Adam Smith

Adam Smith

(1723-1790)

Smith was one of those 18th century Scottish moral philosophers whose impulses led to our modern day theories; his work marks the breakthrough of an evolutionary approach which has progressively displaced the stationary Aristotelian view.

If one is interested in the study of economics -- and one should certainly be if they are at all interested in governmental policy, then one should begin with a good dictionary and a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations . This is likely all that one needs to do; and this is indeed fortunate. For, to go beyond Adam Smith, it is to go beyond into the writings of the thousands of economists that have written since; and, thus, to go into a thicket full of obscure, and for the most part, meaningless terms.

Adam Smith's Life:-

On the Firth of Forth just across and to the north of Edinburgh, in County Fife, will be found a town, Kirkcaldy; it is here, in the year 1723, Adam Smith was born. Adam Smith was to become the first political economist the world had ever known. He was to take his place at the head of the first school of economics, one that continues and is known as the "classical school."Adam's father, who had died before Adam's birth, was a "comptroller of customs." In 1740, at the age of seventeen, Smith was sent off to Oxford on scholarship. It is here that he learned Greek and began a "sound accumulation of Greek learning." It is here, too, that he read Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, a work written during the years 1734-5. (David Hume, from Edinburgh, born twelve years before Smith, was another of those Scottish "lights" which were so prominent in this age.) At any rate Smith's interest in Hume's work brought him into conflict with the authorities at Oxford.2 On coming back home, Adam Smith joined in on "the brilliant circle in Edinburgh which included David Hume, John Home, Hugh Blair, Lord Hailes and Principal Robertson."3In 1751, at age twenty-eight, Adam Smith became a professor of Logic at Glasgow, and then, the following year, took the Chair of Moral Philosophy. In 1759, he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments , a work that spread to both Germany and France, a work that he kept revising right up to his death in 1790.One, not familiar with his life, might well consider it surprising to learn that Adam Smith wrote his "economics" as part of his work as a philosopher. One must appreciate that in the days of Adam Smith, much of the study carried out at universities was history and philosophy; a course in philosophy would include a study of jurisprudence. A study of justice leads naturally to a study of the various legal systems, which of course, in turn, leads to the study of government, and, finally, to a study of political economy.Smith was a curious human being. He treasured his library, and was continually absorbed in abstractions; he was notoriously absent minded. Smith lead a quiet and sheltered life; he lived with his mother (she lived to be ninety) and remained a bachelor all his life. His students loved him, and people came from far to take him in (Boswell was one).Though silent and awkward in social situations, Adam Smith possessed, in considerable perfection, the peculiarly Scotch gift of abstract oratory. Even in common conversation,