Adam Smith (1723–90): A Biographical Sketch

Ian Ross

Chapter 1 in Adam Smith: International Perspectives, 1993, pp 1-25 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Adam Smith’s life was uneventful, outwardly. His aim was to develop intellectual power as a philosopher and apply it to issues he considered important. As the papers delivered at the Nagoya Symposium reveal, there continues to be recognition that his ideas and their systematic exposition offer deep insights into human nature, its expressive forms, and social organization undergoing change through time. Nevertheless, we should remember Hegel’s caveat: ‘Every philosophy ... belongs to its own time and is caught in that time’s restrictions.’1 Accordingly, this paper recollects the human being who developed the ideas in the context of a specific society, and thus seeks to explain something of the circumstances attending the creation of Smith’s systematic thought, as well as evoking the personality responsible for it.

Keywords: Civil Society; Political Society; Expressive Form; Impartial Spectator; Literary Society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-22520-0_1

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-22520-0_1

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