Speaking of Smith Archives

March 24, 2019

 
In this piece we consider the possible impact of major events in the sciences upon Adam Smith’s thought.  

March 10, 2019


Adam Smith was no anarchist. Smith did have a strong presumption of liberty, but this presumption was not absolute. Under certain conditions, a jural superior (such as a sovereign or magistrate) could violate this presumption of liberty and impose a policy that would break the rules of justice.

February 24, 2019


People simply don’t respond to data the way they do to drama. Adam Smith—economist and professor of rhetoric—was ideally equipped to understand and explain why.

February 10, 2019


It is correctly pointed out that Adam Smith condemns love for being exclusive and rejecting any alternative sociability... However, the situation is more complicated than it may appear at first glance. 

January27, 2019


Adam Smith had a life-long interest in the arts.  He was surely a man of taste.  However, his biographer, Dugald Stewart, suggests Smith’s interest in the arts and fashion was primarily “on account of their connexion with the general principles of the human mind” (Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 173).  Smith, it seems, was ever the theorist.  

January 13, 2019


Although Adam Smith produced no systematic treatise on aesthetics (or “criticism” as it was called among Eighteenth century Brits), Smith touches on these issues at a number of places in his work.