Adam Smith’s version of Virtue Ethics can be traced directly back to Plato (Socrates) and Aristotle. Smith basically skipped Aquinas and Augustine because they were also Catholic theologians, as well as philosophers. Referencing them would not have been looked upon kindly by the Scottish...

Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian tracts The Principles of Morals and Legislation and In Defense of Usury contains an explicit attack on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations on pages 8-23 in chapter Two of The Principles of Morals and Legislation, as well as on...

The major impediment standing in the way for economists seeking to understand Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TTMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WN) is demonstrated to be their confusion over the terms, prudence, used by Smith in the standard Aristotelian sense in TTMS to mean putting...