Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment

ISBN-13: 9780521621274 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 428 str.

Jr (Boston University) Charles L. Griswold

Opis

Although Adam Smith is often thought of today as an economist, he was in fact (as his great contemporaries Hume, Burke, Kant, and Hegel recognized) an original and insightful thinker whose work covers an immense territory including moral philosophy, political economy, rhetorical theory, aesthetics, and jurisprudence. Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the continuing debate about the nature and survival of the Enlightenment, and relates it to current discussions in moral and political philosophy. Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of ancient philosophy, and his carefully balanced defense of a liberal and humane moral and political outlook, are also explored. This is a major reassessment of a key figure in modernity that will be of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, rhetoric, and political economy.

Recenzje

'… exemplary in spelling out many of Smith's arguments and subjecting them to analytic scrutiny. If reading it required effort, the reward is substantial.' Wall Street Journal

Spis treści

Texts and acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Rhetoric, method, and system in The Theory of Moral Sentiments; 2. Sympathy and selfishness, imagination and self; 3. The passions, pleasure, and the impartial spectator; 4. Philosophy and skepticism; 5. The theory of virtue; 6. Justice; 7. The moral sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; 8. Philosophy, imagination, and the fragility of beauty: on reconciliation with nature; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.