Adam Smith
Scottish moral philosopher as political economist
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8958533 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Donald Winch (University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 91-113 |
| Publication date | 1992-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x00025620 |
| OpenAlex | W2103679414 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 34 |
| References cited | 27 |
By contrast with those for whom the Wealth of nations marks the origin of economics as an autonomous science, this article argues that Smith's significance lies in his attempt to repossess political economy by restoring its links with the sciences of morals and natural jurisprudence — those concerns which are characteristic of his writings as a moral philosopher. The case proceeds by re-examining two topics derived from these sciences. The first begins with Smith's ungenerous treatment of his mercantile predecessors as a clue to what he believed was distinctive about his own system. Smith was antagonistic to precisely those rationalist, utilitarian and reductive models of behaviour based on self-interest that he is held to have in common with mercantile writers; he was answering rather than joining those who felt it necessary to isolate and legitimate rational economic self-seeking. The second topic turns on Smith's natural jurisprudence: his application of the criteria of natural justice when criticizing mercantile policies and institutions, where the emphasis falls on the negative injunctions of commutative justice rather than the positive ones of distributive justice. The separation of the ethics of the Theory of moral sentiments from the Wealth of nations, therefore, tells us more about Smith's successors than Smith himself
Adam smith · Distributive property · Economic Justice · Economics · Epistemology · Jurisprudence · Law and economics · Natural (archaeology · Natural law · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · History · Law · Legal and Social Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Theory and Influence
Adam Smith and the Study of Ethics in a Commercial Society
Republicanism
Scepticism, priestcraft, and toleration
Self-Interest before Adam Smith
From the Crisis of Civil Culture to the Neapolitan Republic of 1647
Civic Humanism and Republican Citizenship in the Polish Renaissance
Rights or Virtues
Cameralism and the sciences of the state
Political languages of the French Revolution
Encyclopedias and the diffusion of knowledge
Citizenship and Republicanism in Elizabethan England
The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought
Social contract theory and its critics
The Idea of a Republican Constitution in Old Régime France
Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans
Republicanism
The comparative study of regimes and societies
A Very Promising Appearance
Mere Inventions of the Imagination
The Challenge of Distance
Adam Smith, Settler Colonialism, and Limits of Liberal Anti-imperialism
From rational actor to efficient complexity manager
Adam Smith’s free trade casuistry
One vast empire’
Jeremy Bentham, ‘The Psychology of Economic Man’, and Behavioural Economics
The classical limits to police power and the economic foundations of the Slaughterhouse dissents
Robert Malthus
Commerce et caractère chez La Bruyère et Adam Smith
The idea of utility in Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments
As razões do laissez-faire
Adam Smith and the Ambiguity of Nations
Adam Smith as globalization theorist
Everybody's Business
Unintended Order and Intervention
Essays on Adam Smith
An inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy
History of Economic Analysis
The origins of English individualism
Philosophers of the Enlightenment
The Science of a Legislator
VI—Aristotle's Concept of Mind
That Noble Science of Politics
The Market and the State
Adam Smith, businessmen, and the mercantile system in England
Philosophers of the Enlightenment
Sir James Steuart
Some Institutional Aspects of the Wealth of Nations
Science and the Legislator
The Origins of Scientific Economics. English Economic Thought 1660-1776
Less Abused than I had Reason to Expect’
The Burke-Smith Problem and Late Eighteenth-Century Political and Economic Thought
The Butcher, the Baker, and the Policy-Maker
Envy and Commercial Society
"Historicizing the "Adam Smith Problem
The Role in Parliament of the Economic Ideas of Adam Smith, 1776-1800
The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century
| Unique citing works | 34 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,03 |
| Citation span | 1993 - 2025 (33) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 34 |