Counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed, Jerry Muller shows that the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations maintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest. Smith's analysis went beyond economics to embrace a larger "civilizing project" designed to create a more decent society.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780691001616
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 07-23-1995
Pages: 263
Product Dimensions: 7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
About the Author
Jerry Z. Muller is Associate Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton).
What People are Saying
What People are Saying About This
Robert Heilbroner
Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers. — Robert Heilbroner, Author of "The Worldly Philosophers"
Michael Novak
A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: an imagination that allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and a sympathy such as to gain a feel for the world of the subject. . . . Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree. — Michael Novak, "First Things"
From the Publisher
"Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers."—Robert Heilbroner, Author of The Worldly Philosophers
"A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: an imagination that allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and a sympathy such as to gain a feel for the world of the subject. . . . Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree."—Michael Novak, First Things
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction: Back to Adam? 1
Pt. I Adam Smith in His Time
1 Cosmopolitan Provincial: Smith's Life and Social Milieu 15
2 Gentlemen, Consumers, and the Fiscal-Military State 28
3 Self-Love and Self-Command: The Intellectual Origins of Smith's Civilizing Project 39
Pt. II Designing the Decent Society
4 The Market: From Self-Love to Universal Opulence 63
5 The Legislator and the Merchant 77
6 Social Science as the Anticipation of the Unanticipated 84