Adam Smith : An Enlightened Life

by Nicholas Phillipson

• ISBN13: 9780300177671
• ISBN10: 0300177674
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2012-01-10
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Nicholas Phillipson's intellectual biography of Adam Smith shows that Smith saw himself as philosopher rather than an economist. Phillipson shows Smith's famous works were a part of a larger scheme to establish a "Science of Man," which was to encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics. Phillipson explains Adam Smith's part in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh at the time of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all Phillipson explains how far Smith's ideas developed in dialog with his closest friend David Hume.--Publisher's description.

Author Biography

Nicholas Phillipson is one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment. An Honorary Research Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh, he has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Yale, the Folger Library, and the Ludwigs-Maximillian Universitat.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Maps	p. xv
Prologue	p. 1
A Kirkcaldy Upbringing	p. 9
Glasgow, Glasgow University and Francis Hutcheson's Enlightenment	p. 24
Private Study 1740-46: Oxford and David Hume	p. 56
Edinburgh's Early Enlightenment	p. 72
Smith's Edinburgh Lectures: a Conjectural History	p. 89
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 1.1751-9	p. 12o
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Civilizing Powers of Commerce	p. 138
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 2.1759-63	p. 159
Smith and the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe 1764-6	p. 180
London, Kirkcaldy and the Making of the Wealth of Nations 1766-76	p. 200
The Wealth of Nations and Smith's 'Very violent attack … upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain'	p. 214
Hume's Death	p. 239
Last Years in Edinburgh 1778-90	p. 255
Epilogue	p. 279
Notes and Sources	p. 285
Bibliography of Works Cited	p. 313
Index	p. 323
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