Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T08:55:22.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Spencer J. Pack
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now easy to see, in the light of Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, that The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations were parts of a grand system. Nonetheless, TMS and WN are not tightly linked. This paper pursues the following strategy: knowing that Smith wrote both works, one can go back to westigate Smith's handling of the virtues, and see how that work implicitly defended the acquisitive, commercial society analyzed so thoroughly in WN. In doing so, it will be shown that Smith has a distinctive, key, narrow handling of the virtue justice which is based upon the passion resentment. Smith's treatment of justice explains why there can be no concept of just price in Smith's work. It serves to support market, flexible, or negotiated prices as ethically legitimate because it effectively removes market prices from the domain of government control or responsibility, at least insofar as government is enforcing justice.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 127 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aristotle, . 1962. Nicomachean Ethics, Translated, with introduction and notes, by Ostwald, Martin, Bobbs-Merrill Company, New York.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1991. The Art of Rhetoric, translated by Lawson-Tancred, H. C., Penguin Books, New York.Google Scholar
Berns, Laurence. 1994. “Aristotle and Adam Smith on Justice: Cooperation between Ancients and Moderns?” Review of Metaphysics, 48, 71–90.Google Scholar
Brown, Vivienne. 1994. Adam Smith's Discourse, Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. 1991. A Christmas Carol, Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Griswold, Charles L. Jr. 1991. “Rhetoric and Ethics: Adam Smith on Theorizing about the Moral Sentiments” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 24, no. 3, 213–37.Google Scholar
Griswold, Charles L. Jr. 1996. “Nature and Philosophy: Adam Smith on Stoicism, Aesthetic Reconciliation, and Imagination” Man and World, 29, no. 2.Google Scholar
Haakonssen, Knud. 1996. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1987. Essays: Moral Political and Literary, Liberty Classics, Indianapolis.Google Scholar
Kleer, Richard. 1993. “Adam Smith on the Morality of the Pursuit of Fortune” Economics and Philosophy, 9, 289–95.Google Scholar
Lapidus, Andre. 1986. Le detour de valeur, Economica, Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Thomas J. 1978. “Acquisition and Anxiety: Aristotle's Case Against the Market” Canadian Journal of Economics, 11, no. 1, February, 69–90, reprinted in Mark, Blaug, ed., Aristotle (384–322 BC), Edward Elgar, Aldershot, 1991.Google Scholar
Levy, David. 1987. “Adam Smith's Case for Usury Laws” History of Political Economy, 19, no. 3, 387–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowry, S. Todd. 1987. The Archaeology of Economic Ideas: The Classical Greek Tradition, Duke University Press, Durham.Google Scholar
Minowitz, Peter. 1993. Profits, Priests, and Princes: Adam Smith's Emancipation of Economics from Politics and Religion, Stanford University Press, Stanford.Google Scholar
Montesquieu, . 1989. The Spirit of the Laws; translated and edited by Cohler, Anne M., Basia Carolyn, Miller, and Harold Samuel, Stone, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Pack, Spencer J. 1985. “Aristotle and the Problem of Insatiable Desires” History of Political Economy, 17, no. 3, 391–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pack, Spencer J. 1991. Capitalism as a Moral System: Adam Smith's Critique of the Free Market Economy, Edward Elgar, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Rae, John. 1965. Life of Adam Smith, Augustus M. Kelley, New York.Google Scholar
Raphael, D. D., and Macfie, A. L. 1976. “Introduction” to Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ross, Ian Simpson. 1995. The Life of Adam Smith, Oxford University Press, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976a. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by Macfie, A. L. and Raphael, D. D., Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976b. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S., Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1977. Correspondence of Adam Smith, edited by Mossner, E. C. and Ross, I. S., Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1978. Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by Meek, R. L., Raphael, D. D. and Stein, P. G., Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1983. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by Bryce, J. C., Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1993. Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, New Press, New York.Google Scholar
Urquhart, Robert. 1993. “Adam Smith between Political Economy and Economics”, in Economics as Wordly Philosophy: Essays in Political and Historical Economics in Honor of Robert L. Heilbroner, edited by Blackwell, R., Chatha, J., and Nell, E. J., Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1923. “Adam Smith and Laissez Faire” in John Maurice, Clark et al. , Adam Smith 1776–1926, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 116–55.Google Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1965. “Guide to John Rae's Life of Adam Smith” in Rae 1965, 5–145.Google Scholar
Young, Jeffrey T., and Gordon, Barry. 1992. “The Natural Law Tradition: Thomas Aquinas to Francis Hutcheson” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 14, no. 1, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Jeffrey T., 1996. “Distributive Justice as a Normative Criterion in Adam Smith's Political Economy” History of Political Economy, 28, no. 1, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar