Adam Smith

Few would argue that Adam Smith was one of the great minds of the eighteenth century. He is perceived through his best-known book, The Wealth of Nations, as the founder of economics as a science, and his ideas about the free market and the role of the state (in relation to it) continue to influence modern economic thought. Yet Smith achieved even more as a man of letters, as a moralist, historian, and critic. The Life of Adam Smith, the first full-scale biography of Smith in a hundred years, is a superb account of Smith's life and work, encompassing a career that spanned some of the defining moments in world history, including the American and French Revolutions. Here author Ian Simpson Ross examines Smith's family life, education, career, intellectual circle (including David Hume and Francois Quesnay), and his contemporaries (the likes of Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson), bringing to life this great thinker and author. Readers will meet Smith as a student at a lively Glasgow University and at a sleepy Oxford; a freelance lecturer delivering popular classes on rhetoric; an innovative university teacher ("by far the most useful, and therefore," Smith wrote, "by far the happiest and most honourable period of my life"); then a tutor travelling abroad with a Duke; an acclaimed political economist; a policy advisor to governments during and after the American Revolution; and finally, if paradoxically in view of his strongly held tenets, a Commissioner of Customs coping with free traders in the smuggling business. But it his impact as a writer that continues to set Adam Smith apart today. The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, as the British Parliament was deep in debate about the American colonies, continues to influence modern economic theory throughout the world. Ross sheds new light on this classic work and on its meaning for today. And he also paints a vivid portrait of Smith's personal life, revealing a man of singular generosity of spirit, who believed that with wit and logic and sensitivity to our feelings, we might aspire to virtue rather than wealth, and so become members of a truly civil society. Upon Adam Smith's death in 1790, a friend wrote of him, "Happy are those who at the close of life can reflect that they have lived to a valuable purpose by contributing, as he did, to enlighten mankind, and to spread the blessings of peace and liberty and virtue." The Life of Adam Smith illuminates the world of a man whose legacy of thought concerns and affects us all.

This book examines the influence that Adam Smith's philosophy had on his economics, drawing on the neglected parts of Smith's writings to show that the political and economic theories built logically on his morals. It analyses the significance of his stoic beliefs, his notions of art and music, astronomy, philosophy and war, and shows that Smith's invisible hand was part of a `system' that was meant to replace medieval Christianity with an ethic of virtue in this world rather than the next. Smith was motivated primarily by a political ideal, a moral version of liberalism. He rejected the political philosophy of the Greeks and Christians as authoritarian and unworldly, but contrary to what many economists believe, he also rejected the amoral liberalism that was being advocated by his countryman and friend David Hume. Far from being myopic about self-love, Smith arrived at his theories of free trade, economic growth, and alienation via his reinterpretation of Stoic virtue. Athol Fitzgibbons' account is clearly written, and its innovations reveal the hitherto hidden unity in Smith's overarching system of morals, politics and economics.

The second edition of this guide to Adam Smith's system of thought has been fully updated to reflect recent developments in Smith scholarship and Professor Skinner's experience of teaching Smith to a student audience. The material from the first edition has been extensively rewritten, and four new chapters have been added, covering Smith's essays on the exercise of human understanding, and his relationship to Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Sir James Steuart. Skinner places Smith's system of social, and moral, science firmly within the context of contemporary British and Continental intellectual history, dealing in particular detail with the founders of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the French Physiocrats.

Although Adam Smith died over two hundred years ago, his influence is still felt in many areas of contemporary economics. In this volume some of the world's leading economists pay tribute to Smith's continuing importance. The contributors write under three different headings. The first section considers The Wealth of Nations from today's perpective. Even though Smith lacked the sophisticated mathematical techniques of modern economists his theoretical and quantitative work is shown to be both acute and rigorous. The second section looks at modern applications of Smith's analysis. Again, the terms Smith uses when addressing issues in macro and labour economics might not be familiar, but the essentials of his analysis will be. Finally, the book considers the state of modern economics. Heirs to Smith as leaders of the discipline, the contributors assess the extent to which economics measures up to the bench-mark established by its founder. Both a tribute to the enduring value of Smith's work and an overview of,the current state of the discipline, this volume will be of interest to the whole economics community.