Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of The Wealth of Nations
Athol Fitzgibbons
Abstract
Adam Smith's System is a study in classical economic thought and methodology. It portrays Adam Smith as a Stoic philosopher who wanted virtue to be relevant to this life rather than to the next. His central purpose was to define a set of laws, a jurisprudence in the widest possible sense, which would permit economic and political liberalism to proceed without triggering long‐run moral degeneration. Smith argued that the conflict between morals and wealth was only apparent, because it was possible to synthesize the seeming contraries with better laws and moral rules.
Keywords: Christianity, free trade, laws, liberalism, methodology, morality, Newtonian science, philosophy, stoicism, wealth
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1997 | Print ISBN-13: 9780198292883 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 | DOI:10.1093/0198292880.001.0001 |
