Adam Smith on Social Progress and the Evolution of Love
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350183 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ryan Patrick Hanley (0000-0003-2077-708X, Boston College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 215-238 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00905917251327245 |
| OpenAlex | W4411356474 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
Adam Smith is not generally considered a pioneering theorist of love. To the degree that scholars have attended to his treatment of love, they have tended to focus on his critical comments on love and sex in The Theory of Moral Sentiments . This article, in contrast, focuses on Smith’s comparatively understudied treatment of love in the Lectures on Jurisprudence to argue that the lectures set forth a sophisticated theory of the ways in which the progressive development of social institutions contributed to the emergence of modern conceptions of love. Specifically, in focusing on three core elements of Smith’s treatment of domestic law—the evolution of the relations of husbands and wives, the evolution of the relations of parents and children, and the evolution of the relations of masters and slaves—it seeks to bring to light Smith’s understanding of how, through a better understanding of the processes driving the emergence and evolution of our social institutions, we can better understand how and why we today experience love in the way we do, as well as how and why our understanding of love differs from earlier understandings of love
Adam smith · Economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Neoclassical economics · Sociology · History · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics
Inventing the Market
The Impartial Spectator
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Essays on Philosophical Subjects
The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith
Adam Smith
The Vicegerent of God? Adam Smith on the Authority of the Impartial Spectator
Adam Smith
Irony in Adam Smith’s Critical Global History
Adam Smith, Settler Colonialism, and Limits of Liberal Anti-imperialism
Smith's Humean Criticism of Hume's Account of the Origin of Justice
Adam Smith, Stage Theory, and the Status of Women
The Contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the Abandonment of the Institution of Slavery
"The "Wisdom of the State
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |