ABSTRACT
Few figures in the history of Western thought have been simultaneously as well known and as poorly understood as Adam Smith. Smith lived during the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period running roughly from 1725 to 1800 in which perhaps the most important Anglophone work in philosophy, history, economics, and political science was done in Edinburgh and Glasgow, rather than London or Oxford. Smith’s lectures at Glasgow followed the same general plan as those of his teacher and predecessor Hutcheson, beginning with the foundations and nature of morality, moving from there, via the moral principles that underlie law, to a variety of legal topics, and concluding with “police.” Smith was a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, educated in its ethos and close friends with many of its leading figures, especially David Hume.
