i
Psychoanalytic Studies of the Work of Adam Smith blends the rich intellectual heritage of the hermeneutic tradition with the methods and concepts of psychoanalysis, in order to examine the seminal ...works of Adam Smith. This is the first book on Smith to analyze the works of the ground-breaking moral theorist and founding father of economics from a psychoanalytic perspective, whilst also examining the human capacities and skills that are necessary to put Smith’s ideas into practice.
Starting with a detailed discussion of the psychological difficulties that afflicted Smith, Özler and Gabrinetti examine the influence that Smith’s life had on the ideas that are found in his major works. The authors explore the sympathetic process in Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) from an intersubjectivist perspective and use ideas from developmental psychology to argue that sympathy leads to morality. This book contains a thorough analysis of the defenses that are used to create Smith’s moral system in the TMS and explores how Smith’s ideas were precursors to concepts later developed by Freud. The authors show that Smith’s attitude toward women was at best ambivalent and consider the reciprocal interaction between markets and morality from an evolutionary psychology perspective.
Covering an impressive range of topics, this book will appeal to academics and postgraduate students with an interest in psychoanalysis, moral philosophy, history of thought and the social sciences. The book should also be of interest to more advanced undergraduate students.ii
iii
Adam Smith's famous argument that self‐interested decisions will ultimately improve social welfare seems inconsistent with the social and economic inequality characterizing Smith's time and today. I ...contend that these inequalities are the result of Smith's failure to explicitly situate the economic man he describes in The Wealth of Nations within the broader social context he articulates in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, an omission which has since given rise to the separation thesis, which states that business decisions have no moral content and moral decisions have no business content. In response to this modern‐day Adam Smith problem, I integrate Smith's notions of sympathy, intimacy, and justice into a unification thesis that articulates how individuals might balance their self‐interested and benevolent motives. By reuniting the discourses of business and ethics, this research may inform contemporary theories of business ethics and provide normative guidance for managers.
This article analyses Adam Smith's and Sophie de Grouchy's accounts of sympathy to show how they arrive at strikingly different views on whether inequality is a threat to, or precondition of, social ...order. Where many scholars have recently sought to recover Smith's egalitarianism, I instead focus on how his account of sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments naturalises socioeconomic inequalities, while also highlighting the wider inegalitarian implications of his analysis. I demonstrate that Grouchy was alert to these implications and reveal how her own account of sympathy challenges the moral psychology underlying Smith's position on inequality. By reconstructing Grouchy's response to Smith, I illustrate how retrieving the insights of long‐overlooked thinkers can reorient the way we understand key debates in the history of philosophy, since Grouchy was far more concerned than Smith with exposing how economic inequality imperils the prospects of relating to one another as equals.
This article explores Adam Smith's attitude toward economic inequality, as distinct from the problem of poverty, and argues that he regarded it as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, as has often ...been recognized, Smith saw a high degree of economic inequality as an inevitable result of a flourishing commercial society, and he considered a certain amount of such inequality to be positively useful as a means of encouraging productivity and bolstering political stability. On the other hand, it has seldom been noticed that Smith also expressed deep worries about some of the other effects of extreme economic inequality—worries that are, moreover, interestingly different from those that dominate contemporary discourse. In Smith's view, extreme economic inequality leads people to sympathize more fully and readily with the rich than the poor, and this distortion in our sympathies in turn undermines both morality and happiness.
Adam Smith sigue y seguirá siendo una referencia obligada para cualquier persona que se especializa o que tenga algún interés por temas de economía. A pesar de que gran parte de sus afirmaciones ...teóricas han sido rechazadas o al menos cuestionadas desde todo el espectro de las corrientes del pensamiento económico, su teoría monetaria no es la excepción; específicamente lo referente a su teoría en torno al origen del dinero. No obstante, afirma este trabajo, la relectura de Investigación Acerca de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, así como de las críticas de las que ha sido objeto pueden dejar lecciones importantes a la investigación económica actual.
Adam Smith rompió con la ortodoxia mercantilista y está más allá de ser considerado un profeta de la reacción de los conservadores. Smith estaba magníficamente en contacto con su propia época y con ...las cuestiones prácticas. Como economista teórico contribuyó con un sistema que aún no se había consolidado y aportó un método de cómo ordenar y gobernar la vida económica. Smith suponía que el interés privado y público coincidían. Lo que buscaba era destacar que la «mano invisible» conduce a los intereses privados y a las pasiones de los hombres hacia lo que es más conveniente a los intereses de la sociedad. Para Smith al racionalizar los instintos egoístas se podrían convertir en virtudes sociales. Entonces, los móviles egoístas de los hombres, transformados por la acción mutua entre ellos mismos, producen el resultado más inesperado: la armonía social.
The Old Adam, After All Thorne, Christian
Historical materialism : research in critical Marxist theory,
09/2018, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract
Hill and Montag's The Other Adam Smith confirms many of the Left's established positions on Adam Smith, but does so by framing the philosopher as a standard-bearer of the Scottish ...Enlightenment, and not just as an arch-capitalist and proto-Hayekian. The book makes a strong case, but also strong-arms its readers into choosing between the Scottish Enlighteners and the Spinozism that its authors prefer.
It has long been recognised that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) advances a 'system of natural liberty' in seeking to account for the 'nature and causes of the wealth of nations.' This is not ...however a theme that is explored or explained in the early sections of the book; in fact, not until Book IV, Ch. ix does Smith give his most expansive account of what he might mean by this term. This paper examines this chapter in detail to determine the limits of his critique in that chapter of the 'agricultural system' (of Physiocracy), and why it might be that Smith is so parsimonious in offering a clear account of his central idea.
Abstract
Is trade a promoter of peace? Adam Smith, one of the earliest defenders of trade, worries that commerce may instigate some perverse incentives, encouraging wars. The wealth that commerce ...generates decreases the relative cost of wars, increases the ability to finance wars through debts, which decreases their perceived cost, and increases the willingness of commercial interests to use wars to extend their markets, increasing the number and prolonging the length of wars. Smith, therefore, cannot assume that trade would yield a peaceful world. While defending and promoting trade, Smith warns us not to take peace for granted.
PDF