¹ The phrase “marketplace of desires” was used to describe Smith's economics by Michael Ignatieff. See his “Smith, Rousseau and the Republic of Needs,” in Scotland and Europe, 1200–1850, ed. Smout, T. C. (Edinburgh, 1986), 187–207Google Scholar. In my estimation, both Ignatieff and Smout are too dismissive of Smith's ethical concerns and too eager to caricature Wealth of Nations as the ideological blueprint for a market theodicy.

² Unless otherwise noted, all of the Smith citations in this essay are taken from The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1976–87)Google Scholar. Hereafter, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is abbreviated as Wealth of Nations (citations to this work use uppercase roman numerals to indicate volumes, lowercase roman numerals for sections, and arabic numerals for paragraphs; letters, when used, indicate parts within sections) and The Theory of Moral Sentiments as Theory of Moral Sentiments (citations to this work use uppercase roman numerals to indicate books, lowercase roman numerals for sections, and arabic numerals for chapters and paragraphs).

³ Harold Laski is one of the legion that makes this claim. See his The Rise of European Liberalism (London, 1936), 118Google Scholar.

⁴ The Early Writings of Adam Smith, ed. Lindgren, J. Ralph (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁵ Lindgren, J. Ralph, The Social Philosophy of Adam Smith (The Hague, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See The Early Writings of Adam Smith, esp. “The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries: Illustrated by the History of Astronomy,” and “Language.”

⁷ Smith's investigation into the social nature of human understanding and communication was arguably more original and decisive than his economic investigations. Smith's social theory anticipates, for example, the contemporary social construction of reality discussion that had to await our own century. See Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1967), esp. 26–34Google Scholar, where Berger and Luckmann focus on social exchange. Smith's analysis of intersubjectivity permeates all of his writings.

⁸ Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.ii.1.

⁹ The social theorist Émile Durkheim, for example, was able to develop Smith's discussion of the division of labor into a theory of modern social organisms characterized by cooperation.

¹⁰ Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV.ii.9. It may be useful to note that Smith used this metaphor only twice in all of Wealth of Nations (1,080 pages) and that the concept was much more central to his ethical theory. Recent interpretations of Smith present a very different picture of the “hidden hand” from classical economics. Vivienne Brown rightly points out that Smith's use of the “hidden hand” is analytically limited; it is not substantially an argument for market competition but rather an argument for a better flow of capital between different economic sectors. See her comments in Adam Smith's Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience (London, 1994), 182Google Scholar. Charles Griswold suggests that the hidden hand is an imaginative leap that resolves the paradoxes of everyday life and supports normative values. In this sense, the hidden hand resembles a deus ex machina that resolved tensions in the social drama. See his Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1999), 67n, 95, and 303–4Google Scholar.

¹¹ This point is made forcibly by McNally, David in Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation (Berkeley, 1988), 217Google Scholar. For the appropriate passage, see Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.viii and V.ii.k.3.

¹² On Smith's reputation in France, see Chisick, Harvey, “The Representation of Adam Smith and David Hume in the Année Littéraire and the Journal Encyclopédique,” in Scotland and France in the Enlightenment, ed. Dawson, Deidre and Morère, Pierre (Lewisburg, PA, 2004), 240–63Google Scholar.

¹³ Rae, John, Life of Adam Smith (1895; repr., New York, 1965), 148–49Google Scholar.

¹⁴ McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, 166. On Hutcheson's neo-Harringtonian agenda, see also Horne, Thomas, “Moral and Economic Improvement: Francis Hutcheson on Property,” History of Political Thought 7 (1986): 115–30Google Scholar. The Harringtonian model, however, obscures some important distinctions between English and Scottish civic humanism. The former privileged constitutional arrangements to check corruption, while the latter focused on sociocultural factors. The different approach, of course, reflects the political dependence (some would say impotence) of eighteenth-century Scotland on England.

¹⁵ Here we see a sharp difference between Rousseau and Smith. Rousseau was suspicious of language that went beyond the natural signs of the passions, and his approach leaned toward empathy. For Smith, compassion or sympathy needed to be mediated by language and was, therefore, much more detached and controlled.

¹⁶ The emphasis is mine. The exceptions, of course, were the rules of justice, which Smith apparently thought were capable of being codified. That does not mean that the ultimate criterion of justice was not sociability, however, as Smith's discussion of proprietorship and propriety in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (I.36–38) demonstrates.

¹⁷ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.i.4–6. The emphasis is mine.

¹⁸ Ibid., I.iii.2.

¹⁹ Ibid., I.iii.3.

²⁰ Human aesthetics posed an interesting problem for Smith. On the one hand, he recognized that concepts like the invisible hand and the sympathetic symphony appealed to the impartial spectator's desire for wholeness and harmony. On the other hand, an overtly aesthetic focus could all too easily obscure the more substantial operations of “mutual responsiveness and responsibility.” Charles Griswold has an interesting discussion of Smith's aesthetics, although he tends to exaggerate the synthetic role that beauty plays in ethical formation for Smith. See Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 332–35.

²¹ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV.i.11.

²² Ross, Ian Simpson, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995), xiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this otherwise admirable work, Ross suggests that utility comes into Smith's theory when he contemplates social phenomena through the lens of the “hidden hand.” In order to make his argument compelling, Ross would need to (1) demonstrate that the “hidden hand” plays more than an incidental role in Smith's ethics, (2) tease out the distinctly ethical features of that concept, and (3) discount any nonutilitarian features of the “hidden hand,” that is, as a mechanism for addressing the problem of injustice.

²³ See Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, ed. Kivy, Peter (The Hague, 1973)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII.ii.4.1.

²⁵ Ibid., VII.ii.4.7.

²⁶ Ibid., VII.ii.4.12–14.

²⁷ Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 206.

²⁸ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII.ii.4.8

²⁹ Ibid., I.i.4.6.

³⁰ Ibid., I.i.4.7.

³¹ Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 149.

³² Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.i.4.10. It should be underlined, however, that Smith's “society of strangers” signified a genuine moral community and not a contract between egoistic actors, which would render moral cultivation inconceivable. Its ideal type was the new Glasgow and Edinburgh clubs (like Smith's Oyster Club), where gentleman farmers, academics, and other professionals met to converse politely and refine any rough edges. The lack of a feminine presence or principle in this society is striking for an enlightened eighteenth-century philosophe, especially one who charmed the ladies in the French salon, but it is perfectly consistent with Smith's commitment to the supposedly masculine quality of self-command. For a contemporary French and feminine critique of Smith's masculine approach, see Deidre Dawson's article on Sophie de Grouchy in Dawson and Pierre Morère, Scotland and France in the Enlightenment.

³³ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, III.3.22.

³⁴ Ibid., VII.ii.3.14.

³⁵ Smith's approach clearly departed from the mainstream of the Enlightenment, especially those writers who belonged to the “party of humanity” (Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology [New York, 1973], 681–83)Google Scholar. For some examples of the latter, see Gay, The Enlightenment, sec. 7.

³⁶ McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, 263.

³⁷ Smith, Wealth of Nations, III.iv.20.

³⁸ Ibid., IV.ii.21.

³⁹ Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 11.

⁴⁰ On the significance of the gentry for the enlightened Scottish literati, see Dwyer, John, Virtuous Discourse: Sensibility and Community in Late Eighteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1987)Google Scholar, especially the discussion of John Homespun and his family (110).

⁴¹ For an analysis of Smith's negative attitudes toward these classes, see Dwyer, John, The Age of the Passions: An Interpretation of Adam Smith and Scottish Enlightenment Culture (Edinburgh, 1998), 40–45Google Scholar.

⁴² Smith, Wealth of Nations, III.ii.7, and Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV.i.10.

⁴³ Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV.ii.c.15.

⁴⁴ Ibid., IV.i.10, IV.ii.21, IV.iii.c.8–10, IV.iii.c.26–33, IV.vii.c.103, V.i.d., IV.vii.c.60. These are just a few examples of Smith's attack on the groups that we usually identify with capitalist progress but whose motivation Smith derided.

⁴⁵ Ibid., III.iv.19.

⁴⁶ Ibid., II.v.37.

⁴⁷ Dwyer, The Age of the Passions, 69. The concept of competency is a much better term for capturing the kind of economic behavior that Smith approved of. See Vickers, Daniel, “Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America,” William and Mary Quarterly 47 (1990): 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a useful definition of the concept. Griswold, in Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 218, usefully focuses on the psychological character of contentment that is achieved through “reflective integration over time.” Because Smith was opposed to excess of any kind, he cannot sensibly be described as constructing a capitalist commonwealth that was a “marketplace of desires” although this claim is made by Michael Ignatieff.

⁴⁸ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.iii.3.5. Although this passage comes from the final 1790 edition, it is an elaboration and clarification of Smith's treatment of propriety in the early sections of earlier editions.

⁴⁹ Smith, Wealth of Nations, III.iii. Smith uses the hidden hand analogy to describe how the self-interest of these feudal magnates translated into social benefit, but the entire thrust of his argument is that modern agrarian capitalism was an unforeseen event.

⁵⁰ Ibid., III.iv.19.

⁵¹ Ibid., III.iv.13.

⁵² Ibid., III.iv.19.

⁵³ Ibid., III.iv.20.

⁵⁴ Ibid., III.iv.24.

⁵⁵ Brown, Adam Smith's Discourse, 160.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 52.

⁵⁷ See, e.g., Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, ed. Du Gay, Paul and Pryke, Michael (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, 187.

⁵⁹ Civic humanism was a powerful discursive mode in eighteenth-century Scotland and was illuminated in the writings of Smith's friend and colleague, Adam Ferguson. On the importance of civic humanism, especially in its neo-Harringtonian form, see Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975)Google Scholar. See also Kettler, David, “History and Theory in Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society: A Reconsideration,” Political Theory 5 (1977): 437–60Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, chap. 4, provides a useful summary of Smith's use of civic humanist language. However, McNally goes too far in arguing that Smith adopted the political agenda of the neo-Harringtonians. Vivienne Brown is right in suggesting that Smith was looking for less, rather than more, government intervention.

⁶¹ Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV.i.e.15–26.

⁶² Ibid., V.i.e.26.

⁶³ Ibid., IV.vii.c.103–8.

⁶⁴ On Henry Dundas and his relationship with the landowning classes of Scotland, see Dwyer, John and Murdoch, Alexander, “Paradigms and Politics: Manners, Morals and the Rise of Henry Dundas, 1770–1784,” in New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland, ed. Dwyer, John, Mason, Roger A., and Murdoch, Alexander (Edinburgh, 1983), 210–48Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Smith, Wealth of Nations, II.ii.86.

⁶⁶ Ibid., II.ii.94.

⁶⁷ Ibid., II.ii.86.

⁶⁸ Ibid., II.ii.94.

⁶⁹ Ibid., II.ii.106.

⁷⁰ Ibid., II.ii.94.

⁷¹ Ibid., IV.vii.c.63.

⁷² Ibid., I.xi.p.9–10.

⁷³ Ibid., I.viii.48.

⁷⁴ Ibid., I.xi.p.10.

⁷⁵ Ibid., II.i.28 and III.iv.24.

⁷⁶ Ibid., V.ii.a.13.

⁷⁷ Ibid., V.ii.a.17.

⁷⁸ Ibid., I.xi.b.8.

⁷⁹ Ibid., I.xi.a.4.

⁸⁰ Ibid., I.x.l.13.

⁸¹ Ibid., I.xi.l.12.

⁸² Ibid., IV.v.b.39.

⁸³ Ibid., I.xi.p.7–8.

⁸⁴ Ibid., I.xi.p.4–8.

⁸⁵ Ibid., I.xi.p.8–10.

⁸⁶ Ibid., I.xi.p.8–10.

⁸⁷ Ibid., III.iv.3.

⁸⁸ Ibid., V.iii.49–53.

⁸⁹ Ibid., V.iii.76 and 92.

⁹⁰ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI.iii.25.

⁹¹ Ibid., III.3.38.

⁹² Ibid., VI.iii.18.

⁹³ Ibid., VI.iii.25.

⁹⁴ Ibid., VI.i.15.

⁹⁵ Ibid., I.ii.38 and I.iii.2.5.

⁹⁶ Here, I fundamentally disagree with Charles Griswold, who believes that Smith has constructed an elaborate scheme to escape the “circle of selfishness.” I think this is a modern obsession rather than one that Smith would have recognized. See Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 86, 102.

⁹⁷ I also would take issue with Charles Griswold, who views Smith's defense of “ordinary life” as relegating the historical context to a “background picture.” Griswold's inattention to context leads him into interpreting Theory of Moral Sentiments alternately as a treatise on love, a manual for moral cultivation, and an argument for participatory democracy, and the “greatest working man's tract ever written.” See Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 33, 80, 149, 196, 210, 261, and 307.

⁹⁸ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, III.2.31–33.

⁹⁹ Ibid., III.2.32.

¹⁰⁰ Smith, Letter no. 40, “To Gilbert Elliot, 10 Oct. 1759,” in The Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. 6 of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith.

¹⁰¹ Hope, V., “Smith's Demigod,” in Philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Hope, V. (Edinburgh, 1984), 161Google Scholar.

¹⁰² Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI.ii.I.21.

¹⁰³ Ibid., III.2.32. See also III.1.6, III.1.5, III.2.26, VII.iv.24.

¹⁰⁴ The terminology is taken from Brown, Adam Smith's Discourse, 21. Although Vivienne Brown applies Mikhail Bakhtin's theory to Smith, surprisingly, she does not see its relevance to the 1790 edition.

¹⁰⁵ McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, 183.

¹⁰⁶ A number of scholars have noticed Smith's increasing pessimism in the closing decades of his life and have generally attributed this to the psychological impact of the French Revolution. But I argue that the shift in Smith's attitude has different and more interesting origins. For a different opinion, see Mizuta, Hiroshi, “Moral Philosophy and Civil Society,” in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Skinner, Andrew and Wilson, Thomas (Oxford, 1975), 128–29Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Smith, Wealth of Nations, V.iii.92.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., IV.i.34.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., II.ii.73–78.

¹¹⁰ For the economic background to the Ayr bank collapse, in which many of Smith's friends and patrons were implicated, see Hamilton, H., “The Failure of the Ayr Bank, 1772,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 8 (1956): 405–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹¹ Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.iii.26.

¹¹² Ibid., V.iii.5. The emphasis is mine.

¹¹³ Ibid., V.iii.58.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., V.iii.77.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., V.iii.90. The emphasis is mine.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., IV.vii.c.63.

¹¹⁷ Henry Mackenzie, a close friend of Adam Smith, was the leader of the Mirror Club and of the Edinburgh literati when Smith composed the final version of Theory of Moral Sentiments. The essays on Scottish nabobs can be found in the Mirror (Edinburgh, 1779/80), no. 53, and Loungers (Edinburgh, 1785/7), nos. 17, 36, 44, 56, and 62. The relative dates and numbers reflect the increasing concern of Scottish observers about the transformations taking place in Scottish society. The same concerns were reflected in the sermons of Smith's friends and allies in the Moderate Clergy of the Church of Scotland (i.e., John Drysdale and Hugh Blair). See Dwyer, Virtuous Discourse, 39–46.

¹¹⁸ Smith's economic and ethical condemnation of the East India Company can be found in Wealth of Nations, IV.vii.c.103–8.

¹¹⁹ Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 401–6.

¹²⁰ Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, III.6.13.

¹²¹ Ibid., I.iii.3.1.

¹²² Ibid., I.iii.3.7–8.

¹²³ Ibid., VI.iii.29.

¹²⁴ Ibid., VI.iii.31.

¹²⁵ On the Scottish discourse on sensibility, see Dwyer, Virtuous Discourse, chap. 4.

¹²⁶ David McNally argues otherwise, suggesting that Smith's economic agenda implied a political agenda that balanced “Court Whig with Country principles” (Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, 201). I really do not see how this argument is consistent with Smith's emphasis on natural liberty, and it flat out contradicts Smith's comments on liberty in France (an absolute monarchy) and America (a colony).

¹²⁷ See Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963)Google Scholar.