Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life - Hardcover

Phillipson, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713993960 ISBN 13: 9780713993967

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2010

Synopsis

Adam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas - that of the 'Invisible Hand' of the market and that 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest' - have become icons of the modern world. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book, by one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith's other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand 'Science of Man', one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics.

Nicholas Phillipson reconstructs Smith's intellectual ancestry and formation, of which he gives a radically new and convincing account. He shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, the rapidly changing and subtly different intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith's ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume. This superb biography is now the one book which anyone interested in the founder of economics must read.

About this title

Review:

"This stylish biography brings to life Adam Smith''s breathtaking ambition to create a Science of Man. Phillipson''s elegant prose and erudition make clear the necessary relationship between Smith''s moral philosophy and his political economy. The reader is left with a deeper appreciation for Smith''s project and for the eighteenth-century Scottish world in which he lived. This book is both a delight to read and agenda-setting. A real achievement!"--Steve Pincus, Yale University --Steve Pincus

Named a Favorite Business Book of 2010--James Pressley, " Bloomberg BusinessWeek
"--James Pressley "Bloomberg Business Week "

"[Adam Smith] tries, very successfully, to pull together the two Smiths, letting us see how the man of feeling became the little god of finance. . . making it plain that Smith was more moral-man than market-man."--Adam Gopnik, "The New Yorker
" --Adam Gopnik"The New Yorker" (10/18/2010)

"An unabashedly intellectual biography. . . . It is indeed enlightening to understand the broader sweep of [Adam Smith''s] vision."--Nancy F./i>--Nancy F. Koehn "New York Times "

"In a feast of both writing and erudition, Nicholas Phillipson has recreated the intellectual and mercantile world of Adam Smith, and shows how it shaped Smith''s two masterpieces, the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" and the "Wealth of Nations". He sets Smith''s economics firmly in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment - and especially of his great friend David Hume - and argues compellingly that for Smith material improvement was not an end in itself, but a necessary condition for human ennoblement, which was the grand aim of his life''s work. A wonderful, thought-provoking book."--Robert Skidelsky, biographer of John Maynard Keynes--Robert Skidelsky

"This is easily the best book on Smith I've read: a wonderfully accessible, thoroughly researched, full-bodied drama examining the philosopher and economist. Phillipson's biography presents Smith as a living personality, not just an imposing intellect, tracking his social, economic, and political moves from his birthplace Kirkcaldy, to Glasgow and Oxford, through his various lectures and professorships, travels around Europe, preparation of "The Wealth of Nations," and finally to his work for the government. In doing so, it makes a strong case for the importance and complexity - perhaps primacy - of the Scottish Enlightenment and the men who contributed to it. In clean and clear prose, Phillipson explains what Smith was writing and why he was writing it, whether moral philosophy, jurisprudence, rhetoric or political economy. This beguiling blend of Smith's intellection and experience should appeal to anyone interested in the making of the modern world."--David Hancock, author of "Ocean

"Nicholas Phillipson''s lifelong study of Adam Smith has been well worth waiting for. Phillipson treats Smith''s "The Wealth of Nations" as the sequel to his "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Political economy and the history of society were handmaids to the moral philosophy which Enlightenment thinkers intended as the replacement of religion. This story has never been better told than in this deeply sympathetic biography of an intellectually ambitious but personally modest man, and it is a superb portrait of the Scotland, Britain and Europe he lived in."-- J.G.A. Pocock, Johns Hopkins University--J.G.A. Pocock

Named a Best Business Book of 2010--Tyler Cowen, NPR''s "Marketplace"
--Tyler Cowen "NPR's Marketplace "

"A fascinating book. . . . Adam Smith finally has the biography that he deserves, and it could not be more timely."--Jeffrey Collins, "Wall Street Journal"--Jeffrey Collins "Wall Street Journal "

Named a Best Business Book of 2010 by Tyler Cowen, NPR''s "Marketplace"--Tyler Cowen "NPR's Marketplace "

About the Author:

Nicholas Phillipson is Honorary Research Fellow in History at Edinburgh, where he has taught since 1965. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Yale, Tulsa, the Folger Library, Washington DC and the Ludwigs-Maximilian Universitat, Munich. He is co-director of a three-year Leverhulme-funded project on the Science of Man in Scotland. He was an associate editor of the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a founder editor of the journal Modern Intellectual History, published by the Cambridge University Press, and is a past president of the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0713993960
• ISBN 13: 9780713993967
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368