THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO ADAM SMITH

While Adam Smith is a household name as an economist, his political economy was only part of a comprehensive philosophical system centering on the nature of human action in general.

The subsequent essays analyze the main parts of Smith’s system; in this introduction, I attempt a synoptic view of the coherence of that system. As we will see, Smith’s systematic achievement can be understood as a bold undermining of an ancient dispute between Stoics and Epicureans, which had been revived in early modern philosophy. This is not surprising when we look at the matter from the point of view of Smith’s life. After schooling in his native Kirkcaldy, Smith went to the University of Glasgow (1737– 40), where the main influence on him was Francis Hutcheson, who was one of the main representatives in the English-speaking world of Christianized Stoicism. However, in his twenties when he was a freelance public lecturer in Edinburgh (1748–50), Smith formed the most important friendship of his life with David Hume, the most sophisticated heir to a mixed Epicurean and sceptical tradition

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Autor: Knud Haakonssen