SMITH, Adam. - Philosopher and economist, b. at Kirkcaldy (Scotland) on 5 June 1723, d. at Edinburgh on 17 July 1790. At the age of fourteen he entered the High School of Glasgow, where he was a pupil of Hutcheson in the course on moral philosophy; from the general principles of his master he subsequently developed his philosophical and economic thought, intending, in accordance with family wishes, to pursue an Anglican ecclesiastical career; however, he abandoned theology to attend courses in natural sciences and philosophy, graduating in 1746.
He gave private 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 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, elaborated and expanded, were published by S., the former in 1759 (*Theory of Moral Sentiments*, London 1759) and the latter in 1776 (*An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations*, 1776). At the end of 1763 he left teaching to accompany the Duke of Buccleuch on a tour of Europe; with him he stayed for a long time in France, where he met the most eminent men of the time. In discussions with Turgot and Quesnay, founders of the French physiocratic school, S. deepened and broadened his economic knowledge to such an extent that he was later accused of having taken from the physiocrats all the fundamental principles of *The Wealth of Nations* (*Lectures on Justice, Politics, Revenue and Armies*, 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 retired for several years to Kirkcaldy, working on his political economy treatise, 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, a position he held until his death. After his death, some minor philosophical and economic monographs of his were published (A. S., *Essays*, Dublin 1795).
With *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 sentiment of sympathy, which nature uses to direct the fate of humanity towards the happiness willed by Providence. The balance between egoistic and altruistic impulses, achieved through sympathy, leads to harmony between one’s own good and that of society. The analysis of the sentiment of sympathy forms the essential part of the work, but the initial error of seeking 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 bound up with *An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations*, in which, demolishing the sophisms of mercantilism, economics passes from fragmentary and empirical treatment to a systematic and scientific approach, so that its author may be considered the founder of economic science. The work has had more than one Italian translation, the most recent in 1945 (A. S., *Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni*, introd. by A. Graziani, Turin 1945, with bibl.). Fundamental characteristics of S.’s entire work are: 1. utilitarianism: the individual is driven by innate sentiments to act economically in order to maximize material wealth; 2. individualism: society is the sum of individuals, and the realization of individual interests is at the same time that of social interest; 3. liberalism: the State must not intervene in the economic actions of individuals because it would disturb their natural harmony. Weak points are: the identification of the economic principle with egoism, which in subsequent classical economists became the premise for the schematization of the economic man and for the separation of economics from ethics; the insufficient vision of the ends of society and the State; the restriction of the object of economics to the sphere of material goods; the one-sided view of the problem of value. S.’s merit remains that of having succeeded, with rigorous scientific method, in fusing into an organic and coherent body the fragmentary observations of his predecessors and in deducing from a few premises a system of economic laws of general validity. Moreover, his careful observation of English industrial and commercial experience prevented S.’s work from falling into a priorism and schematism, giving it a concreteness that would be lacking in his successors.