This letter responds to letters by Garson Leder and by Harrison Lee in the same issue, September‐October 2024, of the Hastings Center Report.

We defend a scalar theory of the relationship between material scarcity and justice. As scarcity increases beyond a specified threshold, we argue that deontological egalitarian constraints should be gradually relaxed and consequentialist considerations should increasingly determine distributions. We construct this theory by taking a bottom-up approach that is guided by principles of medical triage. Armed with this theory, we consider the range of conditions under which justice applies. We argue that there are compelling reasons for thinking that justice applies under (...) a far broader range of conditions than is standardly supposed, including those that could sensibly be labelled as conditions of extreme rather than moderate scarcity. (shrink)

In transplant medicine, the use of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in donation after circulatory determination of death raises ethical difficulties. NRP is objectionable because it restores the donor's circulation, thus invalidating a death declaration based on the permanent cessation of circulation. NRP's defenders respond with arguments that are tortuous and factually inaccurate and depend on introducing extraneous concepts into the law. However, results comparable to NRP's—more and higher‐quality organs and more efficient allocation—can be achieved by removing organs from deceased donors (...) and using normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) to support the organs outside the body, without jeopardizing confidence in transplantation's legal and ethical foundations. Given the controversy that NRP generates and the convoluted justifications made for it, we recommend a prudential approach we call “ethical parsimony,” which holds that, in the choice between competing means of achieving a result, the ethically simpler one is to be preferred. This approach makes clear that policy‐makers should favor NMP over NRP. (shrink)

In the original version of the article, the Acknowledgements section was not included.

Looking to contexts ranging from premodern Spain and Italy to nineteenth-century Russia, Germany, and America, the contributors to this volume explore the ways the political and intellectual aspirations of successive historical presents have repeatedly reshaped the forms and narratives of Jewish cultural memory.

Is helping those whose subsistence needs are not meet a matter of charity or an obligation? What role should ordinary citizens of developed nations play? In a globalized world, the causes, connections, and responsibilities become complicated. Agriculture subsidies that keep food prices low for many in relatively rich countries may, for example, negatively impact poor farmers in developing countries. Students in Ethics/Philosophy 352 report on their project examining whether, and to what extent, a true obligation to aid exists.

Working within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, a series of empirical studies have tested the theory that the readers' psychological type preference between sensing and intuition shapes distinctive readings of biblical narratives. More recently, closer attention has also been given to differentiation within these two perceiving functions of sensing and intuition with regard to their introverted and extraverted orientation. Against this background, the present study examines the distinctive reading of the Johannine narrative of the wedding at Cana, a (...) passage rich in materials to engage the perceiving functions, by two groups whose dominant or auxiliary functions were introverted sensing and introverted intuition.CONTRIBUTION: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the sensing, intuition, feeling, thinking method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The foundations of the SIFT approach distinguish amongst the four functions of sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking. The present study builds on this foundation by introducing the nuance of the orientation in which the function is expressed, in this case focusing specifically on introverted sensing and introverted intuition. (shrink)

Working within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, a series of empirical studies have tested the theory that the readers’ psychological type preference between sensing and intuition (the two Jungian perceiving functions) shapes distinctive readings of biblical narratives. More recently, closer attention has also been given to differentiation within these two perceiving functions of sensing and intuition with regard to their introverted and extraverted orientation. Against this background, the present study examines the distinctive reading of the Johannine narrative of (...) the wedding at Cana, a passage rich in materials to engage the perceiving functions, by two groups whose dominant or auxiliary functions were introverted sensing and introverted intuition. Contribution: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the sensing, intuition, feeling, thinking (SIFT) method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The foundations of the SIFT approach distinguish amongst the four functions of sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking. The present study builds on this foundation by introducing the nuance of the orientation in which the function is expressed, in this case focusing specifically on introverted sensing and introverted intuition. (shrink)

Adam Smith is perceived, through his best-known book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as the founder of economics as a science. His thought has shaped modern ideas about the market economy and the role of the state in relation to it. Yet Smith needs to be recognized as more than this, as a man of letters, moralist, historian, and critic, as well as an economist, if we are to get full value for his (...) ideas and perspectives in contemporary applications. Ian Simpson Ross is the biographer of Lord Kames, Smith's patron, and of the Scottish poet William Dunbar, and has edited, with E C Mossner, Smith's correspondence for the Glasgow edition of his works. In this, the first full-scale biography of Adam Smith for a hundred years, Ross brings his subject in to historical light as a thinker and author by examining his family circumstance, education, career, and social and intellectual circle, including David Hume and Francois Quesnay, revealed through his correspondence, archival documents, the reports of contemporaries, and the record of his publications. Readers will meet Smith as a student at a lively Glasgow and sleepy Oxford; freelance lecturer in rhetoric; innovative university teacher; tutor travelling abroad with a Duke; acclaimed political economist; policy advisor to governments during and after the American crisis; and finally, if paradoxically in view of his tenets, a Commissioner of Customs coping with the free traders in the smuggling business. This is the life of a Scottish moral philosopher whose legacy of thought concerns and affects us all. Its lively and informed account will appeal to those interested in the social and intellectual milieu of the eighteenth century, and in scottish history. Economists and philosophers will find much to read about the history of their disciplines, supported by full documentation. (shrink)

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomously generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different (...) research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; one must make assumptions about systems in developing cognitive models. This chapter defends (...) the position that metaphysical considerations should play no role in deciding how to model cognition. It further explains how there is no basis for a general fact of the matter about determining what is and what is not a cognitive system. (shrink)

Enth.: Dugoald Stewart's account of Adam Smith / ed. by I.S. Ross.

Mrs. F, seventy‐five, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She and her spouse often discussed how to handle the progression of the disease. She was adamant about not coming to the point where she would be unable to recognize herself, her husband, or their son and daughter. The manner she chose was voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and she chose a specific date on which to carry out her plan. She asked her husband to promise, should she ever waver and request (...) nutrition or hydration, to remind her of the reasons she had chosen for pursuing this path.Mrs. F's ability to function was beginning to wax and wane. Sometimes she was her old self, and sometimes she had no recollection of her past identity. After she voluntarily stopped eating and drinking, the couple's promise created a dilemma for her professional caregivers. She asked for food and drink. Her husband and family reminded her of the reasons she had chosen VSED: “Remember, you didn't want to live in a nursing home, and you didn't want us to be responsible for caring for you at home. You believe that stopping eating and drinking will allow you to die with dignity.” Although they also asked Mrs. F, “What do you want to do?” the family asked the professional caregivers to respect her original choice to stop eating and drinking. Mrs. F still evidenced decision‐making capacity but often did not recall having chosen VSED. She again requested food and drink, from family and the professional caregivers.Can VSED be carried out for a patient whose advanced dementia makes disciplined voluntary action difficult? (shrink)

In _Art Can Help_, the internationally acclaimed American photographer Robert Adams offers over two dozen meditations on the purpose of art and the responsibility of the artist. In particular, Adams advocates art that evokes beauty without irony or sentimentality, art that “encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence.” Following an introduction, the book begins with two short essays on the works of the American painter Edward Hopper, an artist venerated by (...) class='Hi'>Adams. The rest of this compilation contains texts—more than half of which have never before been published—that contemplate one or two works by an individual artist. The pictures discussed are by noted photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Emmet Gowin, Dorothea Lange, Abelardo Morell, Edward Ranney, Judith Joy Ross, John Szarkowski, and Garry Winogrand. Several essays summon the words of literary figures, including Virginia Woolf and Czeslaw Milosz. Adams’s voice is at once intimate and accessible, and is imbued with the accumulated wisdom of a long career devoted to making and viewing art. This eloquent and moving book champions art that fights against disillusionment and despair. Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery. (shrink)

The emotional strength of his mother, Margaret Douglas, and close kinship bonds, to some degree, compensated Adam Smith for the loss of his father. In addition, he was well prepared at the Kirkcaldy burgh school for his student years, and found his vocation as a moral philosopher, in an era marked by a strong drive for advance in agriculture and other economic sectors. Most important of all, his Presbyterian inheritance, together with training in the Latin and Greek classics, instilled in (...) him the values of self‐command of a Stoic cast, frugality, diligence in his calling, and strict justice towards others tempered with benevolence, which characterized his actions and his teaching. At the same time, he seemed to have developed an independence of mind, which led him to rebel against the strict controls of Calvinism meant to check human depravity, and to set store by human goodness, and the will to enjoy natural liberty. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Smith's correspondence of this period of his life suggests that he believed that raising a revenue in a non‐discriminatory way did not gravely affect the tendency towards price equilibrium on which economic efficiency depends. There was also the necessity of providing for justice, education, and public works in Scotland. Smith was consequently willing, on the grounds of utility, to regulate and enforce the mercantile system, even though he viewed some of its features as unwise and unjust, for example, prohibiting certain (...) imports and punishing smugglers harshly. Smith's activities as an administrative judge and director of import police are assessed, and highlights of his service are described, such as his coastguard command role in gathering intelligence about the entry of John Paul Jones with units of the American navy, supported by France, into the Firth of Forth in September 1779. As well, his views of this time about the issue of free trade for Ireland are examined. (shrink)

Smith's two‐year tour abroad with young Buccleuch was modest rather than ‘grand,’ but allowed him to investigate a range of regional economies and two unfamiliar political systems: France's autocracy and republican oligarchy in Switzerland. France's taxation problems in the aftermath of war were of particular interest to him, a topic found in WN. Most of his time was spent in Toulouse, when Voltaire was leading a successful fight for a posthumous retrial there of Jean Calas, a victim of religious bigotry (...) and miscarriage of justice. Smith later visited Voltaire, who was his intellectual hero, at his home, Ferney, near Geneva. When in Paris, Smith was introduced to leading philosophes, who were impressed by TMS, also to Turgot and Quesnay, whose Physiocratic views on circular flow in the economy persuaded him to make adjustments in his system. (shrink)

Adam Smith was baptized on 5 June 1723 in the Fife seaport of Kirkcaldy, where his father, who died on 9 January 1723, had served as Comptroller of Customs. Father Adam Smith studied the liberal arts in Aberdeen, took legal training in Edinburgh qualifying him for estate management, and became secretary to a Campbell magnate. He hesitated about taking up a Customs post in Kirkcaldy, because his income there depended on volume of trade, which was falling off. However, he handled (...) his money well, and married the daughter of a substantial Fife laird. His Will specified that his widow, Margaret Douglas, would get help in raising young Adam from guardians associated with intellectual and economic improvement in Scotland. (shrink)

Smith expressed regret in 1780 that his Custom‐house duties held up ‘Several Works’ he had projected. One of these was on the subject of the ‘Imitative Arts,’ presumably his mimetic aesthetic philosophy. This was very likely connected with the two ‘Great Works’ he had ‘on the anvil’ on 1785. He described the first one as a ‘sort of Philosophical History of all the different branches of Literature, of Philosophy, Poetry, and Eloquence.’ The second he described as a ‘sort of theory (...) and History of Law and Government,’ which presumably would have included the ‘system of jurisprudence’, Smith promised his readers at the conclusion of TMS in 1759. He reported in 1785 that the materials collected were in tolerably good order, but he doubted whether the onset of old age would allow him to finish either work. Parts of the first project were published after his death in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, the only book of his that was not a commercial success. His major efforts of the end of his life went into further editions of TMS and WN, which he had in hand by 1783, in part responding to his critics. (shrink)

Smith wrote that his thirteen years as a Glasgow professor formed the most useful, and, therefore, the happiest and most honourable period of his life. His students joked about his absent‐mindedness and loved him for his benevolence and learning and also for the care he took over the delivery of his lectures. In due course, they disseminated Smith's ideas. Some were sons of local merchants, from whose fathers Smith learned about Glasgow's growing wealth from trading and manufacturing activities, then reflected (...) on related moral and economic problems and offered solutions. Others were from foreign countries: e.g. S.E. Desnitsky and I.A. Tret’yakov, sent abroad by Catherine the Great to complete their education, who then assisted her reform programme in Russia, by passing on Smith's liberal economic policy advice, at least eight years before it was published in WN. (shrink)

Returning to London in November 1766, Smith spent the next six months as an adviser to Buccleuch, and engaged in government research projects on taxation and management of the Sinking Fund intended to reduce public debt. Other assignments were inquiries into Pacific exploration and the history of Roman colonies as a guide, perhaps, to problems in North America. Buccleuch married in May 1767 and Smith spent the next seven years in Kirkcaldy, struggling with bouts of ill health and the perplexing (...) task of composing WN to his satisfaction. Correspondence of this period reveals that Smith was absorbing new information about grain prices and values of silver, with a view to improving his economic system, through refining its self‐correcting feature governed by the price mechanism, in which rents, wages, and profits are detailed as the factors of production. (shrink)

Smith's university studies at Glasgow are described: in Greek, introducing him to the Stoic philosopher Epictetus; Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, including Locke's empiricism; and Euclidian geometry and Newtonian physics, which had seminal lessons for him in methodology. Above all, the inspiration of the teaching of Francis Hutcheson is assessed, who seized Smith's imagination with his teaching of ethics and economics as part of his jurisprudence course. Hutcheson's development of moral sense and benevolence theory is highlighted, as providing a kind of (...) moral Newtonianism, offering answers in ‘new light’ or liberal theology to the ‘old light’ Calvinist stress on human depravity, and in moral philosophy to the egoistic theory of Hobbes and Mandeville. Clearly, Smith received great intellectual stimulation at Glasgow, and his ability was recognized with the award of a scholarship to Oxford in 1740. (shrink)

In the face of declining strength in the 1780s and grief over the death of his nearest relatives, his mother and his cousin Janet Douglas, Smith strove to leave behind him the works he had already published in the ‘best and most perfect state.’ It fell out that he completed the additions that went into the standard third edition of WN in a time of political distress. These included the rise and fall of Shelburne as the Prime Minister whose drive (...) to make peace with the Americans was based in part on Smith's free trade teaching; the subsequent collapse of the Fox–North coalition over efforts to reform the East India Company, which is severely criticized in the third edition of WN; and the onset of the administration of Pitt the Younger, who heeded WN's policy advice with regard to smuggling and trade with France. Smith also intensified his fight against the absurdity of the government's mercantile system of encouragements and prohibitions, which thwarted competition in the market place and favoured clamorous producers over consumers. (shrink)

Empirical work on motivated reasoning suggests that our judgments are influenced to a surprising extent by our wants, desires and preferences (Kahan 2016; Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Molden and Higgins 2012; Taber and Lodge 2006). How should we evaluate the epistemic status of beliefs formed through motivated reasoning? For example, are such beliefs epistemically justified? Are they candidates for knowledge? In liberal democracies, these questions are increasingly controversial as well as politically timely (Beebe et al. 2018; Lynch forthcoming, (...) 2018; Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). And yet, the epistemological significance of motivated reasoning has been almost entirely ignored by those working in mainstream epistemology. We aim to rectify this oversight. Using politically motivated reasoning as a case study, we show how motivated reasoning gives rise to three distinct kinds of skeptical challenges. We conclude by showing how the skeptical import of motivated reasoning has some important ramifications for how we should think about the demands of intellectual humility. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the ’45 Rising, the jurist and man of letters, Lord Kames, recruited Adam Smith to come to Edinburgh, Scotland's capital—notable for its superb views, historic buildings, and noisome streets— to deliver to young professionals, from 1748–51, freelance courses of lectures on rhetoric and criticism. Smith's course included a theory of communication, distinguishing between scientific discourse based on reason and the rhetorical kind meant to persuade by moving the passions. Another part of the course was devoted to (...) the origin and progress of language, an example of the philosophical or natural type of history prevalent among the Scottish literati, which Smith adopted for all his works, moral, political, and literary. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Smith's experience at Balliol College was disappointing, since the dons he encountered were not interested in teaching, and their easy enjoyment of sinecures as Fellows did not encourage that competition for students, and therefore revenue, prevalent among the Glasgow professors, which kept them abreast of their subjects and in touch with the advances of Enlightenment thought, especially the New Philosophy of Locke and the New Science of Newton. Smith read widely on his own, in politics and modern languages, but with (...) no one to supervise him, he seems to have overdone study and suffered a kind of nervous breakdown. He may have started reading Hume at this time, and been punished for doing so; certainly the religious orthodoxy of Balliol and the Jacobitism there, perhaps inflamed by the ’45 Rising’, must have repelled him, and he is reported to have left Oxford in 1746 ‘in disgust.’. (shrink)

Smith was devoted in his attentions to Hume as he lay dying, but, ever the man of prudence, gave his best friend some pain through unwillingness to see through the press the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. In the event, Smith was violently abused by Christians for describing Hume in a published letter as approaching as near to the idea of a ‘perfectly wise and virtuous man’ as human weakness permits. Smith would have been in further trouble if his 1778 Machiavellian (...) advice about a solution to the American problem had been published, for it advocated returning Canada to the French, and Florida to the Spaniards, to ensure that independent Americans would become allies of Britain. (shrink)

Glasgow had a number of advantages as the place of Smith's university education beginning in 1737. Expenses were moderate and important reforms had been implemented in 1727, which put the teaching of logic and metaphysics, moral philosophy, and natural philosophy on a thoroughly modern basis. As well, regulations were made for an arts curriculum including the ancient classics, philosophy, also mathematics and Newtonian science, which provided a firm grounding in cultural and intellectual values for subsequent careers in the professions. Smith (...) noticed the natural beauty of Glasgow's setting, also the emerging industries and thronged local markets, plus the transatlantic shipping in the Clyde estuary, which gave the city a rising economy, contrasting it with Kirkcaldy's declining one. (shrink)

Smith was not optimistic about his free‐trade policy advice being readily accepted, as prejudice and special interests stood in the way, but he must have been gratified that his views received favourable attention by some of Britain's leaders, and that translations of his great work were stirring the minds of French inquirers into political economy and supporters of the coming revolution. In Germany, the reception of his ideas was marked by translations, reviews, assimilation into university teaching, then popularizations, and afterwards (...) the fertilization of original thoughts about economics with application to the problems of the German‐speaking lands, stages that were paralleled across the globe. In 1787, Smith received the honour that gave him the greatest pleasure of his life: election as Rector of Glasgow University. (shrink)

The strong Scottish Enlightenment interest in science created a market in Edinburgh for information about this subject, and Smith responded by providing a course that included the history of astronomy. A key part was a theory of theorizing or system building, with a system identified as an ‘imaginary machine’ invented to provide a coherent pattern of cause and effect in phenomena. His major works presented systems on this model in ethics and economics. WN's free‐enterprise system was foreshadowed in a third (...) course given at Edinburgh on jurisprudence, in which Smith traced the development of law, and argued that humanity could evolve from barbarism to opulence, through enjoying peace, moderate taxes, also minimal justice, and reliance on the natural course of things. (shrink)

Smith understood that as a professor he was required to publish his work and help administer his University. While his reputation for absent‐mindedness grew, his Glasgow colleagues benefited from his sound practical bent and entrusted him with a wide range of university management issues. As for publishing, he began by contributing to the two numbers of the first Edinburgh Review: commenting on Johnson's Dictionary in 1755; and in 1756, on d’Alembert's Encyclopédie, also on Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, whose argument about (...) self‐love as an economic driving force he took up in TMS and WN. Following the publication of TMS in 1759, Smith concentrated more on political economy, also began work on the long process of the composition of WN, adding to his system lessons learned from a banking crisis in Scotland as his professorship came to an end in 1764. (shrink)

Smith moved from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh late in 1778, after his appointment as a Commissioner for managing His Majesty's Customs in Scotland. We may think it a paradox that this prominent advocate of free trade should end up enforcing the mercantile system, but there was a family tradition of Customs service, and while WN does attack restraints on some branches of trade and encouragement for others, especially in the form of monopolies, Smith was not an across the board economic libertarian. (...) He urged that there were reasons of state, as well as economic considerations, for implementing an efficient collection of moderate duties on imports and exports. In Edinburgh, Smith regularly entertained the intelligentsia and their visitors at a Friday Club and Sunday suppers. (shrink)

From 1773 until 1776, Smith remained in London ‐adding finishing touches to WN, whose publication was timed to seize Parliament's attention, and influence Members to support a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the American colonies. North America offered a major point of application for free‐market theory, and if Smith could win supporters, there was some hope of ending the cycle of violence induced by efforts to preserve the old colonial system involving economic restraints and prohibitions. Smith advocated the creation (...) of an Atlantic union, which would accommodate economic dynamism, develop new political institutions, and allow a place for the revolutionary spirit to be exercised. He foresaw that the pace of American economic growth would inevitably guarantee that leadership would pass from Britain to the former colonies. On an entirely different front at this period, Smith, in commenting on a proposal for reform in university medical education, revealed the strength of his endorsement of competition and detestation of monopolies of any kind. (shrink)

The capstone of Smith's years as a professor was the publication of TMS as a direct challenge to the egoistic theories of Hobbes and Mandeville, and Rousseau. In defining what virtue is and why we ought to act virtuously, Smith offers a sophisticated extension of the arguments of his teacher Hutcheson and a good friend, Hume, to the effect that our moral judgements are based on our sentiments, principally those of justice, benevolence, prudence, and propriety. The chief component of the (...) system is the role of sympathy in human transactions, through which we naturally judge the motives and conduct of others, and then ourselves. Another main component in the system is the impartial spectator, a higher self as it were, identified as the source of our normative judgements. A further important part of the book is rejection of utility as an explanation of the origin of moral rules, but acceptance of it embodied in contemplative utilitarianism, which reveals that the selfish rich, gratifying their desires, are led by an invisible hand to divide with the poor the necessaries of life, almost in the measure that equal distribution would have ensured. (shrink)

Here, we follow criticism of TMS by contemporaries, for example, Hume, who discerned that sympathy was the ‘Hinge’ of the book's system, but argued that Smith had not proved that all kinds of sympathies are necessarily agreeable, and that it was necessary to bring in a way of accounting for ‘disagreeable sympathy.’ This pushed Smith to make changes for the second edition of 1761, explaining more fully the moral psychology of sympathy and the role of imagination in the emplacement of (...) the impartial spectator. A negative view of TMS came from the Common Sense philosopher, Thomas Reid, who argued that Smith's system did not offer a standard of virtue for measuring the emotions of the moral actor or the sympathy of the spectator, and that it was reason that informed our moral judgements. This criticism of Smith impressed the patrons of the Glasgow Chair of Moral Philosophy, including Kames, and Reid was chosen as Smith's successor, when he left Glasgow in 1764 to become a travelling tutor to the third Duke of Buccleuch. (shrink)

Smith returned to Glasgow in 1751 to occupy the Chair of Logic, and within a year moved to that of moral philosophy. In his logic course, he substituted for the Aristotelian treatment his system of rhetoric and criticism, which he believed explained and illustrated best the powers of the mind. His moral philosophy course was a four‐part one, covering natural theology, presenting empirical proofs of the existence and attributes of God; Ethics, which gave rise to TMS; Justice, covering a history (...) of civil society, taking up the theme of human progress through the four socio‐economic stages of hunting and fishing, herding, farming, and commerce; and, in essence, Political Economy, the basis for WN. Two surviving sets of lectures on Jurisprudence, combining parts three and four of the moral philosophy course, are discussed to demonstrate the growing sophistication of Smith's economic analysis during his Glasgow professorship. (shrink)