Speaking of Smith Archives

How Rude: Adam Ferguson on Civilization

July 5, 2021

Part II of a Five-Part #ReadWithMe of Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society

July 4th: One Piece of Our Founding Trilogy

July 1, 2021

We should not view the three holidays of April 9th, Juneteenth, and July 4th as wholly distinct occasions, but rather as three parts of a coherent American whole.

What Adam Smith Ate: Sugar Lumps and Strawberry Fool

June 23, 2021

Learn about Smith's sugar-lump habit, and how to make the eighteenth-century English equivalent of strawberry shortcake, "Strawberry Fool."

Moral Sentiments, Active and Passive

June 21, 2021

Klein walks us through Adam Smith's implicit distinction between active and passive moral sentiments.

What Makes a Human?

June 16, 2021

Part 1 of a #ReadWithMe of Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society.

Sympathy and Spectatorship in Adam Smith: A Collection

June 13, 2021

One of Liberty Fund's 2021 Summer Scholar Interns compiles a list of essential readings on Adam Smith and his core concepts of sympathy, spectatorship, and virtue.

Roget.org and Other Sites to Bookmark

June 10, 2021

Daniel B. Klein interviews Dr. L. John Old, creator of the thesaurus website Roget.org.

Free Trade in Language: Adam Smith on Words and Wine

June 6, 2021

Since Smith was clearly at peace with the idea of importing French wines, why does he object to importing French words?

FDR versus Liberalism: Quotations from David Green, 1987

June 3, 2021

In this post, economist Daniel B. Klein unpacks the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the meaning of the word "liberalism," drawing on David Green's 1987 book, The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan.

Adam Smith and David Hume’s Soup a la Reine

May 26, 2021

Learn how to make a version of the soup that some say David Hume helped to re-popularize in late-eighteenth-century Scotland.

Adam Smith in the Narrow Corridor

May 23, 2021

Adam Smith understood that freedom is not the natural order of things. Do we?

Adam Smith's Lost Loves

May 19, 2021

Did Adam Smith know what it was like to be in love? Here's a law professor's primer on the evidence.