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Although Adam Smith is often thought of today as an economist, he was in fact (as his great contemporaries Hume, Burke, Kant, and Hegel recognized) an original and insightful thinker whose work covers an immense territory including moral philosophy, political economy, rhetorical theory, aesthetics, and jurisprudence. Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the continuing debate about the nature and survival of the Enlightenment, and relates it to current discussions in moral and political philosophy. Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of ancient philosophy, and his carefully balanced defense of a liberal and humane moral and political outlook, are also explored. This is a major reassessment of a key figure in modernity that will be of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, rhetoric, and political economy.
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ADAM SMITH AND THE VIRTUES OF ENLIGHTENMENT Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical study of Smith's moral and political thought. Griswold sets Smith's work in the context of the continuing debate about the nature and survival of the Enlightenment, and also relates it to current discussions in moral philosophy. Although Smith is often thought of today as an economist, he was in fact (as his great contemporaries Hume, Burke, Kant, and Hegel recognized) a seminal and insightful thinker whose work covers an immense territory including moral philosophy, political economy, rhetorical theory, aesthetics, and jurisprudence. Griswold explores such themes as the virtues, the emotions, ethical reasoning, impartiality, sympathy, the imagination, moral education, the rhetoric and methods of ethics, and skepticism. He demonstrates the relation between moral theory and political economy, and thus between the virtues and modern liberal and commercial institutions. Religious freedom, alienation, and political utopianism are also discussed. Griswold argues that Smith is simultaneously a resourceful defender of the standpoint of ordinary life, a critic of the excesses of reformist theories, and an advocate of philosophy's reflective amelioration of human life. Throughout the book the author pays close attention to Smith's appropriation as well as criticism of classical philosophy, and to Smith's carefully balanced defense of a humane, enlightened, and decisively modern moral and political outlook. This is a major historical and philosophical reassessment of a key figure in the Enlightenment that will be of particular interest to philosophers and political and legal theorists, as well as historians of ideas, economics, and political economy. Charles L. Griswold, Jr., is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He has published in a variety of fields, including ancient philosophy, the Scottish Enlightenment, and German Idealism. MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY General Editor Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago Advisory Board Gary Gutting, University of Notre Dame Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt University, Berlin Mark Sacks, University of Essex This series contains a range of high-quality books on philosophers, topics, and schools of thought prominent in the Kantian and post-Kantian European tradition. Nonsectarian in approach and methodology, it includes both introductory and more specialized treatments of these thinkers and topics. Authors are encouraged to interpret the boundaries of the modern European tradition in a broad way and in primarily philosophical rather than historical terms. Some Recent Titles: Frederick A. Olafson: What Is a Human Being? Stanley Rosen: The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra Robert C. Scharff: Comte after Positivism F. C. T. Moore: Bergson