promotes the general welfare. In the economic sphere, says Smith, the individual acts in terms of his own interest rather than in terms of sympathy. Thus, Smith made no attempt to bring into harmony his economic and moral theories.
Further Reading
John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (1895), is still useful and was reprinted (1965) with an introductory essay by Jacob Viner which details the recent scholarship on Smith. William R. Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor (1937), focuses on Smith's personality. Other biographies include Eli Ginzberg, The House of Adam Smith (1934); Sir Alexander Gray, Adam Smith (1948); and the not entirely successful work of E.G. West, Adam Smith (1969). Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953; 3d ed. 1967), has a vivid profile of Smith and his times. Smith's place in the history of economics is assessed in Charles Gide and Charles Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines from the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day (trans., 2d ed. 1948), and Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (1954).
Smith, Adam (1723-90). Famous son of Kirkcaldy (Fife) and educated at Glasgow University, Smith graduated at the age of 14. After six years at Balliol College, Oxford, he became professor of logic, then moral philosophy, at Glasgow University. Although his reputation was founded on The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), his magnum opus was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Itanalysed the operation of free market economies where the key players were motivated by self-interest and profit maximization. Most interpretations have labelled Adam Smith a parent of laissez-faire economics, but he was much more interventionist than this.
Smith, Adam (1723–1790), Scottish economist. Along with figures like his teacher Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) and his best friend David Hume (1711–1776), Smith was one of the principals of a period of astonishing learning that has become known as the Scottish Enlightenment. He is the author of two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). His first book brought him considerable acclaim during his lifetime and was quickly considered one of the great works of moral theory—impressing, for example, such people as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who called Smith his Liebling, or 'favorite', and Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who in his Descent of Man(1871) adopted some of Smith's argument and called his moral thought "striking." The book went through fully six revised editions during Smith's lifetime. Since the nineteenth century, however, Smith's fame has largely rested on his second book, which must be considered one of the most influential works of the past millennium.
Smith matriculated at the University of Glasgow at the age of fourteen in 1737. He considered his instruction at Glasgow, which was heavy in the classics, quite good; the influence of Hutcheson—whom Smith later referred to as "the never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson"—was pronounced. After Glasgow, Smith studied at Balliol College, Oxford, with whose level of instruction Smith was not so impressed: "In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the publick professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching" (Wealth of Nations, Liberty Fund edition, p. 761). Smith made good use of the libraries at Oxford, however, studying widely in English, French, Greek, and Latin literature. He left Oxford and returned to Kirkcaldy in 1746.
In Edinburgh (1748) Smith began giving "Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres," as Kames's biographer Alexander Tytler reports, focusing on literary criticism and the arts of speaking and writing well. It was during this time that Smith met and befriended Hume, who was to become Smith's closest confidant and greatest philosophical influence. Smith left Edinburgh to become professor of logic at the University of Glasgow in 1751 and then professor of moral philosophy in 1752. The lectures he gave there eventually crystallized into The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
In his Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith argues that human beings naturally desire a "mutual sympathy of sentiments" with their fellows, which means that they long to see their own judgments and sentiments echoed in others. Because we all seek out this "sympathy" or harmony, much of social life is a give-and-take whereby people alternately try to moderate their own sentiments so that others can "enter into them" and try to arouse others' sentiments so that they match their own. This market-like negotiation results in the gradual development of shared habits, and then rules, of judgment about moral matters ranging from etiquette to moral duty. This process also gives rise, Smith argues, to an ultimate standard of moral judgment, the "impartial spectator," whose perspective we routinely seek out in judging both our own and others' conduct. When we use it to judge our own, it is what constitutes our conscience. We consult the impartial spectator simply by asking ourselves what a fully informed but disinterested person would think about our conduct. If such a person would approve, then we may proceed; if he would disapprove, then we should desist.
Morality on Smith's account is thus an earthly, grounded affair. Although he makes frequent reference to God and the "Author of Nature," scholars disagree over to what extent such references do any real work in his theory—and thus to what extent Smith's theory of moral sentiments is a relativistic account, eschewing reliance on transcendent, objective rules of morality.
In 1763, Smith resigned his post at Glasgow to become the personal tutor of Henry Scott, the third duke of Buccleuch, whom Smith accompanied on an eighteen-month tour of France and Switzerland. It was during his travels with the duke that Smith met François Quesnay (1694–1774), Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), and others in France called Physiocrats, who were publicists arguing for a relaxation of trade barriers and for laissez-faire economic policies. Although Smith had long been developing his own, similar ideas, frequent conversations with the Physiocrats no doubt helped him refine and sharpen his ideas. In 1767, Smith returned to Kirkcaldy to continue work on what would become his Wealth of Nations.
In The Wealth of Nations Smith argues against the mercantilists that wealth is not mere pieces of metal: it is rather the ability to satisfy one's needs and desires. Since each person wishes to "better his own condition," the argument of The Wealth of Nations is that those policies should be adopted that best allow each of us to do so. It turns out, Smith argues, that markets in which the division of labor is allowed to progress, in which trade is free, and in which taxes and regulations are light are the most conducive to this end. Smith argues that in market-oriented economies based on private property, each person working to better his own condition will increase the supply, and thus lower the price, of whatever good he is producing; this means that others will be in a better position to afford his goods. Thus each person serving his own ends is led, in Smith's famous phrase, "by an invisible hand" simultaneously to serve everyone else's ends as well. Much of The Wealth of Nations's 1000-plus-page bulk is concerned with providing historical evidence supporting this theoretical argument.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, The Wealth of Nations was regularly cited in the British Parliament—for example, in the Corn Law debates—and its recommendations of free markets and free trade went on to have great influence in the subsequent political and economic developments not only of the British Isles, but also of most of the Western and even parts of the Eastern world. Smith's influence on the founding of the United States was also great. Among his readers were Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Paine (1737–1809), and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). When compiling a "course of reading" in 1799, Jefferson included The Wealth of Nations along with John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690) and Marie-Jean Caritat de Condorcet's Equisse d'un table historique des progrès de l'esprit humaine (1793; Sketch of the progress of the human spirit) as the essential books. The English historian Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) wrote that The Wealth of Nations "is probably the most important book that has ever been written," including the Bible. Today most countries in the world either rely on some version of Smithian market-based economies or are in the process of creating them.
Smith remained in Kirkcaldy until 1777, when he left to become commissioner of customs in Edinburgh. During this time he visited regularly with friends—including Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the chemist Joseph Black (1728–1799), the geologist James Hutton (1726–1797), the younger William Pitt (1759–1806), and Lord North (1732–1792)—and he took active roles in learned organizations like the Poker Club and the Oyster Club. He also extensively revised his two books for new editions, while additionally working on a "theory and history of law and government." The latter work was never published, however. One week before he died, Smith summoned Black and Hutton to his quarters and asked that they burn his unpublished manuscripts, a request they had been resisting for several months. This time Smith insisted. They reluctantly complied, destroying sixteen volumes of manuscripts. It is probable that Smith's theory and history of law and government were among the works that perished in that tragic loss.
Smith was a true polymath: he was master of several languages and their literatures, a historian of the ancient and modern worlds, a philosopher in his own right, and a brilliant observer of human society and behavior. Although he is known today principally as the father of the discipline now known as economics, given the scope and breadth of his work, he is probably better considered the father of sociology.
Bibliography
Primary Source
Smith, Adam. The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. 6 vols. Oxford, 1976–1977. The definitive edition of Smith's collected works, including student notes on his lectures on jurisprudence, his smaller essays, and his letters. Also published in paperback by the Liberty Fund, Inc. (Indianapolis, 1981–1987).
Secondary Sources
Campbell, R. H., and A. S. Skinner. Adam Smith. New York, 1982.
Campbell, T. D. Adam Smith's Science of Morals. London, 1971.
Griswold, Charles L., Jr. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1999.
Haakonssen, Knud. The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1981.
Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. 7th ed. New York, 1999. See chapter 3, "The Wonderful World of Adam Smith."
Muller, Jerry Z. Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society. New York and Toronto, 1993.
Otteson, James R. Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002.
Rae, John. Life of Adam Smith. London and New York, 1895.
Raphael, D. D. Adam Smith. Oxford and New York, 1985.
Ross, Ian Simpson. The Life of Adam Smith. Oxford and New York, 1995.
Skousen, Mark. The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers. Armonk, N.Y., 2001.
Winch, Donald. Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1978.
—JAMES R. OTTESON
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Adam Smith |
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Adam Smith |
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Classical economics, modern free market, division of labour, invisible hand |
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Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Keynes, Friedman, Marx, Engels, American Founding Fathers, Chomsky, Auguste Comte |
Adam Smith FRSE (baptised June 5 (OS) / June 16 (NS) 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneering political economist. He is a major contributor to the modern perception of free market economics. One of the key figures of the intellectual movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment, he is known primarily as the author of two treatises: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter was one of the earliest attempts to systematically study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe, as well as a sustained attack on the doctrines of mercantilism. Smith's work helped to build the foundation of the modern academic discipline of free market economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism.
Career
Career in Edinburgh and Glasgow
In 1748 Smith began delivering public lectures in Edinburgh under the patronage of the Lord Kames. Some of these dealt with rhetoric and belles-lettres, but later he took up the subject of "the progress of opulence," and it was then, in his middle or late 20s, that he first expounded the economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty" which he was later to proclaim to the world in his Wealth of Nations. In about 1750 he met the philosopher David Hume, who was his senior by over a decade. The alignments of opinion that can be found within the details of their respective writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion indicate that they both shared a closer intellectual alliance and friendship than with the others who were to play important roles during the emergence of what has come to be known as the Scottish Enlightenment[2]; he frequented The Poker Club of Edinburgh.
In 1751 Smith was appointed chair of logic at the University of Glasgow, transferring in 1752 to the Chair of Moral Philosophy, once occupied by his famous teacher, Francis Hutcheson. His lectures covered the fields of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, political economy, and "police and revenue". In 1759 he published his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work, which established Smith's reputation in his day, was concerned with how human communication depends on sympathy between agent and spectator (that is, the individual and other members of society). His analysis of language evolution was somewhat superficial, as shown only 14 years later by a more rigorous examination of primitive language evolution by Lord Monboddo in his Of the Origin and Progress of Language[3]. Smith's capacity for fluent, persuasive, if rather rhetorical argument, is much in evidence. He bases his explanation not, as the third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, on a special "moral sense"; nor, as Hume did, on utility; but on sympathy.
Smith now began to give more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lecture and less to his theories of morals. An impression can be obtained as to the development of his ideas on political economy from the notes of his lectures taken down by a student in about 1763 which were later edited by Edwin Cannan[4], and from what Scott, its discoverer and publisher, describes as "An Early Draft of Part of The Wealth of Nations", which he dates about 1763. Cannan's work appeared as Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. A fuller version was published as Lectures on Jurisprudence in the Glasgow Edition of 1776.
Tour of France
In 1762 the academic senate of the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of laws (LL.D.). At the end of 1763, he obtained a lucrative offer from Charles Townshend (who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume), to tutor his stepson, the young Duke of Buccleuch. Smith subsequently resigned from his professorship and from 1764-66 traveled with his pupil, mostly in France, where he came to know intellectual leaders such as Turgot, Jean D'Alembert, André Morellet, Helvétius and, in particular, Francois Quesnay, the head of the Physiocratic school whose work he respected greatly. On returning home to Kirkcaldy Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London and he devoted much of the next ten years to his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776. The book was very well received and made its author famous.
Later years
In 1778 Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother in Edinburgh. In 1783 he became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and from 1787 to 1789 he occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died in Edinburgh on July 17, 1790, after a painful illness and was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.
Smith's literary executors were two old friends from the Scottish academic world; the physicist and chemist Joseph Black, and the pioneering geologist James Hutton. Smith left behind many notes and some unpublished material, but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication. He mentioned an early unpublished History of Astronomy as probably suitable, and it duly appeared in 1795, along with other material, as Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Contemporary followers of Adam Smith include John Millar.
Adam Smith
Personal character and views
His personal views can be deduced from his published works. All of his personal papers were destroyed after his death. He never married and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who predeceased him by only six years. Contemporary accounts describe Smith as an eccentric but benevolent intellectual, comically absent minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait and a smile of "inexpressible benignity."[5] His patience and tact are said to have been valuable to his work as a university administrator at Glasgow. After his death it was discovered that much of his income had been devoted to secret acts of charity.
There has been considerable scholarly debate about the nature of Adam Smith's religious views. Smith's father had a strong interest in Christianity[6] and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland (the national church of Scotland since 1690). Smith may have gone to England with the intention of a career in the Church of England: this is controversial and depends on the status of the Snell Exhibition. At Oxford, Smith rejected Christianity and it is generally believed that he returned to Scotland as a Deist.[7]
Economist Ronald Coase, however, has challenged the view that Smith was a Deist, stating that, whilst Smith may have referred to the "Great Architect of the Universe", other scholars have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God". He based this on analysis of a remark in The Wealth of Nations where Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the "great phenomena of nature" such as "the generation, the life, growth and dissolution of plants and animals" has led men to "enquire into their causes". Coase notes Smith's observation that: "Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods." However, this belief would not conflict with deism, a belief system which holds as sceptical the idea of a personal god .
The "Adam Smith-Problem"
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In the Wealth of Nations Smith claims that self-interest alone (in a proper institutional setting) can lead to socially beneficial results. But in his Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith argues that sympathy is required to achieve socially beneficial results. On the surface it appears that a contradiction exists. Economist August Oncken referred to this in German as das 'Adam Smith-Problem'.[8] Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter also emphasized this apparent contradiction in his commentary on Smith's work.
Adam Smith himself cannot have seen any contradiction, since he produced a revised edition of Moral Sentiments after the publication of Wealth of Nations. Both sets of ideas are to be found in his Lectures on Jurisprudence. In recent years most students of Adam Smith's work have argued that no contradiction exists. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith develops a theory of psychology in which individuals in society find it in their self-interest to develop sympathy as they seek approval of what he calls the "impartial spectator." The self-interest he speaks of is not a narrow selfishness but something that involves sympathy.
Some readers of The Wealth of Nations have assumed that when Smith speaks of "self-interest" he is referring to selfishness. Although in some contexts, such as buying and selling, sympathy generally need not be considered, Smith makes it clear that he regards selfishness as inappropriate, if not immoral, and that the self-interested actor has sympathy for others. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith argues that the self-interest of any actor includes the interest of the rest of society, since the socially-defined notions of appropriate and inappropriate actions necessarily affect the interests of the individual as a member of society. Context is also useful as Adam Smith was against the idea of corporations, or "joint stock companies."
In any case, Adam Smith apparently believed that moral sentiments and self-interest would always add up to the same thing. One possible line of reasoning he might have employed in reaching this conclusion is as follows: the invisible hand cannot operate if there is no society, for precluding a societal construct precludes division of labor, and thus, the efficiency which comes with its manifestation. Now for society to exist, justice is a necessary condition (as pointed out in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments). For justice to exist in any social setting, individuals must harbor the passions of gratitude and resentment governed by a sense of 'merit' and 'demerit' (again from Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments). And finally, as Smith himself would have so vehemently argued, the sense of 'merit' and 'demerit' is almost exclusively engendered by human sympathy. In conclusion, the invisible hand of the market is, at some level, contingent upon the ability of humans to sympathize: Smith's self-interest is indeed in consonance with the notion of sympathy.
Influence
The Wealth of Nations, one of the earliest attempts to study the rise of industry and commercial development in Europe, was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. It provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade and capitalism, greatly influencing the writings of later economists. During and after the bicentennial celebration of the Wealth of Nations in 1976, much more attention has been paid to The Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as to his use of rhetoric, his views on virtue, government intervention or on the provision of public health, public works and education and his opposition to slavery, morally and economically, inequality, including racial inequality, and to beliefs in the color line, the inferiority of blacks, and the poor and the Irish. Nor did Smith believe that common sense was inferior to science.[9]. Calling him a moral philosopher and scientist or economist, pointing to a need to read both of his two major works, and his lesser works as well, describing his "economic man" as also a moral man, presenting his interests in virtue and morality, identifying the effects of his definition of the separation of the church and state, and of various of forms of government, including republics, on ending or promoting slavery, war, or both, characterizing mercantilism, slavery and colonialism, monopoly, as less efficient, and more expensive than free trade, free labor, or labor not coerced by want, misery, or force, discussing his legacy as a "lost legacy", citing his enemies and those who are and have "purloined" or "coopted" his works, looking at the British's government response to him and other English citizens who were his friends after the French Revolution, his response to religion and querying why he did not publish promised works, all were topics increasingly after 1976.
Overall, an heightened interest in Adam Smith and his works has been sustained until today. Among those reporting on such trends as more than a "speculative bubble" is economist Jonathan B. Wight in a 2004 conference paper titled "Is There a Speculative Bubble in Scholarship on Adam Smith?", presented at the Eleventh World Congress of Social Economics, Albertville, France. Wight, in addition to being the author of this paper and of other books and articles on Adam Smith and his works, also reports in 2002 that six hundred articles and thirty books had been published in the twenty seven years between 1970 and 1997. Only two articles on Adam Smith or his works were published the year before 1971 Wight also reports in a journal article, "The Rise of Adam Smith: Articles and Citations, 1970-1997".
There, in addition, has been a controversy over the extent of Smith's originality in The Wealth of Nations. Some argue that the work added only modestly to the already established ideas of thinkers such as Anders Chydenius (The National Gain 1765), David Hume and the Baron de Montesquieu. Indeed, many of the theories Smith set out simply described historical trends away from mercantilism and towards free trade that had been developing for many decades and had already had significant influence on governmental policy. Nevertheless, Smith's work organized their ideas comprehensively, and so remains one of the most influential and important books in the field today.
Smith was ranked #30 in Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
From 13 March 2007 onwards Smith's portrait appeared in the UK on new £20 notes. He is the first Scotsman to feature on a currency issued by the Bank of England.[10] A picture of the note is available on the Bank of England website.[11]
On June 25 2006, when Warren Buffet announced that he would donate his wealth to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he was presented with a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations by Bill Gates.[12]
Major works
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
- An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
- Essays on Philosophical Subjects (published posthumously 1795)
- Lectures on Jurisprudence (published posthumously 1976)
- Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres
Critics of Adam Smith
- Arthur Lee, An Essay in Vindication Of The Continental Colonies Of America, From A Censure of Mr. Adam Smith, in His Theory of Moral Sentiments. With Some Reflections on Slavery in General.By an American 1764 [13]
- Charles Dickens Tne Secret History of the Dismal Science: Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century by economists David Levy and Sandra Peart [14]
- Thomas Carlyle, Ibid.[15]
- John Ruskin, Ibid., [16]
References
- ^ Robert Falkner (1997). Biography of Smith (English). Liberal Democrat History Group. Retrieved on September 10, 2007.
- ^ Donald Winch, ‘Smith, Adam (bap. 1723, d. 1790)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004
- ^ Cloyd, E.L.: "James Burnett, Lord Monboddo", pp 64-66. Oxford University Press, 1972
- ^ "Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms", 1896
- ^ Liberty Fund. Chapter XVII - London (English). Ch. 17. Liberty Fund. Retrieved on September 10, 2007.
- ^ Ross, Ian Simpson, The Life of Adam Smith page 15
- ^ "When the time of his residence at Oxford expired, the question arose what line he was afterwards to pursue.He was destitute of patrimony and had not any turn for business. The Church seemed an improper profession, because he had early become a disciple of Voltaire in matters of religion." Times obituary of Adam Smith
- ^ August Oncken, "The Consistency of Adam Smith," The Economic Journal 7, no. 27 (1897): 444.
- ^ The Secret History of the Dismal Science: Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century by economists David Levy and Sandra Peart
- ^ BBC News (2006). Smith replaces Elgar on £20 note (English). BBC News. Retrieved on September 10, 2007.
- ^ Bank of England. Bank of England Banknotes - Virtual Tour (English). Bank of England. Retrieved on September 10, 2007.
- ^ Jeremy W. Peters (2006). Buffett Always Planned to Give Away His Billions (English). New York Times. Retrieved on September 10, 2007.
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?printsec=titlepage&dq=adam+smith+slavery&id=I7RIAAAAMAAJ&output=html_text
- ^ http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html
- ^ http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html
- ^ http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html
Bibliography
- James Buchan. The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas (2006)
- Stephen Copley and Kathryn Sutherland, eds. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: New Interdisciplinary Essays (1995)
- F. Glahe, ed. Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations: 1776-1976 (1977)
- Knud Haakonssen. The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith (2006)
- Samuel Hollander. The Economics of Adam Smith (University of Toronto Press) (1973)
- Muller, Jerry Z. Adam Smith in his Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society. Princeton Univ. Press (1995)
- Muller, Jerry Z. The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought. Anchor Books (2002)
- Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory), 2003. ISBN 0415220947
- P. J. O'Rourke. On The Wealth of Nations (Books That Changed the World) (2006)
- Richard F. Teichgraeber. Free Trade and Moral Philosophy: Rethinking the Sources of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1986)
- This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
-
General
- Biography at the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
- Life of Adam Smith by John Rae, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
- The Celebrated Adam Smith by Murray N. Rothbard; full text of Chapter 16 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. I and II, Edward Elgar, 1995; Mises Institute 2006
- Smith's works
- Brad deLong's Adam Smith page
- The Adam Smith Institute
- Grave of Adam Smith on the Famous Economists Grave Sites
- Adam Smith - Important Scots
- Reflections on Smith's ethicsPDF (129 KiB)
- Adam Smith on the 50 British Pound (Clydesdale Bank) banknote
- "The Betrayal of Adam Smith" by David C. Korten
- Adam Smith - A Primer by Eamonn Butler. Introduction to Smith's work, free download
- An Essay In Vindication Of The Continental Colonies Of America,From A Censure of Mr Adam Smith, in His Theory of Moral Sentiments. With Some Reflections on Slavery in General.By an American,1764
- Timeline of the Life of Adam Smith (1723-1790) at the Online Library of Liberty
- Timeline of the Scottish Enlightenment at the Online Library of Liberty
-
Works
- Works by Adam Smith at Project Gutenberg
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations at MetaLibri Digital Library (PDF format)
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments at MetaLibri Digital Library
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments at the Library of Economics and Liberty
- The Wealth of Nations at the Library of Economics and Liberty. Cannan edition. Definitive, fully searchable, free online
- The Wealth of Nations, available at Project Gutenberg.
- The Wealth of Nations from Mondo Politico Library - full text; formatted for easy on-screen reading
- The Wealth of Nations from the Adam Smith Institute - elegantly formatted for on-screen reading
- Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Glasgow edition, 7 volumes at the Online Library of Liberty. Definitive, free online
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Robert Cunninghame-Grahame of Gartmore |
Rector of the
University of Glasgow 1787—1789 |
Succeeded by Walter Campbell of Shawfield |
| Schools of economics | |
|---|---|
| Pre-modern | Ancient schools of economics |
| Early Modern | Scholasticism · Mercantilism · Physiocrats |
| Modern | Classical Economics · English historical school · German historical school · Socialist economics · Neoclassical economics · Lausanne school · Institutional economics |
| 20th-century | Stockholm school · Keynesian economics · Austrian school · Chicago school |
| Related | History of economic thought |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Smith, Adam |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Scottish philosopher and economist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 5 1723 O.S. (June 16 N.S.) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 17 1790 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Edinburgh, Scotland |
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