Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and the Division of Labour

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9722946
AutoresRonald Hamowy (autor correspondente)
Ano1968
Volume35
Fascículo139
Páginas249
Data de publicação1968-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEconomica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2552301
OpenAlexW2315019960
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas16

John Rae, in his biography of Adam Smith, reports that when Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society was published in 1767, Smith accused Ferguson of having borrowed some of his ideas without owning them,' to which Ferguson is said to have replied that he had borrowed nothing from Smith, but much from some unnamed French source where Smith had been before him. The nature of the dispute has never been fully reported, although we know that it was of sufficient importance to Smith to cause him to break off his close and long-standing friendship with Ferguson until Smith's fatal illness in 1790.2 Several interpretations and speculative arguments have been offered concerning the nature of the dispute, despite the cloudiness of the issue and the lack of any more concrete evidence than that provided by Dr. Alexander Carlyle in his Autobiography3 and repeated by Rae. Perhaps the most important, because the most widely accepted, of these is that proposed by the German critic, August Oncken, in an article published in 1909.4 Oncken suggests the following

Adam smith · Art history · Biography · Classical economics · Economics · Epistemology · Friendship · German · Nothing · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Classics · European Political History Analysis · History · Law · Legal and Social Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence