This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Works by Adam Smith | |
|---|---|
| Name | Adam Smith |
| Birth date | 1723 |
| Death date | 1790 |
| Occupation | Philosopher; Moral philosopher; Political economist |
| Notable works | The Theory of Moral Sentiments; An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations |
| Era | Scottish Enlightenment |
| Notable students | James Watt (acquaintance); David Hume (friend) |
Works by Adam Smith
Adam Smith produced a corpus that shaped the Scottish Enlightenment and modern political economy through a combination of moral philosophy, lectures, treatises, and shorter pieces that engaged contemporaries such as David Hume, Edmund Burke, William Pitt the Younger, and institutions like the University of Glasgow and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His principal books and scattered manuscripts influenced debates among figures from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to John Stuart Mill and institutions such as the Bank of England and the British Parliament. The sections below catalogue Smith’s major printed works, unfinished projects, ephemeral writings, editorial histories, and the reception of his ideas across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Smith’s two landmark books anchor his reputation. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) articulated a system of sympathy, the impartial spectator, and moral judgment that engaged readers including Adam Ferguson, Thomas Reid, Francis Hutcheson, James Beattie, and the broader Scottish Enlightenment networks around the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of London. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) examined division of labor, market mechanisms, and public finance, provoking responses from Adam Ferguson to Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and shaping policies debated in the Parliament of Great Britain, the East India Company, and among economists at the Cambridge University and University of Glasgow faculties. Both works were translated and discussed by contemporaries such as Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich List, François Quesnay, Denis Diderot, and later by Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.
Smith left several unfinished projects and lecture notes that circulated posthumously. His planned system of jurisprudence and a projected Lectures on Jurisprudence and notes on Roman law and Natural law survived in student transcriptions and copies owned by figures like William Robertson and George Chalmers. Posthumous publications included edited versions of his lecture outlines that influenced scholars at the University of Oxford and critics such as Jeremy Bentham, Sir James Steuart, and David Ricardo. Manuscripts concerning taxation, public debt, and the nature of value were later excerpted in editions used by Jean-Baptiste Say and Thomas Malthus.
Smith’s shorter writings and public addresses engaged networks around the Société d’Économie Politique, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and civic patrons such as Charles Townshend and Lord Kames. His lectures on rhetoric, belles-lettres, and moral philosophy informed pupils including John Millar and William Fleming; printed versions of these lectures survive in student compilations comparable to the lecture corpora of John Locke and George Berkeley. Pamphlets and essays—some anonymous—entered debates on the American Revolution, Corn Laws, and commercial regulation, prompting replies from Edmund Burke and James Madison among transatlantic readers. His correspondence and occasional notes circulated among the Royal Society membership and policy actors such as William Pitt the Younger and Henry Dundas.
Smith’s texts generated a complex bibliographical history. Early editions and pirated printings appeared in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, followed by translations into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch that spread his ideas to audiences including Turgot, A. de Condorcet, Friedrich von Hayek (as a later reader), and Max Weber (as historian of ideas). Nineteenth-century editors such as J. C. Bryce and scholars at the Edinburgh Review produced annotated editions, while twentieth-century critical editions undertaken by the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith shaped contemporary scholarship alongside studies by Isaiah Berlin, Lionel Robbins, Ronald Meek, G. C. Brown, and E. C. Mossner. Libraries and archives from the Bodleian Library to the British Library and the National Library of Scotland preserve variant printings, marginalia, and manuscript fragments that inform philological and intellectual-historical research by scholars at institutions such as Harvard University, University of Chicago, Princeton University, and the London School of Economics.
Smith’s reception traversed praise, critique, and reinterpretation across ideological spectrums. Classical economists like David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus built on and contested his value theories, while utilitarian thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and later John Stuart Mill debated moral foundations with reference to his Moral Sentiments. Political leaders from William Pitt the Younger to Alexander Hamilton engaged Smithian analyses of trade and taxation in policymaking; continental theorists including Friedrich List and Karl Marx reinterpreted his insights within national development and critique of capitalism. Twentieth-century debates—sparked by Keynesian thinkers and neoclassical economists—reassessed Smith’s method, situating him among predecessors like Aristotle and contemporaries like Diderot and Hume. Contemporary scholarship continues to trace Smith’s influence across disciplines and institutions, reassessing his contributions in archives held by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and research centers at Yale University, University of Cambridge, and University of Glasgow.
Category:Adam Smith Category:Scottish Enlightenment Category:History of economic thought