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date: 04 July 2022

Abstract and Keywords

Using Smith’s own references to thinkers he identifies as significant pioneers, the chapter presents a synoptic and necessarily gross-grained selective survey. It pays particular attention to the thought of Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf and also to Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hutcheson. Newton, because he is the chief subject of another chapter, is not here considered but Harrington, though not mentioned by Smith in this context, is included. While Smith can be seen to take something from all these thinkers, without exception this is done critically. This duality recurs as the survey proceeds.

Keywords: Adam Smith, philosophy, natural law, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, Hutcheson

Christopher J. Berry

Christopher J. Berry is Professor (Emeritus) of Political Theory and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. He has established himself as a leading international scholar of the Scottish Enlightenment. In addition to seminal articles, and contributions in this area, he is the author of the key text Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997), which is shortly to appear in both Japanese and Chinese translations His scholarship ranges more widely. He is the author of six books, including The Idea of Luxury (Cambridge, 1994 Chinese translation, 2005) and David Hume (Continuum 2009). He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which Adam Smith was a founder member. His book The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh) is scheduled to appear in 2013.

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