Commentary
[in chronological order]
Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment
- Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. Harvard University Press, 2013.From the Publisher: “In a brilliant recreation of the epoch between the 1770s and the 1820s, Emma Rothschild reinterprets the ideas of the great revolutionary political economists to show us the true landscape of economic and political thought in their… More
Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph
- Hirschman, Albert O. Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. [S.l.]: Princeton University Pres, 2013.From the Publisher: “In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material… More
The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith
- Berry, Christopher J., Maria Pia Paganelli, and Craig Smith. The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith. Oxford University Press, 2013.From the Publisher: “Adam Smith (1723-90) is a thinker with a distinctive perspective on human behaviour and social institutions. He is best known as the author of the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Yet his work… More
History of Political Philosophy
- Strauss, Leo, and Joseph Cropsey. History of Political Philosophy. University of Chicago Press, 2012.From the Publisher: “This volume provides an unequaled introduction to the thought of chief contributors to the Western tradition of political philosophy from classical Greek antiquity to the twentieth century. Written by specialists on the various… More
The Moral Imagination by Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Moral Imagination: From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.From the Publisher: “In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America’s most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their… More
After Adam Smith: a Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy
- Milgate, Murray, and Shannon C Stimson. After Adam Smith: a Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy. Princeton, N.J.; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2011.From the Publisher: “Few issues are more central to our present predicaments than the relationship between economics and politics. In the century after Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations the British economy was transformed. After Adam Smith looks… More
Adam Smith and the Scotland of His Day
- Fay, C.R. Adam Smith and the Scotland of His Day. Cambridge: University Press, 2011.From the Publisher: “The Augustan Age in Scotland was the half-century between the publication of Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature and the death of Robert Burns in 1796. In this period Edinburgh was at her height as a cultural centre. This is a… More
The Life of Adam Smith
- Ross, Ian Simpson, and Adam T Smith. The Life of Adam Smith. Oxford [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 2010.From the Publisher: “This new edition of The Life of Adam Smith remains the only book to give a full account of Smith’s life whilst also placing his work into the context of his life and times. Updated to include new scholarship which has… More
Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life
- Phillipson, N. T. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. New Haven [Conn.]; London: Yale University Press, 2010.From the Publisher: “The great eighteenth-century British economist Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated as the founder of modern economics. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist and would never have predicted that… More
“Recovering the Case for Capitalism” by Yuval Levin
- Levin, Yuval. “Recovering the Case for Capitalism.” National Affairs (2010).Excerpt: “A recovery of the case for capitalism should begin at the beginning. As always when we want to become reacquainted with ourselves, we Americans would be wise to start with a refreshing dip into the late 18th century, when our way of life was… More
Major Works
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
- Recommended edition: Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.Excerpt: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of… More
Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795)
- Smith, Adam. Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Edited by W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982.Excerpt: “Plato, however, seems to have regarded the first of those as equally distinct with the second from what we would now call the Ideas or Thoughts of the Divine Mind , and even to have supposed, that they had a particular place of existence,… More
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
- Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by Edwin Cannan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.Excerpt: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is… More
Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms (1763)
- Recommended edition: Smith, Adam. Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms (1763). Edited by Edwin Cannan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896.Excerpt: “It is to be observed in general that the situation of a country, and the degree of improvement of which it is susceptible, not only in the cultivation of the land, but in other branches of trade, is favourable to the introduction of a… More
Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762)
- Recommended edition: Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence. Edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein. Vol. 5 of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982.Excerpt: “1stThe first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice; to prevent the members of a society from incroaching on one anothers property, or siezing what is not their own. The design here is to give each one the secure… More