ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book opens the specific collection by exploring recent moves in the scholarship that have sought to distance Smith’s understanding of self-command from the Stoics. It continues the exploration of Smith’s account of moral decision making. The book continues the exploration of Smith’s account of moral judgment, re-examining the longstanding discussion of the tension between virtue ethics and natural jurisprudential elements in Smith’s theory. It provides a detailed analysis of Smith’s three notions of justice: commutative, distributive, and what Klein terms ‘estimative’. The book examines the idea of ‘jural superiors’ and judgment between superiors and inferiors. It focuses on many of the same elements of Smith’s theory, but the emphasis is on the accounts of socialization and social change in political and legal institutions.
