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In this paper we propose a reading of Smith's political philosophy, based on his theory of political obligation, as a critique of contractarianism. The author will reject the hypothesis of the state of nature and the consent of individuals, proposing, instead, a theory based on opinion, but, above all, on the illusion that commercial society will lead us to happiness. We will trace these ideas in three of his most important texts: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations, and the Lectures on Jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The premise of this paper is that Adam Smith was first a teacher and second an economist and writer. Set this, it aims to show that one of the causes of the remarkable success of The Wealth of Nations was the didactic rhetoric that the author put into practice in communicating his thoughts. It focuses on the well-known example of the manufacture of pins, previously not studied from this perspective, because of its important function as a proem to the work, place in which it is a priority to adapt to the imagination of students, listeners and readers, capturing their sympathy so that they wish to continue learning, listening and reading. After identifying the previous formulations of the example by other authors, it analyses the different versions provided by Smith, identifying in them three relevant levels from the point of view of education: visual, emotional and historical. In addition, it gives relevance to the didactic context of Scotland of his time and to the interconnection of Smith's different cultural interests, especially his connections with rhetoric. Its conclusion is that Smith based his didactic rhetoric on perspicuity and sympathy, building a teaching discourse, first, and textual, later, that created an immersive visual environment in which students, listeners and readers felt intuitively protagonists inside the conceptual world exposed (that of the new economic science) and, with this, agents of their own formative process, which has an undeniable topicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the countless similarities between David Hume's and Adam Smith's moral theories, many people have lately argued that the Theory of Moral Sentiments can be read as a critical response to Hume's ethics. In this paper I contend that the most important difference between these sentimentalist philosophers has to do with the source and nature of morality's normative authority, which in turn determines what is a legitimate moral reason or what is morality properly speaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Increase in biodiversity increases biological and environmental fitness. • The Janus Hypothesis explains how fitness is optimized by maximizing total system throughflow (TST) and storage (TSS). • Autonomy, biodiversity, and connectivity are three key ingredients in the process. Abstract Adam Smith's classic, The Wealth of Nations (Smith, 1776), laid down the foundations for free-market, and later growth, economics. Goals, resources, currencies, labor, and skills in human enterprise all have parallels in the economy of nature: ▪ Self-interested people have counterparts in survival-driven species; ▪ Opportunities and markets are reflected in resource and habitat niches; ▪ Division of labor is expressed in role niches and biodiversity; ▪ Persistence of economic growth is matched in that of biological growth; ▪ Growth in money-flow mirrors matter- and energy-flow in ecosystems; ▪ Capital accumulation as monetary profit in economics is expressed as the standing stocks of natural capital in ecology; and finally, ▪ Smith's invisible hand , generating "greatest goods for the greatest many", finds specificity in the utility theory and mathematics of ecology's network environ analysis. These parallels, and the fact that man is a part of nature also, suggest the same laws direct both ecology and economics. This paper summarizes the Janus Hypothesis (Patten, 2016) as a candidate theory determining natural (and human) economics. The hypothesis holds that three relational " ABC "s— a utonomy, b iodiversity, and c onnectivity—self-organize to maximize biological and environmental fitness in the transactional economy of nature. Applicability to human economics is axiomatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Trust and trustworthiness are key elements, both at the micro and macro level, in sustaining the working of modern economies and their institutions. However, despite its centrality, trust continues to be considered as a “conceptual bumblebee”, it works in practice but not in theory. In particular, its behavioural rationale still represents a puzzle for traditional rational choice theory and game theory. In this paper “trust responsiveness”, an alternative explanatory principle that can account for trustful and trustworthy behaviour, is proposed. Such principle assumes that people can be motivated to behave trustworthily by trustful actions. The paper discusses the philosophical roots, the historical development, as well as the relational nature of this principle as well as its theoretical implications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Middle Kingdom, as a relatively unknown advanced civilisation, held a unique position in Enlightenment thought, as Europeans tried to understand a widening world and their own place in it. European views of China in the early modern period have been widely studied. While the predominant paradigm has been to analyse a shift from sinophilia to sinophobia, disagreements over the extent, nature and timing of this shift suggest that the rigid juxtaposition may not always be useful. In order to highlight the importance of the particular topic to the constructions of China in eighteenth-century European thought, this paper examines the way primary sources and scholars viewed one particular aspect of China: Its system of government. This paper will consider views of China related to Adam Smith's main duties of government (the art and science of war, the administration of justice and public institutions) and how these duties were to be paid for (the public revenue). Discussions of China's government married interest in the advanced civilisation of China with that characteristic Enlightenment project to define, explain and reflect on the meaning of civilisation and progress. A surprising degree of consensus is found, calling into question the conventional juxtaposition of sinophilia and sinophobia. Moreover, eighteenth-century European observers did not approach China with assumptions of superiority; on the contrary, there was a degree of civilisational relativism in their outlook, and at times China was seen as offering useful lessons. This approach also allows us to consider those questions with which Enlightenment thinkers did not turn towards China for answers, and ask the reasons for such omissions. China was dismissed as a useful model because it was deemed in many ways to be a unique case that could not be worked into the universal models that characterised the European Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews Aristotle’s problematic relationship with modern economic theory. It argues that in terms of value and income distribution theory, Aristotle should probably be seen as a precursor to neither classical nor neoclassical economic thought. Indeed, there are strong arguments to be made that Aristotle’s views are completely at odds with all modern economic theory, since, among other things, he was not necessarily concerned with flexible market prices, opposed the use of money to acquire more money, and did not think that the unintended consequences of human activity were generally beneficial. The paper argues however, that this interpretation goes too far. The Benthamite neoclassical theory of choice can be seen as a dumbing down of Aristotle’s theory, applicable to animals, not humans. Adam Smith and Karl Marx were deeply influenced by Aristotle’s work and both started their main economic works with Aristotle: Smith ultimately rejecting, and Marx ultimately developing Aristotle’s views of the use of money to acquire more money. Possibilities for the future development of a new Aristotelian Economics are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Scottish Enlightenment, the "point of view of the spectator" was considered to be the adequate standpoint from where to make impartial moral judgments. This school of thought has often been seen as anticipating Utilitarianism. However, many interpreters are now saying that, despite their similar approaches to ethics, Hutcheson's and Hume's theories are proto-utilitarian while Smith's is not. Indeed, Smith was the first important critic of Utilitarianism. In this paper I provide further reasons for Smith's critical attitude to Utilitarianism by tracing it back to his specific account of the position of the impartial spectator: either a third-person or a second-person standpoint. This position generates different meta-ethical structures that determine, among other things, the meaning of the notion of impartiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Few economists speak of talk in considering human interaction. Deirdre McCloskey is one who does. The paper considers what it means to take talk seriously, its connection to moral philosophy, and to innovation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper demonstrates that Adam Smith has common ground with contemporary social scientists who study the management of the common pool resources from an evolutionary perspective. Contrary to the caricature of Smith, presented by neoliberals, as a promoter of self-interest, he recognized the value of other-regarding behavior. Specifically focus is given to how such behavior can contribute to constructing institutional arrangements that can help to avoid damaging market excesses. A study of the development of a process to encourage investment behavior that is environmentally responsible, establishes that Smith's work has relevance for addressing environmental issues in our contemporary complex market system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Why do people give away knowledge in tutoring other people's children or when mentoring junior employees? Neoclassical economists explain informal learning as rational behavior that arises out of enlightened self-interest. They can also justify it as acts that satisfy the agent's preferences for the utility of others. By contrast, this paper shows that Smith's moral sentiments model anticipates a biological approach that explains additional and deeper motives for such exchanges. Instincts and emotions serve consequentialist ends because the ultimate causes of behavior are grounded in adaptations useful for survival and procreation. But man is largely innocent of this knowledge. The proximate causes of behavior—that is, the adaptive mechanisms actually at work in human society—are psychologically obscure—not left to the conscious mind. Social and moral capital develop through instincts and affection, and mentoring and collaboration are examples of social exchanges that arise from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Francis Hutcheson is known as a proto-utilitarian. Adam Smith, though, his most prominent student an successor on the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, focuses on some different trends of his teacher's ethics and founds, based on the same sentimentalism, a completely different theory of morals. On this paper I explore what aspects of Hutcheson's ethics -particularly those of 'sympathy' and the 'impartial spectator'- where already present in his theory, and how Smith develops those intuitions in order to introduce a moment of rationality in moral judgments, whereby he is able to construct a theory that includes practical reasoning, without betraying the Scottish sentimentalist tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper addresses the theory of institutions and collective action in Adam Smith''s Theory of Moral Sentiments. It shows how Smith derives institutions from the sympathy theory and how individual selfish actions are shaped into collective action when guided by institutions. Further, it will be argued that Smith recognizes how individual actions can deviate from the standards of conduct. Smith distinguishes the act of obeying the rules of conduct from that of observing the norms of conduct, citing the differences in the probabilities between observing the rules and norms of conduct as the reason for this distinction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper I claim that Adam Smith distinguished between economic activities without labeling these distinctions; and, that those distinctions correspond with the modern concepts of private, public and merit good. Musgrave introduced the concept of merit good, but he himself (and several commentators) limited the applicability of the concept merit good. I argue that a close reading of Adam Smith solidifies the distinction conceptualized by the modern ideas of public and merit good; gives the concept merit good a broader domain of applicability; and makes of the ideas of public and merit good concepts which are ideal concepts, and can therefore be applicable jointly and in degrees to particular economic activities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

What is the status of the nation state in Adam Smith's much celebrated intellectual system, the "Science of the Legislator"? This paper argues that it was historically transitory. Two aspects of Smith's treatment of states and international relations are examined. The first aspect concerns Smith's conception of the gains from international trade and openness. The second concerns his understanding of the dynamics of international conflict. These two aspects of Smith's conception of international relations go some way towards revealing the bases of his (skeptical) advocacy of a dramatic transformation of the British polity. Indeed, while the jurisprudential component of Smith's projected science of the legislator was never completed, surviving early lecture notes suggest that he regarded the nation-state as a transitional form: one that had already begun to need replacement in his day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An alternative perspective of financial literacy questioned the conceptual legitimacy of sustained personal fulfillment through maximization of financial net worth. In this alternative view, a focus on financial assets and their accumulation constitutes an activity of objectification that perceives other individuals as vehicles for personal social advancement, rather than stories or narratives of themselves. This paper argues that a critically compassionate approach to financial literacy represents a moral pursuit. It begins with the claim that human nature is both controlling and compassionate, and that this dual nature informs about the meaning of financial literacy. From this position, it considers what it may mean to be moral in this context and extending that conception to understandings of financial practice. Finally, it asserts broadening interpretations of financial literacy to include compassionate practices represent a moral consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]