ABSTRACT
Professor Aspromourgos's book is a welcome addition to contemporary Smith scholarship, particularly the almost forgotten realm of Smith's analytical economics. As economists and philosophers alike have discovered the richness and appeal of Smith's philosophical output in general and the moral philosophy in particular, interest in recent years has decidedly shifted in this direction. We have been more interested in the totality of Smith's works and the place of the WN within this larger system of social thought, and old controversies over the meaning of productive and unproductive labour, for example, have receded into the background. While recognizing the embeddedness of WN in his system of thought, Aspromourgos, nonetheless, insists that Smith's political economy, or science of wealth, is a ‘distinct and separate intellectual discipline’ (i). However, this book is more than just a critical review of Smith the economist. It is a major study of the totality of Smith's work from the perspective of an interpretation of his economics, both its scientific, analytical side, and its normative, policy making concerns. The author's method is to isolate thirteen key words and phrases (e.g. ‘political economy’, ‘wealth’, ‘price’, ‘capital’, etc.), group them into their appropriate place in the structure of WN, and then thoroughly investigate the meanings, historical genesis, and Smithian usage of these concepts. After a short introductory chapter, these four constitute the subject matter of the chapters of the book.
