The Social Philosophy of Smith's “wealth of Nations”

Philosophy ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
John Laird
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
General Principles Of Law ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Historical Treatment

When Adam Smith, at the age of forty, resigned his professorship in Glasgow and devoted himself, after three years of travel, to the composition of his Wealth of Nations, he set himself to elaborate the sociological portion of his course on Moral Philosophy. Indeed, at the conclusion of his Moral Sentiments, written during the tenure of his professorship, he had promised “ another discourse ” on the “ general principles of law and government,” including a historical treatment and an account of “ police, revenue and arms.” To be sure, when the work appeared, it was not, in essentials, a continuation of the researches of Montesquieu, and had no authentic connection with Smith’s earlier treatise on morals, Instead, the bulk of it was a strict, and as we should say, a scientific (not a philosophical), inquiry into the origin and conditions of opulence in human communities. Nevertheless, it expounds and is even dominated by a certain social philosophy which is not too convincing when nakedly put. Smith's abiding fame, accordingly, rests more upon the strict scientific analysis of his book than upon its implicit philosophy. Still, the philosophy was there. It had, and it still has, influence. A short discussion of it, therefore, is likely to have something more than historical interest.

scholarly journals Blackstone's Science of Legislation

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The North ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Law And Legislation ◽  
The University

In 1795, Dugald Stewart, the professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and reigning Athenian of the North, observed in a famous estimate of the career of Adam Smith that “the most celebrated works produced in the different countries of Europe during the last thirty years” had “aimed at the improvement of society” by “enlightening the policy of actual legislators.” Among such celebrated productions Stewart included the publications of François Quesnay, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, Pedro Campomanes, and Cesare Beccaria and, above all, the writings of Smith himself, whose Wealth of Nations “unquestionably” represented “the most comprehensive and perfect work that has yet appeared on the general principles of any branch of legislation.” One of the more striking achievements of recent scholarship on eighteenth-century social thought has been to make sense of this description of Smith's Inquiry and to enable us better to appreciate why Smith chose to describe his system of political economy as a contribution to the “science of a legislator.” In a cultural setting in which, as J. G. A. Pocock has put it, “jurisprudence” was “the social science of the eighteenth century,” law and legislation further featured, in J. H. Burns's formula, as “the great applied science among the sciences of man.” Moralists and jurists of the period, echoing earlier political conventions, may readily have acknowledged with Rousseau that “it would take gods to give men laws.” Nevertheless, even in Rousseau's program for perfecting “the conditions of civil association”—“men being taken as they are and laws as they might be”—a mortal “legislator” appeared plainly “necessary.”

Adam Smith: Moral and Political Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The University ◽  
The 19Th Century

Adam Smith (1723–1790) has become known as the father of economics. His reputation as the author of the Wealth of Nations has eclipsed his contributions to other areas of philosophy. Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. His Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) was well-regarded at the time but faded from the philosophical canon in the 19th century and has only recently been subject to a revival of interest among philosophers. Smith’s thought was dismissed as moral psychology or as proto-utilitarian political economy until a revival in interest stemming largely from the publication of a critical edition of his works in the 1970s. Recent years have seen a renaissance in interest in Smith among moral philosophers. This has been accompanied by the first serious analysis of Smith’s thinking on rhetoric and the philosophy of science. This bibliography focuses on Smith’s moral and political philosophy. There is a very large literature on the technical details his economic theory and his contribution to the history of that discipline, but that will be mentioned here only when illuminating for discussions of his moral and political thinking.

(De)commodification, Consumer Culture, and Moral Economy

10.1068/d353 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Sayer
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
The Social ◽  
Status Seeking ◽  
Internal Goods ◽  
The Common

In this paper I attempt to develop understanding of commodification and consumption by relating ideas from the moral philosophy of Adam Smith and Alasdair MacIntyre to recent research on consumer culture by Pierre Bourdieu and Daniel Miller. I focus on how commodification affects how people value things, practices, themselves, and others. It is argued that, although traditional critiques of consumer culture have often been both elitist and weakly supported empirically, some of their normative distinctions can be used to illuminate more positive aspects of consumption. In particular, the distinction between internal and external goods enables us to appreciate that much consumption is not primarily a form of status seeking but a means to the development of skills, achievements, commitments, and relationships which have value regardless of whether they bring participants external rewards. Although Bourdieu's analysis of inequalities and the struggles of the social field misses this distinction, use of it helps to illuminate how the struggles are for internal goods as well as for status and power. Finally, by reference to recent work by Miller on altruistic shopping, I question the common related criticism of consumer culture as individualistic, and conclude.

scholarly journals Business Ethics in Adam Smith’s works

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Stefan Zabieglik
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

This paper presents some views of Adam Smith based on some selected problems of business ethics. These can be found in his famous works—The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations—and in his lectures at the Glasgow University, where he was a professor of moral philosophy in 1752–1764. The main argument of the paper is that ethical problems (presented mainly in The Theory of Moral Sentiments) are also present in his political economy, which contradicts some neoliberal interpretations of his works as ones of the “intellectual father of capitalism”. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith criticizes each social class because of the fact that its interests are incompatible with the good of the whole society. He condemned the monopolist efforts of the traders and entrepreneurs, described some property owners as “vain egoists” and advanced the interests of the poor. He maintained that the interests of the traders should be supported when these were compatible with the interest of the consumers. The desire for possession and wealth should be analyzed from the social point of view: It is good when it contributes to the common good and the reproduction of humankind.

Hume on Suicide

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Lecaldano
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The chapter starts with the history of Hume’s essay on suicide, and the sources and the social context of it in 1755. It also exposes the first reactions to the essay, particularly that of Adam Smith. The central sections present a critical discussion of the interpretation of the essay as a text of the philosophy of religion. The thesis of the chapter is that “On Suicide” is a text of moral philosophy. Hume refutes the Christian position and also the distinction between rational and irrational suicide; he advances—as resolutive—the positive moral principle of the natural liberty of all human beings and “the right to dispose of their own lives.” The essay has an influence in the contemporary bioethical literature just for this conception on the choices for the end of life.

Austen Equilibrium

2018 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Author(s):  
Trisha Urmi Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Marriage Plot ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

By proposing a quantitative game-theory model of the marriage plot in Jane Austen’s Emma, this essay demonstrates that free-market moral philosophy underwrites Austen’s representation of matrimony and key formal elements of her writing—particularly, matters of verbal profusion. Her famed stylistic “economy” is revealed to be structured by the emerging capitalist economy that Adam Smith theorized in The Wealth of Nations. Establishing the correspondences among several kinds of economy, the essay unites economic and formal approaches to Austen’s work.

EQUITY, BESIDES: ADAM SMITH AND THE UTILITY OF POVERTY

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Labor Supply ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Supply Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

Generations of readers have nodded in agreement with Adam Smith’s argument, in Book One of the Wealth of Nations, that a nation cannot be happy if the workers who constitute the majority of its population are miserable. Smith notes that equity, besides, demands that workers receive a generous recompense for their labor. I contend that this famous statement is best interpreted in light of contemporary arguments that it was socially useful for workers to be poor. Smith’s engagement with these arguments is usually interpreted with reference to the labor supply function, but I argue that it also involved deeper suppositions about the place of workers in the social order. Smith’s reaction to these suppositions enriches our understanding of his contribution to liberal economics.

1. Life and times

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

There is more to Adam Smith than The Wealth of Nations, a book on the workings of the economy. He wrote an important treatise on moral philosophy, published an exceptionally well-informed history of astronomy, and was an author who cared about literary style and how to communicate both orally and in print. ‘Life and times’ provides a biographical outline from his birth in Kirkcaldy in 1723 to his student years at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford, and his return to Glasgow University as the Professor of Logic in 1751. It also describes the sort of society in which Smith lived, with the backdrop of the 1707 Treaty of the Union and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document