ABSTRACT
There is a long tradition of reading Adam Smith as an unreflective partisan of the minimal state, the miracles of the free market, and the maximal policy of laissez-faire. In the last several decades, however, a distinguished list of scholars has dissented from this hallowed but increasingly threadbare vision of Smith as the high priest of homo economicus. Whether he is representative of a legacy of classical republicanism, a latter-day Aristotelian, or the harbinger of a Kantian theory of moral judgment, Smith’s moral philosophy goes well beyond a hedonistic concern to liberate the market from superintending moral and political concerns. Michaël Biziou’s ingenious new book locates itself squarely in the midst of these debates. Biziou argues, like many before him, that the traditional view of Smith as a defender of economic liberalism must be supplemented by a deeper appreciation of his moral philosophy. Exploring the thesis that Smith’s moral philosophy and his economic liberalism are necessarily intertwined, even to the point that the former justifies the latter, Biziou advances several strikingly counter-intuitive lines of argument about Smith’s views of the state and economic liberalism.
