Adam Smith

About this figure

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and economist and one of the central figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. Born in Kirkcaldy and educated at the University of Glasgow and later at Oxford, he returned to Glasgow in 1751 to teach, first logic and then, from 1752, moral philosophy, a post he held for over a decade. His lectures there formed the basis of his first major book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759), which argued that moral judgment arises not from abstract reasoning alone but from sympathy, the capacity to imaginatively place oneself in another's position and judge conduct by whether an impartial observer would approve of it.

The book won him wide recognition and led to an appointment as tutor to a young Scottish duke, in whose service Smith traveled through France and Switzerland and met leading figures of the French Enlightenment, including the Physiocrat economists whose ideas about agricultural production and free trade influenced his own thinking. Settling afterward in Kirkcaldy, Smith spent much of the next decade working on his second and far more influential book, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," published in 1776. In it, he analyzed the division of labor, the origins of money and prices, and the workings of markets, arguing that individuals pursuing their own economic self-interest, when operating within a system of open competition, tend to promote the general prosperity of society more effectively than deliberate central planning, an outcome he famously likened to the operation of an "invisible hand." The book also mounted a sustained critique of mercantilist trade restrictions and of monopolies and guild privileges that limited competition. "The Wealth of Nations" became the foundational text of classical economics and shaped debates over trade and government policy for generations afterward. In his later years, Smith served as a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh, a post that gave him a practical, close-up view of the trade regulations he had spent years analyzing, until his death in 1790.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.