Features March 1996
Adam Smith, the sensible philosopher
On the life of the influential political scientist.
Of all the great teachers of mankind, can any have lived a duller life than Adam Smith? Between his birth in 1723 and his death in 1790, he seems to have done nothing but read, lecture, travel once to Europe as tutor to a young duke, work as a customs commissioner, and (of course) write.
Of all the great teachers of mankind, can any have lived a duller life than Adam Smith?
Nor did he leave behind a record of a particularly interesting personality. His books occasionally glint with wry wit, but Smith himself seems to have been a singularly unamusing man. As a young schoolteacher in Smith’s home village of Kirkcaldy, Thomas...
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