Search Results
The Psychological and Normative Framework of TMS
Nir Ben-Moshe
May 27, 2020 … is sufficient and there is no need to defend the standard upon reflection. Given the limited use that Smith makes of the reflective endorsement test in TMS, I believe that the latter option is the correct one, but that is a discussion for another paper.
Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation … of something can ever depend only on local customs? What are some examples of things that your country has done in the past that now seem unthinkable? Is there anything your country does today that you hope will one day be thought of as unthinkable?
Adam Smith in the Anthropocene
Paul Crider
April 19, 2023 Can Adam Smith's philosophy help those who care about environmental issues develop a theory of ecoliberalism?
Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon Moral Sentiments … to the propriety or unlawfulness of particular usages. There never can be any such custom. No society could subsist a moment, in which the usual strain of men’s conduct and behaviour was of a piece with the horrible practice I have just now mentioned.
Of the social Passions … . It is quite otherwise with hatred and resentment. Too violent a propensity to those detestable passions, renders a person the object of universal dread and abhorrence, who, like a wild beast, ought, we think, to be hunted out of all civil society.
Of the origin of Ambition, and of the distinction of Ranks … exposed to insult and derision, to be led in triumph, to be set up for the hand of scorn to point at, is a situation in which its constancy is much more apt to fail. Compared with the contempt of mankind, all other external evils are easily supported.
Jack Russell Weinstein
May 15, 2019 … people who argue both that slavery was a positive institution for the black slaves and that the Africans didn’t really suffer. These people however, constitute the vast minority and are generally regarded as crackpots. Adam Smith would not sympathize.
Of the manner in which we judge of the Propriety or Impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with our own … judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.
Of the proper Objects of Gratitude and Resentment … Nature, antecedent to all reflections upon the utility of punishment, has in this manner stamped upon the human heart, in the strongest and most indelible characters, an immediate and instinctive approbation of the sacred and necessary law of retaliation.
Of the Nature of Self-deceit, and of the Origin and Use of general Rules … being gratified and palled, he begins to view what he has done in the light in which others are apt to view it; and actually feels, what he had only foreseen very imperfectly before, the stings of remorse and repentance begin to agitate and torment him.
Of the Beauty which the Appearance of Utility bestows upon all the Productions of Art, and of the extensive Influence of this Species of Beauty … of speculation the most useful. Even the weakest and the worst of them are not altogether without their utility. They serve at least to animate the public passions of men, and rouse them to seek out the means of promoting the happiness of the society.
Liberty, Equality, Jane Eyre, and Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric (June 2022)
June, 2022 with Renee Wilmeth … for liberty and independence, her desire to perform useful work, and her desire to find love is one for the literary ages. · Jane Eyre, Chapters 28-38 (pages 371-521) · Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Lecture 22nd, p128-134
Skjönsberg on Stafford's The Case of Ireland
Max Skjönsberg
November 9, 2022 While other countries improved in trade and wealth during the Enlightenment, Ireland remained relatively poorer longer. Adam Smith, James Stafford, and Max Skjönsberg weigh in on the case of Ireland.
Of the sense of Justice, of Remorse, and of the consciousness of Merit
Clarissa Explains It All: Adam Smith and the Eighteenth-Century Novel in Letters
Shannon Chamberlain
December 4, 2019 … reason to sympathize with her. Smith’s recommendation of Richardson’s epistolary novels specifically helps us understand how important this connection between rhetoric and morality was in his work. It may also be where he got the idea in the first place.