Adam Smith

Josiah Tucker, who was the Anglican dean of Gloucester from 1758 until his death in 1799, is best known today as a controversialist, a political economist and a lesser contemporary of Adam Smith. Little attention has been paid, however, to the important relationship between his religious writings and his wider economic thought. This article addresses this lack of attention in two ways: first by demonstrating the link between Tucker's conception of civil and religious liberty and his "science" of political economy, and second by drawing sustained attention to his economic adaptation and reformulation of the moral philosophy of Bishop Joseph Butler, Tucker's ecclesiastical mentor from 1739 to 1752. Emphasizing Butler and Tucker's views on the traditional Christian virtue of charity, and the moral duty of the rich towards the poor, the article suggests that both clergymen were proponents of a sociability-based, neo-Stoic conception of human nature, which was not only compatible with, but also dependent upon, the established Anglican Church and state and the predominantly Whig commercial order. In consequence, Tucker's political economy was premised on the unavoidability of social subordination and economic inequality as necessary hallmarks of modern commercial society. Accordingly, the article closes with a brief discussion of Tucker's "Butlerian" assessment and rejection of the "anti-social" doctrine of individual natural rights, associated with the popular radicalism of the American and French Revolutions in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

Adam Smith's approach to self interest(self love)is an application of Jesus Christ's dictum to love your neighbor as you love yourself ."As you love yourself " means that you can put yourself in a position to "love your neighbor"(benevolence) by first being able to build up a surplus by maximizing your profits or returns. This prudent behavior by the sober people is identical to their behavior if they were in a race with prizes given to the winners. This was discussed in Smith's 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which laid out his virtue ethics approach based on Aristotle.

This paper presents an overview of the adoption of Adam Smith’s work in the Central European countries, namely the Czech lands and the Hungarian Kingdom in the last third of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, after a short presentation concerning the teaching and writing on economic issues in Smith’s time, we discuss various channels through which Smith’s ideas reached Central Europe. We take stock of the economists influenced by his thoughts, most of them students at the University of Göttingen. In the second part, we discussed the life and the work of Gregorius von Berzeviczy, an eminent economist living in the Kingdom of Hungary, who seemed to be most influenced by the teaching of the Great Scotsman. We reviewed Berzeviczy’s main works and discussed his influence.

"Social justice progressives are fulfilling, not betraying, the ideals of their Enlightenment forebears." In this essay, contra Jordan Peterson, I explain the philosophical roots of "social justice progressivism" as being perfectly aligned with "classical liberal" philosophical assumptions and presumptions. Examining, briefly and concisely, Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Smith, Mill, Popper, and Rawls, I highlight how the fundamental thesis of liberalism is "freedom from harm."

As Descartes did for epistemology and Lévinas did for ethics, Baruchello
places social and political philosophy as the new ‘first philosophy’. His
research in the intersecting fields of economics, power politics,
knowledge, and reality, presented here and in The Business of Life and
Death Volume 2: Politics, Law, and Society, continues the work of John
McMurtry, and fills in the unacknowledged missing pieces in the work of
Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky, among others. He
lays bare the frightening reality of how capital has controlled our
understanding of knowledge, ethics, and meaning, to the detriment of
the life-flourishing of peoples and environments. Yet his argument
remains optimistic: he shows how the power of capital can be escaped,
and how the life-ground of human goodness can replace it.
--Brendan Myers,
author of Loneliness and Revelation, and Reclaiming Civilization.

Please note that all author's royalties are devolved to charity.

(Cf. http://www.brendanmyers.net/nwpbooks/baruchello1.html)

The sample provided here contains also the table of contents.

Contemporary societies are marked by deep inequalities grounded in collective failures to recognize the histories, needs, and experiences of marginalized social groups. What are the strategies that can help individuals become more responsive to social realities and perspectives that differ significantly from their own?

In Reimagining Sympathy,Recognizing Difference: Insights from Adam Smith, Millicent Churcher attends to recent debates over the imagination as a resource for social and political reform, and highlights the central relevance of Adam Smith’s voice to these debates. Smith, best known for his work on economics, may seem an unlikely figure to draw upon in this context. However, his nuanced account of ‘sympathy’—conceived as an imaginative and reflective capacity that develops within and through social experience—greatly enriches the role of imagination in fostering mutual understanding and solidarity among a diverse citizenry.

Churcher critically explores and extends Smith’s view that if sympathy is to bind people together across their differences rather than divide them, it requires work at the level of individual practice, as well as the support of wider social structures. By drawing Smith into conversation with contemporary debates in social and political theory, this monograph addresses the pressing question of what is required from individuals and institutions to remedy abject failures to recognize and respond ethically to difference.

How should the ordinary citizens of commercial societies navigate increasingly complex political landscapes characterized by global markets, specialization, and manipulation by special interests? Given the political power of ordinary citizens typical of contemporary democracies, political theorists and political scientists alike have investigated citizens' competence and the quality of their political judgments. This research reveals a potential gap between normative ideals and empirical reality. On the one hand, there is widespread agreement that well-functioning democracies need sufficiently well-informed citizens capable of making competent decisions on issues including taxation, regulatory policies, and education policy (Rawls 1996; Habermas 2006; Estlund 2009; Landemore 2013). On the other hand, empirical studies consistently find real-world democratic citizens to be ill-informed, biased, and prone to systematic errors in judgment (Achen and Bartels 2017; Caplan 2008). In this paper, I refer to the mismatch between the demands of political judgment and the capacities of ordinary citizens as "the political judgment problem" and I argue, drawing on the work of Adam Smith, that versions of this problem have existed since the early days of commercial society (therefore preceding the advent of mass democracy). In The Wealth of Nations (henceforth, WN), Smith 1 I have used the following (standard) in-text abbreviations for Smith's works. References to TMS and WN include the relevant book, part, section, chapter, and paragraph, followed by page number, using the Glasgow edition's citation system. CAS = Correspondence of Adam Smith; LJ = Lectures on Jurisprudence; TMS = The Theory of Moral Sentiments; WN = An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

RESUMEN: El artículo presenta y contrasta el papel central de la simpatía en las teorías morales de Hume y Smith a lo largo de cinco puntos: 1) la simpatía como «fuente principal de las distinciones morales» y como contrapunto al egoísmo, 2) el papel auxiliar de la razón, 3) el mecanismo imaginativo que sustenta la simpatía, 4) el sesgo de parcialidad que la caracteriza y, por ello mismo, 5) la necesidad de corrección reconocida por Hume con «el punto de vista estable y general» y por Smith con «el espectador imparcial». Por último, revisa la noción de «simpatía» de ambos autores a la luz de algunas aportaciones psicológicas contemporáneas en torno a la «empatía», valorando la contribución de Smith como gran teórico de la adopción de perspectiva imaginativa en todas sus variantes.

Résumé : Le but de cet article est d’étudier en quoi la notion de système, développée par Smith, se différencie du système d’harmonie préétablie de Leibniz appelé aussi, au XVIII°siècle, système de l’optimisme. Depuis les travaux de Jon Elster, nous connaissons l'influence du philosophe de Hanovre dans l’architectonique du capitalisme ou plutôt, devrions-nous ajouter, dans celle du laissez-faire. Nous savons, par ailleurs, qu’une controverse a opposé, au moment précis où Smith commençait à écrire son œuvre, les tenants du système de l’optimisme aux « newtoniens » dont les trois figures clés étaient en France d’Alembert et Condillac au plan épistémologique, Voltaire au niveau littéraire. Nous verrons que cette controverse, qui porte principalement sur le concept de liaisons ou de lois qui lient les éléments d’un système, traverse le siècle et prolonge celle qui a opposé Newton à Leibniz. Après avoir présenté le système de l’Optimisme, nous étudierons comment situer Smith dans ce débat. Pour cela, nous nous centrerons nos analyses sur trois points clés du système de l’optimisme : la notion de monade ; la notion même de système avec ses enjeux architectoniques, théoriques et politiques ; et enfin le problème de la maximisation. Cette étude nous conduira enfin à proposer une interprétation de la « main invisible » plus en empathie avec l’architectonique smithienne telle qu’elle se dévoile dans ce travail.

Mots clés : « Système de l’optimisme », Leibniz, Malebranche, Smith, Newton, Condillac, d’Alembert, « main invisible, Platon, Koyré, Elster, More.


Abstract. The aim of this article is to study how Smith's concept of system is different from what was called in the 18 th century the system of Optimism developed by Malebranche and mainly by Leibniz. Jon Elster has shown the influence of the philosopher of Hanover in the architectonics of capitalism or rather – of laisser-faire. If this fact alone could encourage us to compare the two systems, another element also provides an incentive. At the very moment when Smith began his work there was a controversy opposing the supporters of the system of optimism with « Newtonians » and their three key figures in France: d' Alembert, Condillac and Voltaire. This controversy is mainly about the concept of connections or of laws which bind the elements of a system. It followed the one which had opposed Newton with Leibniz at the very beginning of the 18 th century. After presenting the system of Optimism we will compare with that of Smith on three key points: the concept of monade, the concept of system itself, with its architectonic, theoretical and political stakes, and finally the problem of maximization. Then we will propose a non leibnizian interpretation of the " invisible hand " more empathetic with Smith's architectonics as it has appeared in our study. Classification JEL : B10, H10, K20, K40. Résumé : Le but de cet article est d'étudier en quoi la notion de système, développée par Smith, se différencie du système d'harmonie préétablie de Leibniz appelé aussi, au XVIII°

Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass produced consumer durable, and were Adam Smith’s pre-eminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95 per cent over the preceding century; a claim that this paper attempts to evaluate. We look at changes in the reported value of over 3,200 stolen watches from records of criminal trials in the Old Bailey court in London from 1685 to 1810. Before allowing for quality improvements we find that the real price of watches in
nearly all categories falls steadily by 1.3 per cent per year, equivalent to a fall of 75 per cent over a century, a rate considerably above the growth rate of average labour productivity in British industry in the early nineteenth century.
(JEL N0, Keywords: Watch prices, Adam Smith, Industrial Revolution.)

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has acquired worldwide relevance since 1970s, namely thanks to the revolution brought by the civil society. However, some scholars claim that nowadays the concept of CSR has been emptied of its social value and it is instead used as a means to create more economic profit. Thus, this research paper is an attempt to investigate whether the theory of a capitalist CSR can be applied to the case study of the Italian Benetton Group. To do this, two main activities of the BG ("shockvertising" and dialogue with civil society) will be studied through discourse analysis.

Il Decimo Rapporto annuale di "Sos Impresa", pubblicato il 22 ottobre 2007 in occasione dell'assemblea nazionale dell'associazione antiracket dall'eloquente sottotitolo "le mani della criminalità sulle imprese", pone per l'ennesima volta l'accento su un'emergenza che pesa come un macigno sull'economia e sulle opportunità di sviluppo civile di interi settori della società italiana.

Should education have any use? The question seems hardly worth asking, let alone answering. Yet this apparently absurd topic constitutes the major issue that has dominated debates about higher education in Britain for the past two hundred years. What is perhaps most remarkable is that such a controversy should have managed to sustain itself into such extreme old age; that indeed it reasserts itself even now. It is true that not even Oscar Wilde dared to assert publicly, at least, that universities should be like art- that is, perfectly useless. But to suggest that universities should be useful, that they should teach practical forms of knowledge, has been for many to go too far.

Download: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv5cg94w
The automotive sector represents more than a simple industry. Since the late nineteenth century, it has embodied the economic and technological power of nations, the lifestyle, the dynamics of urban and territorial development, and it has acted as a national barometer of economic success and failure. This book explains how the car industry works and analyses the challenges both for the sector and for the economies that rely on the industry for jobs, growth, and innovation. It explores an industry that has been under severe pressure in industrialized countries for many years—factories have shut down, jobs have gone, and brands have disappeared—yet world production has never been so high, reaching new peaks annually. Fabio Cassia and Matteo Ferrazzi investigate as well the new trends of urban mobility and the characteristic of " car of the future " : the traditional landscape of car production and usage will be driven by technological advances, connectivity, car sharing, and by one the most fascinating advances, the self-driving car. How different will be the automotive sector in a decade? Will the traditional players be challenged by new entrants such as Google, Apple, Uber?

First chapter download: https://agendapub.com/images/pdfs/chapters/9781911116721_chp.pdf

“An Insatiable Emptiness” written by Evelyn Lau “uses vivid details to describe the effects of an eating
disorder that she eventually overcame” (Lau p. 495.) .... “Addiction in Free Markets” is a story on social dislocation and family stress written by Bruce K. Alexander
and Stefa Shaler. “Although any person in society can become addicted, free market societies universally
dislocate their members leading to mass addiction” (“Addiction ” p. 229).

Table of contents

1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism; 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy; 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a form of life; 4. Epicurus and ethics as care for oneself; 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions; 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism; 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism; 8. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelianism; 9. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism; 10. Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian moral doctrine and Aristotelian ethics; 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry; 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living
13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism; 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality; 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism; 16. Richard Price and intuitionism; 17. Adam Smith and sentimentalism; 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism; 19. Immanuel Kant, the practical use of reason and judgment; 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and a critique of Enlightenment universalism; 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment; 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism; 23. Edmund Husserl and the a priori of action; 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism; 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics; 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism; 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy; 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics; 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics; 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics.

This article focuses on the alleged direct acquaintanceship between Condorcet and Adam Smith. Mistaken infor-mation about this issue was repeated many times in the literature of the late 1800s and 1900s. It is presumed that they met in France, during Smith’s journey there, chez Sophie de Grouchy. I will attempt to show that the meeting be-tween the two authors was not in fact arranged by Sophie de Grouchy, Condorcet’s wife, even though she was very interested in Smithian theories, especially about the category of “sympathy”, as confirmed by her French translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. My purpose is to demonstrate that Madame de Condorcet did never meet Smith and, as a result, she could not have introduced Condorcet to Smith. A greater degree of probability can be attributed to the version that indicates Turgot as the intermediary between Condorcet and Smith. In my opinion, not even this hypothesis is totally convincing, because neither Smith nor Condorcet ever talk about their meeting. Moreover, there is no evidence of correspondence between them.

Resumen: El autointerés constituye el principal postulado de la teoría económica ortodoxa. Se trata de una perspectiva que ancla sus raíces en el egoísmo psicológico del siglo xvii, que se abre paso en el pensamiento económico a través de los trabajos de autores como Bernard Mandeville y Joseph Butler durante el siglo xviii, y que encuentra su lugar en la ciencia económica con la revolución marginalista y la posterior emergencia de la escuela neoclásica a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Sin embargo, la teoría de juegos, en su versión tradicional, evolutiva y neuronal, lleva décadas mostrando una realidad comportamental del agente económico motivacionalmente heterogénea y moralmente comprometida. Por ello, el objetivo del presente estudio será doble. Por un lado, mostrar cómo nace, concreta y desarrolla la perspectiva egoísta para la economía, y, por otro, dilucidar cuál es la perspectiva comportamental que subyace de los últimos estudios neuroeconómicos.

Cabang studi ilmu ekonomi sejatinya telah dikenal sejak lama. Pada dasarnya istilah-istilah ekonomi selalu berhubungan dengan perdagangan. Bahkan istilah perdagangan sendiri sudah dikenal sejak lama. Hal ini diperkuat dengan teori perdagangan dan interdependensi ekonomi yang dikemukakan oleh Adam Smith, seorang liberal dan pakar ekonomi klasik, dalam bukunya yang berjudul An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

This article examines how The wealth of nations (1776) was transformed into an amorphous text regarding the imperial question throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Adam Smith had left behind an ambiguous legacy on the subject of empire: a legacy that left long-term effects upon subsequent British imperial debates. In his chapter on colonies, Smith had proposed both a scheme for the gradual devolution of the British empire and a theoretical scheme for imperial federation. In response to the growing global popularity of protectionism and imperial expansionism, the rapid development of new tools of globalization, and the frequent onset of economic downturns throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, turn-of-the-century proponents of British imperial federation formed into a formidable opposition to England's prevailing free trade orthodoxy – Cobdenism – a free trade ideology which famously expanded upon the anti-imperial dimensions of The wealth of nations. Ironically, at the turn of the century many advocates for imperial federation also turned to Smith for their intellectual inspiration. Adam Smith thus became an advocate of empire, and his advocacy left an indelible intellectual mark upon the burgeoning British imperial crisis.

We have histories of the term ‘invisible hand’, but less on the idea, which goes back to a) ancient Taoism (the Tao does nothing, yet it is the Way by which all things are done); b) the Hippocratic philosophy, that physicians should remove the impediment and then let nature takes its course (think of Smith’s ‘unknown principle of animal life’, which ‘frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution’ (Wealth of Nations 343); c) common law, a product of human action but not of human design; John Herschel’s 19th-century concept of ‘consilience’ (‘when verifications [of a theory] spring up… spontaneously…from quarters where they might be least expected…evidence of this kind is irresistible’); and the late-20th-century science of ‘self-organization’.

Az elfogulatlan szemlélő és az interszubjektivitás, töredékek Adam Smith morálfilozófiájából c. dolgozatomban Adam Smith (első kiadásában 1759-ben megjelent) erkölcsfilozófiai művének Az erkölcsi érzelmek elméletének (The Theory of Moral Sentiments) főbb vonalait tárgyalom, a rendszer rekonstruálása során igyekszem rámutatni annak interszubjektív jegyeire. Álláspontom szerint a smithi morális ítélkezés a társadalomban élő egyének interszubjektív megértésének területén, an-nak elemeként határozható meg.

This essay attempts an ‘internalist’ explication of political legitimacy. That is, a philosophically articulated and normatively compelling account, which nonetheless appeals only to resources that are (at least in principle) available to relevantly-affected agents, and not to external (even if eminently endorsable) moral constraints. Internalist accounts are implicit in the political theories of David Hume, Adam Smith, and Max Weber, but are not adequately explicated by any of them. An internalist account of legitimacy is explicitly put forward in the later work of Bernard Williams, but his presentation is somewhat obscure, and insufficiently developed to be serviceable. This essay therefore seeks to go beyond Williams – in particular by drawing on work by James C. Scott, Michael Rosen, Lisa Wedeen, and Sally Haslanger – to articulate a minimalist form of critical theory that enables the construction of an adequate internalist account of legitimacy. In turn I seek to show that internalists can engage in radical social critique of unjust structures, without needing to posit external moral values, raising the question of whether internalism is in fact all that we need.

El autor plantea que la aprobación o desaprobación moral se manifiesta por medio de tendencias naturales de tipo emocional. Tal argumento se fundamenta en la teología de Juan Calvino, la cual sostiene la constante acción providencial de Dios y la limitada capacidad racional humana. En base a esto, el filósofo escocés expone que la divinidad habría establecido que los individuos tuvieran ciertas tendencias morales naturales, emocionales y no racionales, en virtud de controlar la también natural tendencia al mal de una especie marcada por el pecado original. De esa forma, se lograrían los fines predeterminados por Dios a través de los medios, que también predeterminó, más adecuados para ello.

The central question addressed in this paper is "Is the Perfect Market Sustainable?".  It is shown by means of a simple desirable market model that the perfect market is not sustainable because it is based on maximization principles(production, consumption, and market price). This desirable framework is also used to describe the characteristics of other possible types of traditional markets. Besides the above, it is shown by means of a simple optimal market model that only the perfect sustainability market is sustainable because it is driven by optimal forces(production, consumption, and market price). The optimal market structure is also used to describe the characteristics of other possible types of sustainability markets. Finally, some very important conclusions are provided.