Adam Smith (1723–1790)
Who They Were
Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. He held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, working amid a circle of thinkers -- including his close friend David Hume -- who treated society as a proper object of systematic, secular study. In 1759 he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, an account of sympathy and moral judgment, seventeen years before his most famous work. In 1776 he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, widely regarded as the founding text of modern economics and the starting point of the classical school. Smith argued that a market economy could coordinate the self-interested actions of individuals into broadly beneficial outcomes, and his work reframed what national wealth actually is.
Key Contributions
Smith opened The Wealth of Nations by illustrating the division of labor with a pin factory, showing how specialization multiplies output. One of his most quoted lines captures his account of self-interest and exchange: it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. He is best known for the metaphor of the invisible hand, by which individuals pursuing private gain can unintentionally promote the public good -- though he used the exact phrase only once in The Wealth of Nations, and it had appeared earlier in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The two books form a single project: the moral psychology of the first underpins the political economy of the second. Smith's redefinition of wealth as productive capacity rather than hoarded gold undercut mercantilism.
On EconRecall
Scottish moral philosopher whose Wealth of Nations (1776) founded modern economics and the classical school. Play the games that feature Adam Smith: