Introduction

Until very recently, philosophers tended to ignore Adam Smith. They acknowledged his idea of sympathy in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, but generally regarded it as superficial and unsophisticated, and tended to dismiss Smith as a minor figure in the shadow of David Hume. Moreover, he was regularly cast aside as a crass materialist who reduced human motivation to selfishness and corrupted the world with a moral justification for capitalism. In this environment, Smith scholarship was left to the mercy of economists and historians of economics who tended to subordinate Smith’s philosophy and ignore the complexity of his thought.