This article is part of a symposium (in Society) on a target article by Amitai Etzioni. Using that article as a point of departure, I take the opportunity to elaborate a reading of Adam Smith's moral philosophy that sees it as quite non-foundationalist. Whereas foundationalism's metaphor is a...

These brief, casual remarks were delivered at an event to discuss Russell Roberts’s book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. I provide nine quotations from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, each quotation stating a source of vice, disorder, and corruption in human life. Smith...

Adam Smith infused the expression “impartial spectator” with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which normally would aptly take the definite article the, and which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator of an...

In 1826 the famous novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott entered an economic policy debate. Adopting a pseudonym, his Letters … from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq., on the Proposed Change of Currency fiercely defended the Scottish banking system from a British government proposal to ban banknotes...

The present 77 page document is my set of notes used in a five-part reading group on Larry Siedentop's great book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. The document contains a link to the set of videos online

In a recent edition of Economic Affairs, Edwin van de Haar provides evidence against the thesis that trade fosters peace. However, I argue his description of the “trade-fosters-peace” thesis as insufficiently precise is incorrect. By its nature, we must use probabilistic language....

On regular issues of policy reform—presupposing a stable integrated polity— Hume, Smith, and Burke were liberal in the original political meaning of “liberal.” Thus, on policy reform, although they accorded the status quo a certain presumption (as any reasonable person must), the more...

The most sophisticated monetary and banking policy advice available in the decades after 1776was found in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith recommended free competition amongnationwide banks of issue with only minimal legal restrictions and no legal privileges. Yetneither Alexander...

In the first edition of the Wealth of Nations, published in London in 1776, the author-works list is presented in a very unusual place: directly opposite the table of contents. That placement suggests a continuity and unity in Adam Smith’s published works. A photograph provides a touchstone to...