Book contents
- Interpreting Adam Smith
- Interpreting Adam Smith
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations of Works by Adam Smith
- Introduction
- 1 Smith Scholarship
- 2 The Wealth of Nations as a Work of Social Science
- 3 Adam Smith’s “Industrial Organization” of Religion
- 4 Talking to My Butcher
- 5 What Did Adam Smith Mean? The Semantics of the Opening Key Principles in the Wealth of Nations
- 6 Adam Smith and Virtuous Business
- 7 Adam Smith and the Morality of Political Economy
- 8 A Moral Philosophy for Commercial Society?
- 9 Adam Smith, Sufficientarian
- 10 Narrowing the Scope of Resentment in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
- 11 Adam Smith
- 12 “Much Better Instructors”
- 13 Sophie de Grouchy as an Activist Interpreter of Adam Smith
- 14 Adam Smith and the Limits of Philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Adam Smith, Sufficientarian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2023
- Interpreting Adam Smith
- Interpreting Adam Smith
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations of Works by Adam Smith
- Introduction
- 1 Smith Scholarship
- 2 The Wealth of Nations as a Work of Social Science
- 3 Adam Smith’s “Industrial Organization” of Religion
- 4 Talking to My Butcher
- 5 What Did Adam Smith Mean? The Semantics of the Opening Key Principles in the Wealth of Nations
- 6 Adam Smith and Virtuous Business
- 7 Adam Smith and the Morality of Political Economy
- 8 A Moral Philosophy for Commercial Society?
- 9 Adam Smith, Sufficientarian
- 10 Narrowing the Scope of Resentment in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
- 11 Adam Smith
- 12 “Much Better Instructors”
- 13 Sophie de Grouchy as an Activist Interpreter of Adam Smith
- 14 Adam Smith and the Limits of Philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Recent scholarship has sought to read Smith in TMS as an ethical critic of market inequality, one motivated by egalitarian commitments. This chapter pushes back against this reading, arguing that the position Smith adopts in TMS is most accurately labelled sufficientarian, not egalitarian. However, Smith’s sufficientarian considerations are deliberately focused on what is most apt for securing individual happiness. He says little of direct or decisive bearing on the plausibility of egalitarianism as a political commitment. Yet because ethical questions are not, in this area at least, isomorphic with political ones, we ought not to assume the latter can straightforwardly be read off the former. This ought to temper both our reading of Smith’s argument, and what we can appropriately extract from his text for present normative debate.
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- Interpreting Adam SmithCritical Essays, pp. 142 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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