Smith, Adam
Smith, Adam (1723–90)An eminent Scottish philosopher and social theorist, Professor of Logic then Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, whose influential publications include The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), and Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795).
Smith is best known as an economist—although even The Wealth of Nations is much more than simply a treatise on economic affairs. A total philosophy of society, rather than a narrowly economic perspective on social action, is suggested by passages such as the following: ‘Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had lived before almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their...
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