The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [13]
Smith’s intellectual context has been examined in several excellent studies; among the best introductions are Nicholas Phillipson’s essay “The Scottish Enlightenment,” in The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981); and The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Alexander Broadie (Cambridge, 2003). Essential works on the moral and political thought of the Scottish Enlightenment include Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983); and Christopher Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997).
Among the best introductions to Smith’s thought is Jerry Z. Muller, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours (Princeton, 1995). Comprehensive overviews can also be found in D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Oxford, 1985); and Andrew S. Skinner, A System of Social Science (Oxford, 1979). Readers can also look forward to two forthcoming works that promise to be of considerable interest: Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Intellectual Biography (Penguin), and Eric Schliesser’s study of Smith for the Routledge Philosophers series.
Over the course of the past century, The Theory of Moral Sentiments has largely lived in the shadow of The Wealth of Nations. Interest in Smith’s moral philosophy yet owes much to the discovery of Das Adam Smith Problem by German scholars in the late nineteenth century. Among early important works in English is Joseph Cropsey’s Polity and Economy (M. Nijhoff, 1957), which established Smith as a central figure in modern political philosophy, a question reconsidered in one of the most important recent works, Charles Griswold’s Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1999). In addition to Griswold’s, other essential comprehensive studies of Smith’s moral philosophy focusing on his conceptions of sympathy and spectatorship include A. L. Macfie, The Individual in Society (Allen and Unwin, 1967); T. D. Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (Allen and Unwin, 1971); and Raphael, The Impartial Spectator (Oxford, 2007). Smith’s theory of moral judgment is examined in Samuel Fleischacker, A Third Concept of Liberty (Princeton, 1999); his theory of the emergence of norms through sympathy and exchange is examined in James Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge, 2002). The context of Smith’s moral and political thought is considered in Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge, 1978); and Leonidas Montes, Adam Smith in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Treatments of specific aspects of Smith’s moral philosophy also abound. The link between his rhetoric and his ethics is examined in Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse (Routledge, 1994); and Stephen J. McKenna, Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety (SUNY Press, 2006); the connection between his natural jurisprudence and his ethics is examined in Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator (Cambridge, 1981). Craig Smith examines the place of spontaneous order in Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy (Routledge, 2005). The role of teleology in Smith is examined in James E. Alvey, Adam Smith: Optimist or Pessimist? (Ashgate, 2003). Smith’s relationship to Rousseau is treated in Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (Picador, 1984); Pierre Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith (Cambridge, 2003); and Dennis Rasmussen, The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society (Penn State, 2008). Smith’s debts to the ancients are the focus of Gloria Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics (Oxford, 2001). Smith’s theory of virtue is examined in Ryan Patrick Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge, 2009), and his theory of cosmopolitanism is examined in Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy (Cambridge, forthcoming).
The literature on Smith’s economic thought is massive, but several studies are of particular interest to readers of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Important connections between Smith’s ethics and his