ABSTRACT
In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in Adam Smith’s invisible hand-it has become the best known feature of his writings. Economists seem fairly sure they know what the invisible hand means-usually something like the following: “Under certain social arrangements, which we would nowadays describe as workable competition, private interests are reconciled with public interests as if by an invisible hand”1. For many economists the hand summarizes the case for a market economy. There is rarely any reference to the original context of the invisible hand, especially the religious context.
