'The Hidden Adam Smith in his Alleged Religiosity'

IMPORTANT NOTICE

ADAM SMITH’S LOST LEGACY HAS BEEN MOVED BY “BLOGGER”, THE HOST SITE, TO A NEW ADDRESS:

www.adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.co.uk

TO FOLLOW ALL 2083 POSTS (AND COUNTNG) FROM HERE TO 2012 AND BEYOND, PLEASE USE THE NEW ADDRESS.

THANK YOU

Gavin Kennedy

My paper: ‘The Hidden Adam Smith in his Alleged Religiosity’, to be presented at the History of Economic Thought, 10th Summer Institute, University of Richmond, Virginia (22 June) and at the Annual Conference of the History of Economics Society, University of Colorado, Denver on 27 June.

It is now available for readers of Lost Legacy (email me for a copy). I expect it will be revised after the presentations – ‘good reason must given way to better’ (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar).

I introduce biographical indicators (which many scholars have ignored) to account for Adam Smith’s strange behaviour in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), in which he deliberately modified, diluted, and in some cases quite brazenly turned away from presenting his alleged theology in a truly Christian or purely Deist manner, particularly in the last 6th edition he edited in 1789/90 and published weeks before he died.

The contrary view to mine (and a few others) that Adam Smith was ‘deeply’ religious and wrote with consistent theological undercurrents, such as offered by Richard Kleer and Lisa Hill: Kleer, (Kleer, R. A. 2000. ‘The role of teleology in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations’, History of Economics Review, 31: 14-29; Hill, L. 2001. "The hidden theology of Adam Smith," European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 8(1): 1-29), is fairly dominant among Smithian scholars at present.

I intend in future to respond directly to these and other authors, but in the meantime I make my case indirectly, such as through the title of my paper which indirectly responds to Lisa Hill’s article.

For a copy, email me at Lost Legacy.