Adam Smith (1721-90) is a thinker with a distinctive perspective on human behaviour and social institutions. Yet his work is name-checked more often than it is read and then typically it is of an uninformed nature; that he is an apologist for capitalism a forceful promoter of self-interest, a...

A carefully curated selection of new and classic essays by Scottish Enlightenment expert Christopher J. BerryThis collection of essays by Christopher J. Berry spans several decades and multiple shifts across Scottish Enlightenment, Hume and Smith studies. It brings together classic essays –...

"This book looks at how the ideas of freedom, property and order are expressed in modern social contract theories (SCTs). Drawing on the theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls, it studies how notions of freedom promulgated by these SCTs invariably legitimise and defend the private...