In addition to its connection with ideas of freedom, the word “liberal” is an apt descriptor of Smith’s plan in politics. Smith’s plan evinces attributes that are liberal in a non-political sense. Salient among these attributes is generosity and charity. The liberal plan, on Smith’s...

Smith’s discourses aim to encourage mores, practices, and public policies in service to the common good, or that which a universally benevolent spectator would approve of. The Wealth of Nations illustrates how in pursuing our own happiness within the bounds of prudence and commutative justice...

David K. Lewis published his brilliant PhD dissertation in 1969, Convention; A Philosophical Study. With a lag, scholarship on David Hume has come to elaborate the similitude between Lewis and Hume on convention. Reading Hume along the lines of Lewis gives us a vocabulary with which we can...

The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the understanding of Hume’s account of the faculty of reason and to examine some implications for interpreting the broader arc of his philosophy. I argue that Hume develops his thinking about reason dialectically in Book I of the Treatise by...

This essay provides an overview of the major changes across the editions of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). It deals with two issues relating to Smith’s theological and economic perspectives. Although Smith pares away some of the orthodox Christian theology in the later...

In this essay I consider the relationship between wealth and happiness in Adam Smith by a close reading of a famous section of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS IV.i.8-10). I interpret Smith as presenting an open-ended dialectic between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of happiness with...

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...

There has been a longstanding debate over the coherence of Hutcheson’s writings. Hutcheson’s writings on ethics have been taken as inconsistent with his work on jurisprudence and economics. This article argues that Hutcheson’s works are coherent when situated in theological context. We...

This essay provides a short sketch of the changes in the editions of Adam Smith's 'Theory of Moral Sentiments.' I begin with a treatment of the first five editions, focusing on Smith's responses to comments from David Hume and Gilbert Elliot and the addition of the "Languages" essay to edition...