Adam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas - such as the 'Invisible Hand' of the market - have become icons of the modern world. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book, by one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, shows the extent to which "The Wealth of Nations" and Smith's other great work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand 'Science of Man', one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics. Nicholas Phillipson reconstructs Smith's intellectual ancestry and formation, of which he gives a radically new and convincing account. He shows Smith's interactions with the rapidly changing and subtly different intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith's ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume. This superb biography is now the one book which anyone interested in the founder of economics must read.
Adam Smith (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-C)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Phillipson has produced a remarkable and often brilliant intellectual biography ... stuffed with acute philosophical observations ... [His] exposition of Smith's "enlightened life" could scarcely be bettered -- Oliver Kamm The Times
About the Author
Nicholas Phillipson is Honorary Research Fellow in History at Edinburgh, where he has taught since 1965. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Yale, Tulsa, the Folger Library, Washington DC and the Ludwigs-Maximilian Universitat, Munich. He is co-director of a three-year Leverhulme-funded project on the Science of Man in Scotland. He was an associate editor of the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a founder editor of the journal Modern Intellectual History, published by the Cambridge University Press, and is a past president of the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A solidly written biography of one known by most of us only as the Scottish author of an unread great book. Professor Phillipson's fine effort should lead many to go back and read "The Wealth of Nations."
Adam Smith's thoughts still have direct relevance to today's bucketful of economic problems--and resulting strident political debates--over government's proper role in terms of expenditures, debt, taxation, and business regulations.
While this book concentrates on the scholarship of Adam Smith, the author also intelligently traces the era within which Smith lived and his private life that included such striking people as David Hume, James Boswell, and Voltaire.
In this current age of instant and empty celebrities, Smith still stands, after about 250 years, as a man worth knowing.
Adam Smith's thoughts still have direct relevance to today's bucketful of economic problems--and resulting strident political debates--over government's proper role in terms of expenditures, debt, taxation, and business regulations.
While this book concentrates on the scholarship of Adam Smith, the author also intelligently traces the era within which Smith lived and his private life that included such striking people as David Hume, James Boswell, and Voltaire.
In this current age of instant and empty celebrities, Smith still stands, after about 250 years, as a man worth knowing.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a great, thoughtful & engaging biography on the elusive Scottish academic & philosopher, Adam Smith, titled "Adam Smith : An Enlightened Life" by professor Nicholas Phillipson. Adam Smith is well known for his description of the market's/capitalism's "invisible hand" that guides the economy, keeping 'everything' under control. But there is more to this elusive philosophical man than meets the eye : he was a private man, a hypochondriac who lived with his widowed mother most of his life. His popular lectures at the University of Glasgow turned Adam Smith into an 'institutional figure of note'. He wrote two great influencial books, "The Wealth Of The Nations" which took him 10 years to write on colonial America & the philosophical, "The Theory Of Moral Sentiments". By drawing from his published works & lecture notes, his thinking on social theory & ethics influenced his theory of economics & human behaviour.
Adam Smith instructed his executors to destroy all his lecture notes, but seven upublished philosophical essays & 193 letters survived to give us a glimpse of this elusive Scottish academic & philosopher, making the market's "invisible hand" come alive again, even if it's only at an intellectual level. This is a highly recommended reading on the 18th century's influential philosopher & academic that is Adam Smith.
Adam Smith instructed his executors to destroy all his lecture notes, but seven upublished philosophical essays & 193 letters survived to give us a glimpse of this elusive Scottish academic & philosopher, making the market's "invisible hand" come alive again, even if it's only at an intellectual level. This is a highly recommended reading on the 18th century's influential philosopher & academic that is Adam Smith.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have read five book-length biographies of Adam Smith and concluded that the one by Ian Simpson Ross was definitive. I purchased the latest by Nicholas Phillipson because of his reputation rather than an expectation to learn much that is new. Reading it has proven that labeling a work as definitive does not mean it is the final word on the subject. Quite the contrary, Phillipson's work is aptly titled: Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, as it traces the development of Smith's thought in the milieu of the Scottish Enlightenment and British geopolitics during the second half of the eighteenth century. What was especially enjoyable was to learn more about the great debt Smith owed Hume as an intellect in shaping his works and as a friend. Phillipson expresses puzzlement about why Smith may not have held up his end of the friendship. After reading E. C. Mossner's The Life of David Hume and the Smith biographies, it seems clear Smith was too prudent to do so. If given a change, this reviewer would rather have kept the company of Hume than Smith.
Yale has done justice to this wonderful work. The production is a delight to see and to hold. It provides the best answer to e-books because we buyers will surely enjoying pulling it from our shelves, looking at the illustrations, and reading it again.
Yale has done justice to this wonderful work. The production is a delight to see and to hold. It provides the best answer to e-books because we buyers will surely enjoying pulling it from our shelves, looking at the illustrations, and reading it again.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The intellectual world of Adam Smith
Though his name looms large as the founder of modern economic theory, Adam Smith himself is in many ways a mysterious and unknowable figure. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mark Klobas
Where are the illustration
Like some other readers I'm finding this book a bit heavy going because of the subject matter. It's not a standard biography as Adam Smith deliberately left little information... Read more
Published 5 months ago by JC Palmie
I had higher expectations but it simply wasn't that interesting
I've enjoyed many biographies on financial "giants" and this book simply didn't have the punch or interesting facts to make Adam Smith's history and experiences come to life. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Robert Kirk
A book for scholars...
Rich and plentiful research and scholarship make this book a treasure for academics. For the semi-intellectual, there is just too much of it. Read more
Published 12 months ago by John Eberhart
Read this book AFTER reading Smith's two masterworks.
I was hoping for a general overview of the political, social, and geographic climate that Smith lived in as well as some analysis of the influences in his work. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Robert T. Muir
Unenlightening book
I wonder if any of the people who gave this 5 stars have actually read it. It is ponderous, opaque, disorganized and lacking in insights. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Deborah
Why Not Concentate on the Wealth of Nations Instead of His Life
If the author would have concentrated on Wealth of Nations instead of Adam Smith's life it would have been a better read. Read more
Published 14 months ago by D. Farr
Good book, but hard core
This is a thorough biography by someone who evidently knows his subject inside and out.
Put differently, if you know a fair bit about the 18th century, and are... Read more
Put differently, if you know a fair bit about the 18th century, and are... Read more
Published 16 months ago by J. Smith
Extraordinary book!
Beautifully written biography of a key father of the modern world. So well done I bought and read Adam Smith's two great books as well.
Published 16 months ago by Rick Clay
The Owl of Minerva
I thought this book would have a million reviews, but since not let me give it another fiver. I was just astonished at how Smith's grand worldview is in fact a projection of his... Read more
Published 17 months ago by J. A. Haverstick
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