Speaking of Smith Archives

with Zaccheus Harmon

January 14, 2019

The 18th century is generally cited as the birthplace of modern aesthetic thought. Whatever the veracity of this claim, there is little doubt that aesthetic topics were central to the intellectual projects of Enlightenment in a way that was unprecedented in the immediately preceding centuries. Philosophers and critics writing during this period addressed themselves to a variety of aesthetic questions: What is the nature of taste? How are aesthetic judgments made and what justifies such judgments? What is the nature of the beautiful and how does it relate to other aesthetic qualities, such as the sublime or the picturesque? What is the nature of artistic representation and how does it relate to the beauty of the natural world?

Adam Smith is no exception to this trend. Although he produced no systematic treatise on aesthetics (or “criticism” as it was called among Eighteenth century Brits), Smith touches on these issues at a number of places in his work. In the following series of blog posts, I want to examine some of Smith’s most insightful and interesting comments on aesthetic topics. 

With Professor Graham McAleer

January 28, 2019


Adam Smith had a life-long interest in the arts.  He was surely a man of taste.  However, his biographer, Dugald Stewart, suggests Smith’s interest in the arts and fashion was primarily “on account of their connexion with the general principles of the human mind” (Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 173).  Smith, it seems, was ever the theorist.  

Is Love Ridiculous???
with Professor Spyridon Tegos

February 11, 2019


Ridicule does not seem to be an indifferent topic for Adam Smith. In this respect, he dedicates two of his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, (numbers 9 and 10) in which we read that while we admire the grand and beautiful and show contempt to what is mean and little...

People simply don’t respond to data the way they do to drama. Adam Smith—economist and professor of rhetoric—was ideally equipped to understand and explain why.

February 25, 2019

Jon Murphy for AdamSmithWorks

March 11, 2019


Adam Smith was no anarchist. Smith did have a strong presumption of liberty, but this presumption was not absolute. Under certain conditions, a jural superior (such as a sovereign or magistrate) could violate this presumption of liberty and impose a policy that would break the rules of justice.

with your scholar-host, Graham McAleer*

March 25, 2019

In this piece we consider the possible impact of major events in the sciences upon Adam Smith’s thought.  

Amy Willis for AdamSmithWorks

April 29, 2019


What makes people naturally sociable? How do we come to together as a community or society?

with your scholar-hosts Sarah Skwire and Aeon Skoble

May 6, 2019

Editor's Note: Please help us maintain this as a NO SPOILER space. References up to and including Infinity Wars and Captain Marvel are acceptable, but please no spoilers for Endgame. Thank you!

How does a student of poetry come to love Smithian political economy? Sarah Skwire counts the ways...

May 20, 2019

with Sarah Skwire

June 3, 2019