I argue instead that there is a remarkable analogy between Smith’s and Kant’s theory of religion. According to the myth, Adam Smith endorsed several of the traditional proofs of God’s existence he believed that the order existing in the world is a morally good order implemented by Divine Providence he believed that evil in the world is part of an all-encompassing Divine Plan and that the ‘invisible hand’ is the hand of the Christian God who leads the rich to employ their wealth for the greater benefit of the greatest number. That was really the key to human prosperity.This is the draft accepted for publication, Please quote from the published version I intend to dismantle a piece of historiographic mythology created by self-styled ‘Revisionists’ (Hill, Alvey, Oslington, etc.). Those societies that allowed individuals scope for their ingenuity, they succeeded they flourished. It was whether the society, whether the community, whether the nation, allowed people’s individual ingenuity-scope-to investigate, entrepreneurially figure out new ways to do things to satisfy their interests better. For Smith, this was really the key to explaining why some places were wealthy and other places were not. Why would that matter? Because if you were allowed to focus on a fairly narrow range of activities, this could unleash your human ingenuity. What he thought the key to the difference between wealthy and nonwealthy places was whether they allowed division of labor. Both of those are explanations that were available and heard at that time. It’s not because some races are superior to others. Well, what Smith didn’t say is almost as important as what he did say. So, what Smith was interested to know was, why are some places wealthy and other places are not? Remember that the title of the book was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. That’s really an amazing insight and one of the key pieces of our understanding today of markets and commercial society.īut what might be even more interesting, at least to me, about that Wealth of Nations is at the beginning of it. About halfway through the book, he uses this phrase, “invisible hand.” And that phrase is very important, because what Smith thought he had discovered was that commercial societies-markets-could enable human beings who are seeking to satisfy their own self-interest to actually benefit other people, even if unintentionally. It’s 1,000 pages long, chock full of information. If you’ve heard anything about The Wealth of Nations, the one phrase you may have heard of is “invisible hand.” It’s about halfway through the book. So he’s now principally known as the father of economics, and that’s because of the book, The Wealth of Nations. For him, moral philosophy encompassed all of the investigation that had to do with human behavior. Those two books together almost singlehandedly began the discipline of political economy.Īdam Smith called himself a moral philosopher. In 1776, the one he’s more famous for now, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments was his first book. Adam Smith was one of the principals of an astonishing period of human learning, called the Scottish Enlightenment, during the 18 th century.
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