Western economic thinkers in the 19th century rediscovered the principle of greatest happiness (PGH). However, as Eastern philosophical and religious thinking shows it was part of common knowledge in Buddhism and Hinduism over the past millennia. PGH did not have the same agenda as later on...

This paper is an evaluation of John Locke's labour theory of property. Section I sets out Locke's labour view. Section II addresses several possible objections, including against the conceptual coherence of Locke's argument, against the metaphysical implications of his view, as well as...

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...

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...

The economics profession has completely mixed up Adam Smith’s definition of self-interest, by which Smith means the absolute necessity of successfully applying the Virtue of Prudence, with Jeremy Bentham’s directly conflicting definition of self-interest, which is the Vice of Greed,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In his Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen compares the two basic approaches to evaluate institutions, transcendental institutionalism and realization-focused comparisons. Referring to Smith's Impartial Spectator, he argues in favor of the latter and proposes the principle of Open Impartiality....