- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy
- Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections
- Newtonianism and Adam Smith
- Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
- Adam Smith and Early-Modern Thought
- Adam Smith's Aesthetics
- Adam Smith As Critic
- Adam Smith: History and Poetics
- Adam Smith On Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety
- Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and The Origin and Function Of Conscience
- Adam Smith and The Limits of Sympathy
- Adam Smith and Virtue
- Adam Smith and Self-Interest
- Adam Smith on Labour and Capital
- Adam Smith on Value and Prices
- Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level
- Commercial Relations: From Adam Smith to Field Experiments
- Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption
- Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform
- Adam Smith and the Law
- Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations
- Adam Smith on Civility and Civil Society
- Adam Smith on Religion
- Adam Smith on Equality
- Adam Smith on Women
- Adam Smith and Marx
- Adam Smith and the New Right
- Adam Smith: Methods, Morals, and Markets
- The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith
- Index Introductory Note
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter surveys recent literature arguing for and against the view that Smith was deeply egalitarian, and then examines both the elements of Smith’s texts that lend support to such a view, and the elements that militate against it. It concludes by considering various different senses in which one might be an egalitarian—distinguishing the belief in moral equality from a belief in political equality, and both from a belief in socio-economic equality—and suggesting that Smith is clearly an egalitarian along some of these dimensions but more ambiguously so along others.
Keywords: Adam Smith, egalitarianism, justice, mob, honour, poverty
Samuel Fleischacker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion, (Princeton 2004), and A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (Princeton 1999). From 2006 to 2010, he was President of the International Adam Smith Society.
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- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy
- Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections
- Newtonianism and Adam Smith
- Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
- Adam Smith and Early-Modern Thought
- Adam Smith's Aesthetics
- Adam Smith As Critic
- Adam Smith: History and Poetics
- Adam Smith On Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety
- Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and The Origin and Function Of Conscience
- Adam Smith and The Limits of Sympathy
- Adam Smith and Virtue
- Adam Smith and Self-Interest
- Adam Smith on Labour and Capital
- Adam Smith on Value and Prices
- Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level
- Commercial Relations: From Adam Smith to Field Experiments
- Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption
- Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform
- Adam Smith and the Law
- Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations
- Adam Smith on Civility and Civil Society
- Adam Smith on Religion
- Adam Smith on Equality
- Adam Smith on Women
- Adam Smith and Marx
- Adam Smith and the New Right
- Adam Smith: Methods, Morals, and Markets
- The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith
- Index Introductory Note