Speaking of Smith Archives

Five Great Books on Adam Smith

January 20, 2021

If you haven't encountered them already, these five books make for great reading on a range of topics related to Smith.

Bargaining with the Butcher, Baker, and Brewer: A New Look at Smith’s Most Famous Sentences

January 17, 2021

Our desire to persuade each other is not reducible to our pursuit of self-interest in a narrow material sense; it is rather a deep feature of human nature, one we share with the men and women whom we rely on for our food.

Dear Adam Smith: Impatience with Infants

January 13, 2021

We simply cannot sympathize with an infant as naturally as we would with a person in full command of her faculties, and this can be uncomfortable.

Profitable Business: Adam Smith’s Moral Assessment

January 10, 2021

What we get in Smith is not a utopian view of profitable business, but a humane and realistic assessment of the power of firms and the markets in which they operate to do good in the world.

What Adam Smith Ate: Dinner with Ben Franklin

January 7, 2020

Dear Adam Smith: The Distracted Professor

January 3, 2021

Dr. Distracted gets lost in thought, and wants to present himself better.

Can Adam Smith help?

The Hazards of Ambition

December 31, 2020

Instead of being a blind supporter of today’s morally hazardous consumerism, Smith is perhaps its most astute critic.

The Bard and The Professor: Adam Smith’s Influence on Robert Burns

December 27, 2020

What Adam Smith Ate: Christmas Punch

December 23, 2020

Smith would have enjoyed his favorite claret, what we would call Bordeaux today, as well as, perhaps, a Christmas punch.

Mr. Potter: Man of System

December 20, 2020

Friends of AdamSmithWorks will surely note that the tension between George Bailey and Mr. Potter stems in part from Potter being what Adam Smith calls a man of system.

Adam Smith Wishes You a Mereology Christmas

December 16, 2020

Aristotle’s proposition that individuals belong more to the republic than to themselves folds the part (individual) into the whole (polity). This mereology collapsed, argues Strauss, when people adopted the Christian belief in a personal transcendent destiny and a loyalty to a kingdom beyond this world.

Happiness in Times of Crisis

December 13, 2020

By François Topino-Lebrun - Public Domain

"In highlighting the anecdote of Pyrrhus and Cineas, Smith moves away from an answer to the happiness question that is merely economic or material."