Beyond Adam Smith's economics

One clear conclusion to be drawn from the flood of publications occasioned by the Wealth of Nations bicentennial is that although studies of Adam Smith's economic analysis encountered rapidly diminishing returns some time ago, there is still ample scope for original and illuminating research into other aspects of Smith's intellectual achievement. ¹ During the past two decades or so the close interdependence between Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations has been acknowledged by all but extreme ‘absolutist’ historians of economics, and the unity and comprehensiveness of his mental outlook is nowadays widely appreciated. Doubtless it is too much to hope that Smith's departed spirit will ever be entirely released from the tortures devised by ingenious mathematical economists seeking to force his subtle insights into their own sadistic conceptual apparatas. ² But there is consolation for the humanists in the two important publications under review ³ — one an austere major addition to the limited available corpus of Smith's own writings, the other a suggestive interpretative essay which will undoubtedly both stimulate and provoke the cognoscenti.