Adam Smith: Reforming Merchant Power. The Case for an Open Public Sphere

Two decades of Adam Smith revisionism have restored his reputation as a philosopher of some substance and refuted the idea that he was simply the ‘high priest’ of capitalism. Yet all too often Smith is still offered up as an ‘English empiricist’ in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Mill. In this ar...

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Published inPolitics (Manchester, England) Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 131 - 142
Main Author Glassford, John
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2004
SAGE Publications
Subjects
Capitalism
Economic Theories
Enlightenment
Epistemology
Ethics
Intellectual History
Mercantilism
Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Public sphere
Revisionism
Smith, Adam
Social interaction
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Summary:Two decades of Adam Smith revisionism have restored his reputation as a philosopher of some substance and refuted the idea that he was simply the ‘high priest’ of capitalism. Yet all too often Smith is still offered up as an ‘English empiricist’ in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Mill. In this article Smith's critique of mercantilism is re-read through a peculiar Scottish tradition of social thought which began with Hume and which delivers up a surprisingly fresh, open and contemporary thinker.
Bibliography:istex:8833819CF4116524A21961FC0B98CDC17E5A9D6A
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ArticleID:PONL214
An earlier version of this article was delivered to the conference, 'The Scottish Enlightenment in its European Context', University of Glasgow (British Society for the History of Philosophy), Glasgow, Scotland, 3-6 April 2001.
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ISSN:0263-3957
1467-9256
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9256.2004.00214.x