The Theory of Moral Sentiments Read Free Page B

countries that led the world in the frequency of capital punishment in 2008)—the perspectives of other people from far as well as near have a relevance for reasons that Smith presented definitively in the Moral Sentiments .

Suggestions for Further Reading
     
    Adam Smith once told his students that to be “an ancient” was to “have commentators.” By that standard, few are more ancient than Smith. The scholarship on him is immense; what follows is merely a brief guide to some of the most helpful introductory and most essential scholarly works.
    Smith’s quiet life, coupled with his deathbed insistence that all his papers be destroyed, has rendered him a challenging subject for biographers. The authoritative biography is Ian S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995). A brief and lively account can be found in James Buchan, The Authentic Adam Smith (Norton, 2006). And still valuable is a short essay by Walter Bagehot, “Adam Smith as a Person,” included in The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot .
    Smith’s intellectual context has been examined in several excellent studies; among the best introductions are Nicholas Phillipson’s essay “The Scottish Enlightenment,” in The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981); and The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment , edited by Alexander Broadie (Cambridge, 2003). Essential works on the moral and political thought of the Scottish Enlightenment include Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983); and Christopher Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997).
    Among the best introductions to Smith’s thought is Jerry Z. Muller, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours (Princeton, 1995). Comprehensive overviews can also be found in D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Oxford, 1985); and Andrew S. Skinner, A System of Social Science (Oxford, 1979). Readers can also look forward to two forthcoming works that promise to be of considerable interest: Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Intellectual Biography (Penguin), and Eric Schliesser’s study of Smith for the Routledge Philosophers series.
    Over the course of the past century, The Theory of Moral Sentiments has largely lived in the shadow of The Wealth of Nations . Interest in Smith’s moral philosophy yet owes much to the discovery of Das Adam Smith Problem by German scholars in the late nineteenth century. Among early important works in English is Joseph Cropsey’s Polity and Economy (M. Nijhoff, 1957), which established Smith as a central figure in modern political philosophy, a question reconsidered in one of the most important recent works, Charles Griswold’s Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1999). In addition to Griswold’s, other essential comprehensive studies of Smith’s moral philosophy focusing on his conceptions of sympathy and spectatorship include A. L. Macfie, The Individual in Society (Allen and Unwin, 1967); T. D. Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (Allen and Unwin, 1971); and Raphael, The Impartial Spectator (Oxford, 2007). Smith’s theory of moral judgment is examined in Samuel Fleischacker, A Third Concept of Liberty (Princeton, 1999); his theory of the emergence of norms through sympathy and exchange is examined in James Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge, 2002). The context of Smith’s moral and political thought is considered in Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge, 1978); and Leonidas Montes, Adam Smith in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
    Treatments of specific aspects of Smith’s moral philosophy also abound. The link between his rhetoric and his ethics is examined in Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse (Routledge, 1994); and Stephen J. McKenna, Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety (SUNY Press, 2006); the connection between his natural jurisprudence and his ethics is examined in Knud Haakonssen,