Conlin Jonathan - Adam Smith

Adam Smith

Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.

In the same series

Antonin Artaud David A. Shafer

Roland Barthes Andy Stafford

Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall

Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd

Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd

Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson

Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie

John Berger Andy Merrifield

Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson

Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller

Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn

Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne

William S. Burroughs Phil Baker

John Cage Rob Haskins

Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes

Fidel Castro Nick Caistor

Paul Czanne Jon Kear

Coco Chanel Linda Simon

Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich

Jean Cocteau James S. Williams

Salvador Dal Mary Ann Caws

Guy Debord Andy Merrifield

Claude Debussy David J. Code

Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird

Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros

Sergei Eisenstein Mike OMahony

Michel Foucault David Macey

Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen

Jean Genet Stephen Barber

Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow

Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale

Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth

Alfred Jarry Jill Fell

James Joyce Andrew Gibson

Carl Jung Paul Bishop

Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman

Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori

Yves Klein Nuit Banai

Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild

Lenin Lars T. Lih

Stphane Mallarm Roger Pearson

Gabriel Garca Mrquez Stephen M. Hart

Karl Marx Paul Thomas

Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne

Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan

Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun

Vladimir Nabokov Barbara Wyllie

Pablo Neruda Dominic Moran

Georgia OKeeffe Nancy J. Scott

Octavio Paz Nick Caistor

Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws

Edgar Allan Poe Kevin J. Hayes

Ezra Pound Alec Marsh

Marcel Proust Adam Watt

John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne

Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak

Erik Satie Mary E. Davis

Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis

Adam Smith Jonathan Conlin

Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell

Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel

Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross

Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc

Richard Wagner Raymond Furness

Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau

Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian

Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter

Jonathan Conlin

REAKTION BOOKS

For Pat

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
4448, Wharf Road
London N1 7UX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2016

Copyright Jonathan Conlin 2016

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements
match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 9781780236001

All quotations, with original spellings, are taken from The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, published between 1975 and 1987 by Oxford University Press, and also available in inexpensive paperback form from Liberty Fund Press.

The eighteenth-century Scottish thinker Adam Smith (17231790) is considered to be the founding father of free market economics. Unlike many twentieth- and twenty-first-century practitioners of economics, however, Adam Smith preferred telling stories to writing equations; homespun tales about routine interactions and everyday objects, about things of a very frivolous nature that nonetheless revealed something important about the nature of man (TMS, 17). Smiths surviving works originated as lectures written for delivery to undergraduates at the University of Glasgow. Although the Scottish education system was one of the finest around in the eighteenth-century world, were we able to travel back and sit in on one of Professor Smiths classes we would immediately be struck by how young the audience was. Smith was lecturing teenagers aged between fourteen to sixteen (between 7:30 am and 8:30 am, no less), which explains some, but not all, of his fondness for telling stories.

Smiths eighteenth-century prose can make reading his work something of a challenge. He may have been lecturing to teenagers, but it can feel as if Smith is speaking a dead language. This book will suggest that this problem lies as much in our failure to listen correctly as to any shift in vocabulary or any weaknesses in Smiths thought. Until fairly recently the only people listening to Smith were economists, and some philosophers. Even then, each expected Smith to speak their language and became inattentive, frustrated or bored when Smith failed to do so. As with many great thinkers of the past, were he to return to life Smith would probably be surprised by what his self-proclaimed followers have done in his name. He would be frustrated by the tendency to draw a line between his study of political economy, that is, of the best means of promoting opulence in a nation, and his moral philosophy, his attempt to advance a set of moral principles grounded in human nature. One of the teenagers sitting in Professor Smiths class in 1766 transcribed the following pithy summary, which presents these investigations as equally necessary and interlocking:

William Hogarth, Scholars at a Lecture, 1736, etching and engraving. Adam Smiths students presumably paid more attention than the students depicted here.