On Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": A Philosophical Companion
Samuel Fleischacker
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 069112390X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Adam Smith was a philosopher before he ever wrote about economics, yet until now there has never been a philosophical commentary on the Wealth of Nations. Samuel Fleischacker suggests that Smith's vastly influential treatise on economics can be better understood if placed in the light of his epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. He lays out the relevance of these aspects of Smith's thought to specific themes in the Wealth of Nations, arguing, among other things, that Smith regards social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice.
Fleischacker also places Smith's views in relation to the work of his contemporaries, especially his teacher Francis Hutcheson and friend David Hume, and draws out consequences of Smith's thought for present-day political and philosophical debates. The Companion is divided into five general sections, which can be read independently of one another. It contains an index that points to commentary on specific passages in Wealth of Nations. Written in an approachable style befitting Smith's own clear yet finely honed rhetoric, it is intended for professional philosophers and political economists as well as those coming to Smith for the first time.
Rousseau: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides For The Perplexed)
Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton Classics)
them gloriously—or shows us what it would look like if it triumphed gloriously—in the fifth and final act. As is proper for tragedy, the climax comes at the end of the fourth act, when “all systems, either of preference or of restraint” are “completely taken away,” and our hero is thereby released to “establish itself of its own accord” (WN 687). The considerations in this section should encourage at least the presumption that a passage in WN need not mean only what it might in a work of social
what justice, liberty, or even property consists in, and that his appeals to justice, and to property rights, always rely on a conventional notion of justice, should give pause to those who have tried to claim originality for Smith’s account of justice, or to claim that WN should be read with the distinctive features of that account in mind. There are many new and controversial notions in WN, but the claims he makes about justice are not among them. This point is reinforced by the fact that Smith
that utilitarian considerations alone might lead one to favor a centrally controlled system of distributing goods, rather than the system of private property, if only “a wise political constitution could compel all men to bear their part in labour, and then make a wisely proportioned distribution of all that was acquired, according to the indigence, or merit of the citizens” (SystemII.vi.6, 322). He considers it very unlikely that such a constitution could actually come about, but leaves this, as
that one cannot so much as discern cultural and historical variations in human beings except against the background of some basic similarities. By picking out a general structure of human motivations and aspirations, Smith can distinguish between social conditions that work against our natural impulses and social conditions that work with them. He achieves a position from which he can hold up certain social practices as, for instance, oppressing, deluding, or otherwise frustrating people. But the
it—which in turn is said to have roots in a normative belief that people should work for their living, rather than in any empirical use to which the theory might be put. Exactly why Smith argued for a labor basis of exchange value is a difficult problem, but before we come to it, let us get a more trivial objection to Smith’s account quickly out of the way. Some commentators have made heavy weather over Smith’s apparent wish to define the labor price of an object both in terms of the labor that