ABSTRACT
Economists for centuries have struggled to understand the self other relationship and its implications for economic life. For Smith, one becomes generous and virtuous through the pursuit of approbation from actual and imaginary spectators, the great school of self-command. Smith recognized that the first and most steadfast myopia is that which places the human self at the center of the universe. Boettke and Smith write about the doux-commerce thesis, which was developed to explain the civilizing function of commerce whereby the market system produces social cooperation, especially among distant and different anonymous actors. Without the ability to converse and persuade, creatures like greyhounds and mastiffs are unable to obtain the material benefits of specialization, trade, and cooperation that flow from reason and speech. An increasingly apparent gap in our understanding of the relationship between Smiths teaching on economic development is outlined in The Wealth of Nations and his teaching in moral philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
