SMITH, ADAM

SMITH, ADAM. — Philosopher and economist, born at Kirkaldy (Scotland) on 5 June 1723, died at Edinburgh on 17 July 1790. At the age of fourteen he entered the University of Glasgow, where he was a pupil of Hutcheson in the course on moral philosophy; he subsequently developed his philosophical and economic thought from his teacher’s general principles, intending, in accordance with his family’s wishes, to pursue an Anglican ecclesiastical career. He nevertheless abandoned theology in order to attend courses in the natural sciences and philosophy, graduating in 1746.

He gave public lectures at the University of Edinburgh, where he met Hume, with whom he remained friends; in 1751 he was appointed professor of logic at the University of Glasgow, and the following year professor of moral philosophy, a chair he held until 1763. His course, following the lines of that of Hutcheson, who had preceded him, was divided into four parts: natural theology, ethics, civil and political law, and political economy. Of these, only the second and fourth, developed and enlarged, were published by S.: the one in 1759 (Theory of moral sentiments, London 1759), the other in 1776 (An inquiry into the nature and causes of wealth of nations, there 1776). At the end of 1763 he left teaching to accompany the Duke of Buccleugh on a journey through Europe; he stayed with him for a long time in France, where he met the most eminent men of the period. In discussions with Turgot and Quesnay, founders of the French physiocratic school, S. deepened and broadened his economic knowledge, so much so that he was subsequently accused of having

taken the most important part of his doctrine from the physiocrats; but in the notes of his lectures on political economy preceding the journey, all the fundamental principles of the «Wealth of Nations» are already set forth (Lectures on justice, police, revenue and arms, delivered in the University of Glasgow by A. S., reported by a student in 1763 and edited with introduction and notes by E. Cannon, Oxford 1896). On his return to England

in 1766 he withdrew for several years to Kirkaldy, where he worked out his treatise on political economy, which, published in 1776, met with rapid success. In 1778, in recognition of his merits, S. was appointed commissioner of customs and excise in Scotland, an office he held until his death. After his death, several of his short philosophical and economic monographs, of lesser importance, were published (A. S., Essays, Dublin 1795).

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, S. does not depart from the empiricism and moralism of Hutcheson and Hume: man is a moral being guided by the feeling of sympathy, which nature employs to direct the destiny of humanity toward the happiness willed by Providence. The balance between selfish and altruistic impulses, brought about by sympathy, leads to harmony between personal good and the good of society. The analysis of the feeling of sympathy constitutes the essential part of the work, but the initial error of attempting to deduce a moral law from the immediacy of feeling gives S.’s reasoning a character of fragility and inadequacy.

S.’s fame and importance as an economist are linked to the Inquiries into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in which, after demolishing the sophisms of mercantilism, economics moves from fragmented and empirical treatment to systematic and scientific treatment, so that its author may be considered the founder of economic science. The work has had more than one Italian translation, the most recent of which appeared in 1945 (A. S., Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, introduction by A. Graziani, Turin 1945, with bibliography). The fundamental characteristics of S.’s entire work are: utilitarianism: the individual is impelled by innate sentiments to act economically in order to maximize material wealth; individualism: society is the sum of individuals, and the realization of individual interests is at the same time the realization of the social interest; economic liberalism: the State must not intervene in the economic actions of individuals, because it would disturb their natural harmony. Its weak points are: the identification of the economic principle with selfishness, which in the later classical economists constitutes the premise for the schematization of economic man and for the separation of economics from ethics; the insufficient conception of the ends of society and the State; the restriction of the object of economics to the sphere of material goods; and the one-sided view of the problem of value. S.’s enduring merit is that he succeeded, by means of a rigorous scientific method, in fusing the fragmentary observations of his predecessors into an organic and coherent body and in deducing from a few premises a system of economic laws possessing general validity. Moreover, his careful observation of English industrial and commercial experience prevents S.’s work from falling into apriorism and schematism, giving it a concreteness that would later be lacking in his successors.

(from A. S., Recherches sur la nature... I. Paris 1883)
SMITH, ADAM — Portrait, engraving by B. L. Prevost.