Smith, Justice, and the Scope of the Political

  • Craig Smith
Chapter
Part of the Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics book series (AIEE)

Abstract

There was a time when many commentators thought that there was a problem with Adam Smith. The tendency to read Smith’s thought as marred by supposed tensions between the ‘sympathy’ of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and the ‘selfishness’ of The Wealth of Nations (WN) has long since been debunked.1 Smith scholars are coming increasingly to agree that Smith is remarkably consistent in his views; that he employs a consistent methodology and that this consistency is an indication of the ‘systematic’ spirit of his thought (Phillipson, 2010, p. 4). However, recognizing the consistency of approach that Smith adopts does not reduce the potential disagreement among Smith scholars about how best to characterize many aspects of his overall outlook.

Keywords

Distributive Justice Moral Psychology Moral Sentiment Moral Experience Conceptual Language 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Craig Smith 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Craig Smith
    • 1
  1. 1.Scottish Enlightenment at the School of Social and Political SciencesUniversity of GlasgowUK

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