Adam Smith’s Treatment of the Ancients

James Price
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James Price: Adam Smith Institute

A chapter in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations After 250 Years, 2026, pp 43-61 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Adam Smith’s engagement with classical antiquity is more extensive and consequential than sometimes recognised. This chapter surveys the principal classical influences on Smith’s thought (Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero) and traces how these ancient sources shaped his moral philosophy, his account of justice, and his political economy. I argue that Smith systematically adapted classical conceptual frameworks (such as Ciceronian propriety, Stoic ideas about natural order, and Aristotelian virtue ethics) whilst modifying them with his empirical moral psychology. As a consequence, the tradition of commercial liberty has deeper classical roots than is ordinarily acknowledged by those who take a Schumpeterian view of Smith as the origin point of economics, rather than a high-water mark of an older tradition. Understanding Smith’s treatment of the ancients shows a creative continuation and growth of those old ideas for his modern, commercial age.

Keywords: Adam Smith; Classical philosophy; Cicero; Stoicism; Virtue ethics; Moral sentiment; Political economy; Commercial society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-032-32299-9_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-32299-9_3

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