Arts & Culture

Adam Smith, the German Historical School, and Walter Eucken

January 8, 2025

Photo from the Walter Eucken Institut

Grudev and Kolev examine the evolution of the Historical School's perspectives on Smith and the "Adam Smith Problem" starting with Smith's contemporaries through to mid-20th century.

Cities as Centers of Innovation: Lessons from Edinburgh and Paris

February 7, 2024

Where and when does progress happen? Certain places at certain times are special and Follett show why with two examples close to the life of Adam Smith: Edinburgh, Scotland and Paris, France.

The Physics and Metaphysics of Liberty: Adam Smith and William Blake

October 11, 2023

"Smith’s moral, political, and economic cases for liberty are compelling, stated as they are in purely practical terms, yet they leave some stones unturned. Enter William Blake, who asks, what if liberty is not only beneficial but also at the core of what it means to be human?"

Intellectual Pride and the Limits of Theory

September 6, 2023

"We are responsible for what we think... And we arrive at our notions about what is true and false not simply by diagramming ideas on a whiteboard, but by seeing them expressed in the lives of others and experiencing firsthand how they play out in our own lives. As such, ideas are not like pieces on a chess board, to be moved about by whim with impunity. To the contrary, they are matters of life and death."

Nils von Rosenstein: An Enlightened Follower of Adam Smith in Eighteenth-Century Sweden

July 12, 2024

Rosenstein’s Dissertation on the Enlightenment and other works show there's more opportunities for better understanding Adam Smith's reception beyond England, France, and Scotland. Studying these peripheries can illuminate our understanding of the wider Enlightenment especially as it relates to ideas about political economy.

Adam Smith on the Value of Art

May 10, 2023

Tolstoy, Smith, and the Perils of Loneliness

October 20, 2021

Frankenstein Through the Eyes of Adam Smith

October 29, 2021

LUMOS! Learning Moral Sentiments with Harry Potter

June 2, 2021

Smith and Samuel Johnson: Unlucky Altercation?

October 14, 2020

Heaven and Earth: Points of Convergence in the Arts and Adam Smith

September 2, 2020

“Who are you wearing?” Fashion production in the age of Adam Smith

June 10, 2020

Drawn to Industry and Idleness: Hogarth and Smith

March 3, 2020

Clarissa Explains It All: Adam Smith and the Eighteenth-Century Novel in Letters

December 4, 2019

Happy Smithsgiving!

November 26, 2019

What would Adam Smith think of that particularly American holiday, Thanksgiving?

Gulliver's Travels: Adam Smith's Favorite Novel

October 30, 2019

Adam Smith and Silas Marner: Heaps of Gold

July 17, 2019

Smithian Sympathy in the Arabian Nights

June 12, 2019

Adam Smith Goes to the Movies: The Avengers

April 24, 2019

If Adam Smith were alive today, he’d be just as excited as the rest of us about the release of Avengers: Endgame

Curious Sympathies Between Mark Twain and Adam Smith

February 6, 2019

Adam Smith and the Theater of the Marketplace

August 1, 2018

Self-Help Advice from Adam Smith and Jane Austen

November 12, 2018

Adam Smith and the Horror of Frankenstein

Watch on YouTube

April 3, 2019

Just for Fun... Design Your Own 18th Century Wig!

Via the Victoria & Albert Museum