Early modern Europe · 1723–1790
Adam Smith
Scottish moral philosopher and founder of political economy
Morality grows from sympathy — imagining ourselves in another’s place — and from an inner “impartial spectator”. In commerce, the division of labour and free exchange can serve the common good without anyone intending it.
Life and thought
Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy in Scotland, studied at Glasgow under Francis Hutcheson and then at Oxford, and in 1752 became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. In 1764 he left to tutor the young Duke of Buccleuch on a tour of France, where he met Quesnay and the physiocrats, then spent a decade writing The Wealth of Nations (1776). He ended his life as a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh. He was a close friend of Hume.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) explains morality through sympathy: we imagine ourselves into others’ situations, and judge our own conduct as an imagined impartial spectator would. The Wealth of Nations explains how nations grow rich: the division of labour multiplies productivity — his example is a pin factory where ten workers make thousands of pins a day — and exchange in free markets coordinates the work of strangers, as if by an “invisible hand”, though no one intends the common good. Smith also warned that merchants conspire against the public and that repetitive work dulls the mind. He founded classical economics.