ADAM SMITH’S ENLIGHTENED WORLD

Commerce, morality, equality, the rule of law, and the role of government… Welcome to the world of Adam Smith.

What can we learn about our own world from Smith? Join the workers in an 18th century pin factory to find out more…

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Speaking of Smith

Latest

Alice Temnick on Adam Smith as an Educator

May 3, 2024 What might it have been like to be a student of Adam Smith, and if he hadn't quit teaching, would we have ever gotten The Wealth of Nations? Host Juliette Sellgren explores these questions and more with master teacher Alice Temnick.

Smithian Imagination and Austen's Catharine or the Bower

Carly Jackson for AdamSmithWorks Adam Smith often used fictional examples to talk about his ideas. Carly Jackson takes his lead using an unfinished work of Jane Austen's juvenilia to help us think about sympathy, fellow-feeling, and imagination gone wrong.

Great Antidote Extras: David Boaz on Liberalism and the Continuing Progress of the Enlightenment

Janet Bufton for AdamSmithWorks "Materially, people in the United States are much better off. But they’ve also progressed in ways important to liberalism, which stands against racism, sexism, antisemitism, and laws oppressing gay people."

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An Animal That Trades

A five-part short video series on the life and contemporary relevance of Adam Smith.

Learn.

Adam Smith and Angels with Dirty Faces

Ali Motamedi and Daniel B. Klein for AdamSmithWorks Motamedi and Klein provide a character study of Adam Smith's example of a bigoted Roman Catholic who, overcome by compassion, saves Protestants instead of killing them during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572. Drawing on Smith, the authors suggest that virtue involves a dynamic between self-approbation and upward vitality like that seen in the Roman Catholic who overcomes his bigotry. "...our estimation of a person’s conduct or character involves a consideration of the person’s own self-approbation. When a person does not fully approve of his own good actions, that counts against him." Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Adam Smith's Political Economy: From Poison to Science

Kwok Ping Tsang for AdamSmithWorks October 28, 2020

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Division of Labor Toolkit

Tackling the division of labor in your classroom? Let us help you start with Adam Smith.

Teaching through the Year: Seasonal Readings and Activities

We're making it easy for you to find seasonally relevant ways to bring Adam Smith and his ideas into your classroom.

Activity: Commerce and care

A comic strip to spark discussion of Adam Smith's "the butcher, the brewer, and the baker", and of how our care for each other is affected by money.

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Lectures on Jurisprudence

Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence, originally delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1762–1763, presents his “theory of the rules by which civil government ought to be directed.” The chief purpose of government, according to Smith, is to preserve justice; and “the object of justice is security from injury.” The state must protect the individual’s right to his person, property, reputation, and social relations.

Scholars’ Portal

How to Join the Portal

The ASW Scholars’ Portal is an online work-and-gathering space for Smith scholars. Its features include:

  • ability to upload working papers for comment, and to comment on others' papers
  • online open-discussion forum
  • ability to create and contribute to collaborative documents such as reading lists, annotated bibliographies, and a "Smithopaedia"
To be considered for access to the portal, please contact us with your ideas and CV at awillis@libertyfund.org.