A Blogger Re-reads Adam Smith's Definitive Biography

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Gavin Kennedy

Kenneth Anderson writes the Volokh Consipiracy Blog HERE and posts:

“Mallaby on Soros and the Pound, and Some Other Summer Reading in Philosophy and Economics"

“The latter goes to my scholarly interest in what I have called the “moral psychology of finance,” and somtimes called “virtue economics” — not in the sense of distributional justice in the economy, but instead the Aristotlean sense of “virtue ethics” and its intersection among practical reason, attitudes and rationality, and affective behavior and rational choice. I am slowly re-reading Theory of Moral Sentiments, alongside Ian Simpson Ross’s exemplary Life of Adam Smith, a book I read with insufficient attention when it first appeared, but which I am re-reading with a great deal of care.”

Comment
A good sign from Blogland.

The more that those interested in modern economics read about figures, like Adam Smith, from impeccable sources, such as Ian Simpson Ross’s excellent and, in my view definitive, biography of Adam Smith, the more likely we are going to see a re-appraisal of historical figures who have been captured by people with modern perspectives rather than what they actually wrote and contributed.

Note: A new, second edition of Ian Ross’s Life of Adam Smith, is due from Oxford University Press soon.

Last year, when he visited Edinburgh and I showed him round, and the plans for the sympathetic renovation of, Panmure House in Edinburgh, where Adam Smith lived from 1778-90, he told me that his new edition was about to be sent to the publishers.

I await an opportunity to re-read the book and catch-up with his latest thoughts.