Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society - Hardcover

Muller, Jerry Z.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029222346 ISBN 13: 9780029222348

Publisher: The Free Press, 1992

Synopsis

In recent years Adam Smith has been championed by advocates of the market economy. This book analyzes Smith's economic and political thought, and concludes that far from subscribing to unregulated self-interest, Smith believed the market should operate in tandem with socially improving institutions. Muller shows how the "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" was as much as anything a warning against the threat posed to the common good by organized mercantile interest. Smith was interested not just in how wealth was created, but how it could be used to build a decent society. It is this aspect of his thought, argues Muller, which has been ignored by those who use his writings to further their own ideological interests.

About this title

Review

A profoundly erudite and timely study. -- John Gray, National Review
A profoundly erudite and timely study. -- John Gray, National Review
A profoundly erudite and timely study.--John Gray "National Review "

Muller's great accomplishment in this book is to present a clear, thoughtful, and engaging overview of Adam Smith's thought. He reveals Smith to be a wide-ranging and innovative thinker who formulated a comprehensive social science.--Peter McNamara "The Review of Politics "
A profoundly erudite and timely study.
--John Gray "National Review "
Muller's great accomplishment in this book is to present a clear,
thoughtful, and engaging overview of Adam Smith's thought. He reveals Smith
to be a wide-ranging and innovative thinker who formulated a comprehensive
social science.
--Peter McNamara "The Review of Politics "

"A profoundly erudite and timely study."--John Gray, "National Review"

"A profoundly erudite and timely study."--John Gray, National Review

"Muller's great accomplishment in this book is to present a clear, thoughtful, and engaging overview of Adam Smith's thought. He reveals Smith to be a wide-ranging and innovative thinker who formulated a comprehensive social science."--Peter McNamara, The Review of Politics

-A profoundly erudite and timely study.---John Gray, National Review

From the Back Cover

"Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers."--Robert Heilbroner, Author of The Worldly Philosophers

"A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: an imagination that allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and a sympathy such as to gain a feel for the world of the subject. . . . Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree."--Michael Novak, First Things

Edition details

• Publisher: The Free Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0029222346
• ISBN 13: 9780029222348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180