Respectful Disagreements on Smith's use of the IH Metaphor

Nicholas Phillipson, who wrote the justly praised, “Adam Smith: an enlightened life’ (Yale University Press, 2010), writes in The Guardian (UK)
HERE

“Governments are the custodians of Adam Smith's invisible hand”

History thinks of Adam Smith as the economist who thought that whenever a person is able to work in his own way, an invisible hand will ensure that he is quite unintentionally working for the benefit of society at large. "Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it," Smith commented. "By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."

This is voice of a philosopher who thought that the interests of merchants would never be the same as that of the public, and who had no faith whatever in the ability of governments to increase national prosperity by rigging the market. It is the voice of someone who thought that the bedrock of economic life and national prosperity in a commercial economy were workers, productive landowners and small businessmen living and trading in local markets they knew and understood. It is the Smith who thought that all that governments needed to do to promote economic growth was to provide security, easy taxes and open markets "all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things".

… “Whatever his private religious beliefs – and Smith was deeply circumspect on such matters – Smith shared his friend David Hume's view that neither philosophy nor science had provided the slightest reason for believing in the existence of a benevolent deity. What is more, Smith was scrupulous in ensuring that at no point had his philosophy been built on Christian or even, as some have claimed, Stoic, assumptions.

… In fact Smith's invisible hand reached much deeper into the fabric of society than the economy. In Smith's wider philosophy, it is an unspoken metaphor for opening up the history of a species that has had to learn to co-operate and exchange its members' goods, services and sentiments if it is to survive, a species whose members have tried to make their lives more "convenient" whenever they have felt secure enough to do so….

… As Smith told it, it is the story of the making of a sociably self-interested species composed of beings who have quite unintentionally acquired their sense of identity, their understanding of sociability in the struggle for survival and contentment. It is a species that owes its humanity to the invisible hand.”

Comment
I reviewed Nicholas Phillipson’s book when it was published and thoroughly recommended it on Lost Legacy. It gives a deep thinker’s assessment of Adam Smith’s life in the form of an intellectual biography by a scholar, who is thoroughly immersed in Smith’s moral philosophy and his biography.

Nicholas is a moral philosopher, not an economist – his pages on Smith’s political economy are very brief. This explains, perhaps, why he has bought into the modern invention of the myth (also spread by historians of economic thought, hence what follows is my distinctly minority view) of the use by Smith of the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’ in Nicholas’s Guardian piece. However, I know Nicholas is familiar with Smith’s teaching on the role of metaphors in English grammar, in that Smith taught that they describe “in a more striking and interesting manner” their objects and do not have an existence beyond their objects. We know this because that is how Smith described the role of metaphors in his “Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres” [1763] 1963, p 29).

We know that Nicolas is familiar with Smith’s Rhetoric lectures; the book opens with a quotation from Lecture 22 (17 January 1763) on page 1, and refers to the lectures throughout the volume. (Nicholas also refers to Professor Hugh Blair’s follow-on Rhetoric lectures and notes Blair’s acknowledgement of Smith lending to him his Rhetoric Lecture manuscript (Nicholas, p 90), and cites Blair’s own Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 3 vols. 1818, Edinburgh. Blair’s own definition of a ‘metaphor’ is exactly the same as Smith’s, and, incidentally, the same as the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1986. I raise this detail because Nicholas explains the IH metaphor this way:

“It was a response to circumstances with beneficial if unintended consequences for the progress of civilization, behaviour which Smith in one of his more poetical moments would attribute to the workings on the invisible hand’ (p 117)”.

Note how the IH metaphor is promoted by Nicholas from ‘an’ to ‘the’ invisible hand, giving it a definite noun-like and less of a metaphoric quality. Metaphors do not exist separate from the ‘striking and more interesting manner’ by which they describe their object. Similarly with other metaphors Smith used in WN (“Great Wheel of Ciculation’; the ‘Daedalian wings of paper money’; ’a waggon-way through the air”, etc.).

In TMS the IH metaphor refers to the unintentional ‘unfeeling landlords’ being ‘led’ by ‘an invisible hand’ to feed their slaves, retainers, and serfs by absolute necessity – ‘no food, no work is possible’. In Wealth Of Nations the IH metaphor refers to some, but not all, merchants being ‘led by an invisible hand’ to invest ‘domestically rather than abroad by their felt insecurity of investing abroad in foreign countries. Incidentally, a similar insecurity of all domestick merchants led them (also by an invisible hand?) to favour protection, tariffs, and prohibitions against foreign competition, which was contrary to the interests of their consumers, that is not always ‘beneficial’.

Further, the usual quotation is provided in evidence: ‘By providing his own interest he frequently promotes …’etc., while the preceding 8 paragraphs (WN IV.ii.1-9, 452-6) detailing the limited object for the IH metaphor is, as usual, ignored. In fact, Smith’s point was not a general one that ‘an invisible hand’ existed, but a particular point that the insecure ‘domestick merchant’s’ actions add to the annual “revenue and employment of people in his own country”; in short, their insecurity leads them unintentionally to cause a quantitative consequence, because arithmetically the whole is the sum of its parts, which consequence Smith regarded as a public good or benefit.

I am in full agreement with Nicholas that Smith had strong reservations about the role of a “benevolent deity” which I have stated in my paper in the September, 2011 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (JHET, vol. 33, no 3), ‘The Hidden Adam Smith in his Alleged Theology’

I am not sure what Nicholas means by:

“In fact Smith's invisible hand reached much deeper into the fabric of society than the economy. In Smith's wider philosophy, it is an unspoken metaphor”.

Such a general use of the IH metaphor is certainly “unspoken’ and as such it is without content. Metaphors in a text are the author’s choice to use or not and not a reader’s choice to generalise to mean whatever a reader wants them to mean. This fits the modern economists (and modern philosopher’s too) obsession with the IH metaphor to mean a whole range of ideas, concepts, paradigms and theories, not justified by Adam Smith’s use of it.

Of course, modern authors may make the IH metaphor mean whatever they want it to mean, but it is questionable if they can attribute their meanings willy-nilly to Adam Smith who died in 1790, as if he agreed with their modern meanings. This behaviour gives an undue mythical authority and legitimacy to the various fanciful meanings which modern economists, largely in the 20th century, and for purposes alien to Smith’s political economy and his moral philosophy, have given to his limited use to describe in a “more striking and interesting manner” their specific and clearly stated objects.

None of my objections to these aspects of Nicholas Phillipson’s Guardian article, detract from the high quality of his “Adam Smith: an enlightened life” (Yale UP, 2010). I recommend that you read his book and learn much about Adam Smith’s intellectual biography. Just ignore his references to the meaning of Smith’s use of ‘an invisible hand’ (he mentions it only once).

Phillipson's Good Work Continues

Britannica Blog (HERE) contains a most interesting and authoritative, because thoughtful, Q & A with Nicholas Phillipson on Adam Smith:

Rediscovering Adam Smith: 5 Questions for Biographer Nicholas Phillipson

"Britannica: Why do you suppose it is that Adam Smith, though renowned in his day for breadth of scope and moral philosophizing, is today remembered only for ideas such as the invisible hand and the importance of self-interest in the economy?"

"Phillipson: History hasn’t been kind to Smith. Contemporaries knew him for his moral philosophy as well as his political economy, and his Scottish friends knew him for major university courses on jurisprudence and rhetoric which he would have published if time and health hadn’t run out on him. After his death, memory of his lectures faded—and has only recently been revived by the discovery of sets of student notes. His moral philosophy went out of fashion, and Smith became known simply as the author of The Wealth of Nations, a one-book man. Even that became increasingly selectively read by successive generations of economists who were more anxious to distill scientific laws out of his economic principles than to attend to his concerns with the role of governments in managing economies."

"Britannica: What do you regard as Smith’s most important idea—or, perhaps better, the one, to use the overworked term, that remains most relevant to us today?

Phillipson: If Smith’s philosophy is read as a whole and seen as an extraordinary attempt to develop a Science of Man, his most enduring insights are into the business of social exchange. He saw that exchanging goods, services, and sentiments is the activity that shapes and socializes our lives and makes it possible for us to acquire characters and identities. It’s an activity that has profound unintended consequences, too. For the effect of these individual actions will be to shape the customs, conventions, and culture of the societies to which we belong. It’s an idea that involves seeing economic activity as part of a civilizing process, and Smith’s enduring message is that economic life will work for the betterment of society only when citizens and their rulers treat the pursuit of wealth as a means of seeking that feeling of happiness which comes when we feel at ease with society and with ourselves."

Comment
Plus three more questions and answers of similar value (respect for copyright precludes me offering them all.

These exchanges are among the gradual rise in presentations of the authentic Adam Smith that encourages Lost Legacy to keep plugging away at the usual rather sad renditions of Adam Smith's thinking that passes for normal in today's media and economic commentary.

Later today I shall add some comments on a recent professional article on Adam Smith that has been sent to me by its author that makes the effort to be accurate as well as instructive.

The more that the profession takes not of the authentic Adam Smith, the greater the assistance of his ideas to current policy discussions. Recently, the epigones have divided into those recanting their earlier beliefs (not yet realising they were in error to start with) and those brazenly carryon on as if nothing has happened in the real world to their epigonic, not accurate, beliefs about Adam Smith).

So, follow the link and enjoy.

An Indian Review of Nicholas Phillipson's New Book

From The Hindu (India’s National Newspaper), a review of Nicholas Phillipson’s, ‘Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life’ by K. Subramanian (HERE):

“Adam Smith: his life & times”

“Phillipson's account is more about the intellectual evolution and contributions of Smith than about his life per se.

Adam Smith is one of the most celebrated authors in history and, as it emerges from a close study of his writings, the most misunderstood as well. For the defenders of capitalism, he is a messiah. In truth, he had no such pretensions.

There are many who venerate him even after the recent crisis and the near-collapse of global capitalism, and many others who despise him. There are scholarly blogs on Adam Smith's lost legacy. Noam Chomsky described him as “pre-capitalist, a figure of Enlightenment,” and went on to lambast how people read snippets of Adam Smith and the few phrases they teach in schools and don't get the full import of Smith's philosophy.

Indeed, Smith was a creature of his times. More importantly, he was also a contributor to the intellectual fervour of the times. Later historians described the developments in the 18th century as the ‘Age of Enlightenment'. …

… Unfortunately, Smith was a very private or secretive person. He had friends; but hardly communicated with them. He left behind very few letters. He did not marry and the only woman he was close to was his mother. Like Franz Kafka, he wanted all his private papers to be destroyed. While Kafka had in Max Broad a friend who disregarded his wish and got them published posthumously, Smith ensured the destruction of his papers.

Daunting task
Writing the biography of Adam Smith should have, obviously, been quite a daunting task. What Nicholas Phillipson has done is an achievement beyond measure. His bibliography runs to 12 pages covering historical and other biographical accounts. He has also drawn upon the notes of a couple of students to trace the development of Smith's views on many issues. Truly, it is a tour de force. …

… Smith's two books have to be taken together to get the message. It was unfortunate that The Wealth of Nations came to acquire notoriety as a fundamentalist's apologia for capitalism.

These words should chasten the later-day reform zealots. It is to the credit of Phillipson that, in a lucidly written and persuasively argued book, he has restored the real contributions of Adam Smith. The book is a rare academic achievement.”

Comment
While not much may be known about Adam Smith as a private person a great deal is known and knowable about Adam Smith’s contributions to the times he lived in and his relationships with the people in the institutions.

These can be seen in Ian Ross’s excellent biography, ‘The Life of Adam Smith’, 2010, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press.

What Adam Smith did not leave in his own hand for posterity, Ian Ross has detailed in a lucid and most admirable text, which digs a great deal from contemporary records.

I would suggest that Ross adds enormous context to Phillipson’s necessarily shorter and narrower ‘intellectual biography’, including his making excellent use of Smith’s surviving correspondence and the known facts about Smith’s life, which scholars may find missing when deriving a balanced view purely from his ideas.

Overall, the balance from the many reviews of Phillipson – of which I include my own admiration for his achievement, accepting that I was able to add in the relevant background from my readings of Adam Smith’s works, and, I candidly affirm, from my study of Ian Ross’s two editions of his Life of Adam Smith (1995 & 2010) – has been very favourable, as evidenced by the reviews I have quoted on Lost Legacy.

I would not want readers to form the opinion that somehow the biographical details brilliantly covered in Ross are in any way redundant. For these Phillipson is not sufficient; it is, however, necessary.

Nicholas Phillipson in Conversation With Russ Roberts

Russ Roberts of Econtalk hosts a discussion with Phillipson on Adam Smith HERE: -about 70 mins.

“Nicholas Phillipson, author of Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the life of Adam Smith. Drawing on his recent biography of Smith, Phillipson discusses his intellectual roots, his intellectual journey, and what we know of his influences and achievements. Phillipson argues that Smith was shy, ambitious and very well-liked. He highlights the influence of Francis Hutcheson and David Hume on Smith's thinking. Phillipson gives his take on how the ideas of The Theory of Moral Sentiments mesh with The Wealth of Nations and argues that the Theory of Moral Sentiments was a response to Mandeville and Rousseau.”

Comment
Russ Roberts makes comments as Nicholas Phillipson discusses Adam Smith. It is not always clear as to which of them is speaking, especially in references to the metaphor on “an invisible hand” (which has a special, almost messianic, place in Econtalk discourses on Adam Smith). The podcast is still worth listening to or reading in summary. It contains much of interest and relevance to Adam Smith studies.

Listen to Nick Phillipson on Adam Smith on What Human Beings Are Like

Philosophy Bites (HERE) or Spoken Word (HERE) offer podcasts in which Nicholas Phillipson speaks on “Adam Smith's view of human beings are like” - follow the links and then click on the podcast.

“Nick Phillipson on Adam Smith on What Human Beings Are Like”

"Adam Smith, the great thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment, is best known as an economist, and in particular for his idea of the 'invisible hand' which operates to bring about beneficial results that may not have been sought by the people trading. But even his economic thinking is perhaps best understood as part of a broader philosophical project of a science of human beings. Nicholas Phillipson, his acclaimed biographer, discusses Adam Smith's view of human beings in this episode on the Philosophy Bites and Spoken Word podcasts."

My Review of Nicholas Phillipson's "Adam Smith: an Enlightened Life"

Nicholas Phillipson, Adam Smith: an enlightened life, 2010, London: Allan Lane; New Haven: Yale University Press (pp. 346) (ISBN 978-0-300-16927-0)

I first met Nicholas Phillipson in September 2006 at a conference, entitled: ‘Reclaiming Adam Smith’, at Columbia University, New York. It was never made clear just who the organisers were ‘reclaiming Adam Smith’ from, or even ‘why’ it was necessary. Lost Legacy (September 06) carried my reports of the conference and my opinions of various speakers. Here is an extract:

“I would like to comment first on the ‘joint-star’ of the conference (in fact he slightly edges it), Nicholas Phillipson, Emeritus Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh. Until the conference I had not heard of him or his work (though many other attendees did know him, judging by how warmly they greeted him during the intervals). I found his performance outstanding, as he showed everybody how to lecture, and he clearly followed Adam Smith’s advice in ‘Rhetoric and Belles Lettres’: to know his subject (he does), to be perspicuous (he was) and to be enthusiastic (which he is in spades).

[He told me that] that he is writing an intellectual biography of Adam Smith, of which, if his session was but a sample, augurs well for what is coming, to which I certainly await with anticipation of not being other than educated in aspects of Adam Smith, so far untouched by what has been written to date.”

Well, Phillipson’s intellectual biography of Adam Smith is now available. My four-year wait has been worth it, though it actually took years for its gestation. I am not disappointed in any degree; in fact, quite the reverse, for it exceeds all my expectations. Quite frankly it is outstanding and it will be many years before it is superseded.

While it contains some necessary biographical material, it is not comparable, intentionally, to the detail of Ian Simpson Ross’s definitive biography, "The Life of Adam Smith” (2nd edition, 2010: now available from Oxford University Press - which I shall be reviewing shortly on Lost Legacy).

Phillipson’s is an intellectual biography – the history of Smith’s startling ideas – carefully developed over his lifetime and their germination from Smith’s solid grasp of the work of those who preceded him, particularly David Hume, whose ideas he applied and developed, but also ‘the never to be forgotten, Francis Hutcheson, whose ideas he sympathetically critiqued and developed, as well as host of others, including Newton (by analogy), and by critical attention to contemporaries.

It is not just a talented account of Smith’s ideas. Phillipson delves into their development, taking just enough space to keep his theme of their evolution rolling along at a non-exhausting page-turning pace. And in the background, all the time, is the ever-present brave mood of Enlightenment in struggle with the cloying embrace of theological superstition, under the watchful eyes, and lurid imaginations, of the Presbyterian zealots, and to be fair, of the timid and intimidated Presbyterian Moderates who, privately, knew better but remained silent in public (as Smith did, sadly, until the last, sixth edition, of Moral Sentiments a few months before he died in 1790).

Refreshingly, Phillipson, makes full use of all of Smith’s works, published under his direct authorship, Moral Sentiments (1759) and Wealth Of Nations (1776), his posthumous Philosophical Essays (1795), and the detailed near-verbatim notes of his Lectures On Jurisprudence (1762) and Lectures On Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1763), and what remains of Smith’s Correspondence. Phillipson’s mastery of these materials gives the necessary ballast to his account, without weighing the reader down with seemingly endless quotations, because he weaves his judicious selection of illustrative quotations seamlessly into his discourse.

From the beginning at the local Kirkcaldy school, Smith aptitude for the Latin and Greek classics prepared him for the more arduous work he undertook at the Universities of Glasgow (tutored by talented teachers such as Professors Hutcheson on moral philosophy, Simson on mathematics, and Dick on Newtonian physics), and at Oxford (untutored and mainly by self-study), an experience of Oxford which he denounced in Wealth Of Nations thirty years later.

It was at Oxford from around 1744 (when 21 years-old) that he started his ‘intended juvenile essay’ on the History of Astronomy that displayed his budding genius for philosophy, both moral and natural. In the clearest terms, Phillipson places the ideas in this early work on the ‘origins of philosophical thought’ in the ‘psychological need to explain the unexpected, to soothe the imagination and to restore the mind to a state of order and tranquillity’ (provoking James Buchan’s wonderful quip: ‘philosophy as a tranquiliser’).

Smith explained that only when men had some ‘security and leisure to reflect on the world’ could they ‘attend to the train of events which passes around them’. Meanwhile, they would cower in frightful superstition and fear at everything they could not understand, until they could seek ‘the invisible chains which bind together all these disjoined objects’ so as to ‘… render the theatre of nature a more coherent and therefore a more magnificent spectacle’. Knowledge grew slowly and the remnants of ignorance, accompanied by imaginary and invisible polytheistic gods and ‘pusillanimous superstition’ (which persisted unsaid into monotheistic modern times).

Phillipson casts his understanding eye over the milieu within which Smith’s intellectual mind developed throughout the years of the Scottish Enlightenment. He uncovers, from hints and fine deductions, the probable content of Smith’s Edinburgh lectures (1748-51), which I have not seen attempted credibly in other authors. In particular, he gives an account of the role of Smith’s neglected ideas of the Origins of language (1761), which was to be articulated as an Essay attached to ‘Moral Sentiments’ (from the 3rd 1767 edition). This Essay was particularly important, not just for its originality, but as an early indication of his conjectural-historical method that can be seen in all of his works.

Here, I would enter a small quibble in that Phillipson has not reported on the potential suggestions of a common core in all of Smith’s work in ‘Moral Sentiments’, ‘Wealth Of Nations’ and ‘Languages’, as found credibly in James Otteson’s “Adam Smith and the Market Place of Life” (2002): ‘Motivation desire’ (in TMS: ‘pleasure of mutual sympathy’); ‘Rules Developed’ (TMS: ‘standards of moral judgement’); ‘Currency’ (TMS ‘personal sentiments and moral judgments’); and ‘Resultant unintended system of order’ (TMS: ‘Commonly shared standards of morality and moral judgement’), which, incidentally and in addition, can also be applied to Smith’s ‘Astronomy’ and his ‘Jurisprudence’ lectures. (See the 1st hardback edition of my Adam Smith: a moral philosopher and his political economy, 2008, p 43, Palgrave.)

Phillipson suggests there is a common methodology in Smith’s work and I agree, and I think Otteson provides a skeletal outline of that common method, with fruitful research implications.

Phillipson’s discussion of Moral Sentiments is both engaging and thoughtful. I enjoyed it particularly for its perspicuity (as Smith would have expressed it). He covers a lot of ground (we are nearly half-way through Phillipson’s book). I found Phillipson’s account of Smith’s none too obvious philosophical response to Rousseau’s critique insightful, though, as an economist, I consider Smith’s analysis of the historical evolution of post-hunter economies, as outlined in his ‘Lectures On Jurisprudence’ and ‘Wealth Of Nations’, a fuller and more complete answer in respect of the relative conditions, and continuing promises, of European ‘day labourers’ and the African or North American ‘savages’, post-1776.

However, Smith’s moral philosophy is a deeper analysis of real morality – and potential for humanisation - through the device of an ‘imaginary man within the breast’ - the impartial spectator – and more convincing to contemporary readers in and beyond 1759. It made Smith’s reputation in Scotland and England, and to some extent in France.

It was the latter country that entered Smith’s life and exposed him to company of the French Physiocrats around Quesnay and others. Before he met them (1764-6) Smith had developed and finalised many of his early ideas in political economy. His Lectures On Jurisprudence (1762-63) show sections that were to appear in Wealth Of Nations – some verbatim – in 1776 and he delivered detailed elaborations in Book I and II, particularly in regard to the historical significance of the division of labour, the propensity to ‘truck, barter, and exchange’, the crucial influence of the extent of the market, the importance of inter-connected supply chains, market and natural prices, the role of money, foreign trade, monopolies, competition, stock (capital), loan finance, the mercantile errors in their concepts of ‘wealth’, advantages of ‘free commerce’, bargaining, and an historical account of the decline of feudalism.

His contact with the Physiocrats and others did not teach him his economics. He listened, admired their ideas (but not those of ‘laissez-faire’), and severely criticised their major error, as he saw it, of the primacy of agriculture as the sole productive driver of the economy and their outright dismissal of commercial industry as ‘sterile’. As always, Smith remained on good personal terms with Quesnay, Mirabeau and Turgot. He respected them but did not agree totally with their views, as Phillipson shows brilliantly.

One review of Phillipson’s ‘An Enlightened Life’ seemed to complain that his account of the Wealth Of Nations was too short. I did not get that impression when I read it. He had already introduced much of Smith’s political economy before he wrote a separate chapter on Wealth Of Nations, where he concentrated on Smith’s critique of mercantile political economy (‘the very violent attack’).

I do not know what he is alleged to have missed out that fitted the book’s theme. Adding in a detailed discussion of, say, the ‘labour theory of value’ controversy, would not add much. Anyway, the LTV controversy in Wealth Of Nations is much misunderstood by modern economists, from Ricardo onwards, as I have made clear on Lost Legacy and in my books. Phillipson’s account is competent, relevant, and complete. Familiar as I am with the torrid, not to say arid, disputes among economists about almost every idea uttered by any economist before Smith’s time, and since, not to mention what they have done to Smith’s Legacy, I am not surprised that a distinguished historian shied away from ‘kicking over the hornet’s nest’ of what passes for economic theory today.

In discussing the importance to Smith of his last major revision of Moral Sentiments much of what Phillipson says is undoubtedly true and I think he deals well with the arguments of Smith’s critics (for example Thomas Reid). I would add that he 6th edition of TMS (1789-90) was also notably less ‘religious’ in expression and tone than the previous five editions.

I suggest that both old-hands at Smithian studies and new readers of anything from Smith, will gain a great deal of satisfaction from reading Nicholas Phillipson’s considered thoughts on the Works and contributions of Adam Smith to moral philosophy, political economy, and the broader ‘science of man’ that he articulated so consistently throughout his life. It is a remarkable achievement worthy of the attention it has attracted so far, among general readers and the cognoscenti.

Gavin Kennedy

Tyler Cowen's Short and Informative Review of NIchollson's Book on Adam Smith

Tyler Cowen's Review (on Marginal Revolution Blog of Phillipson's Book on Adam Smith.

See the original for the interesting links HERE:

*Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life*

That is the new book by Nicholas Phillipson from Yale University Press. I urge all fans of Adam Smith to read this book. It covers Smith's life and times more than his texts per se. It is especially strong on Smith and Hume, Smith's work as a customs inspector, Smith's time in France, Smith and Quesnay, and Smith's dedication to his mother. I like very much what it covers; my main complaint is that the book is not longer.

Here is a James Buchan review of the book. Here is a John Gray review, more about Gray than the book. Here is further coverage. Here is a short piece by Phillipson. Here is a short bio of Phillipson.

Yet Another Good Review of NIcholas Phillipson's Intellectual Biography of Adam Smith

John Calder writes a book review in the Islington Tribune of Nicholas Phillipson’s, “Adam Smith: an enlightened life” (Allen Lane, London HERE:

“ADAM Smith is one of the most iconic names in history since medieval times, together with Darwin, Marx and Freud, even more so than his close friend and colleague David Hume….

… To modify this view, he described “an invisible hand” that brought out an element of compassion or altruism that he assumed was buried somewhere in the human character that made us want to improve the ­general wellbeing.
Smith’s theories of the wealth-creating advantages of breaking up labour into separate or specialise units (the principle of mass production as well as skilled craftsmanship) lie at the basis of capitalism and free trade. It seems likely that Smith never fully realised the miserable consequences of a capitalist manufacturing industry that forced a peasant population off the land into factories where they were paid starvation wages to create a new affluent middle class and to kill the cottage industries on which so many had subsisted.

…Smith stated: “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the ­security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

“Dr Phillipson’s book is unlikely to be bettered. It catches not just Smith’s life and ideas, but the background of the Scottish Enlightenment, on which he has already written, too little acknowledged in British history as a result of the Union of the crowns, to which Smith nevertheless gives credit for a temporary trade prosperity, often used as an example to justify his theories.”

Comment
A thoughtful review of Nicholas Phillipson’s excellent intellectual biography of Adam Smith by a former(?) British publisher, who did much to produce books of high quality in his own quest for widespread enlightenment in the mid-to-late 20th century.

My comments should be taken in the light of my appreciation of most of John Calder’s review.

Smith did not foresee ‘capitalism’ (the word was not invented in English until Thackeray’s novel, The Newcomes, in 1854 - Smith died in 1790). He was well aware of the condition of the very poor in Scottish society in the last half of the 18th century. Living in rural Scotland from 1723-37, he could not but see how they lived, though his mother’s family were major landowners in Fife. The notion of some kind of ‘peasants’ idyll (Maypoles, etc.,), either in rural Scotland or England (or Wales and Ireland) is suspect.

Landless peasants were very poor by 18thcentury standards, and drifting to the towns and cities for work was often better than actual starvation on the land.

The city-dwelling poor of Glasgow (1737-40; 1751-64; Edinburgh (and 1778-90) walked in the same streets, and sometimes lived in the same buildings (Edinburgh High Street) as the professional and business leaders (at least until they made their fortunes). The fact remains (contrary to Marxian imagery) that real incomes across the board rose steadily in the 19th century (as they are for ex-peasants in India and China today).

Smith’s awareness of the condition of the poor majority appears throughout his works and he saw commercial society and the division of labour as a means to which opulence would spread to wider sections of the people. There were no other realistic alternatives available. Hence, his fierce (even ‘violent’) attack on the British mercantile system which slowed down the benefits of commercial society, particularly for the poor.

‘he described “an invisible hand” that brought out an element of compassion or altruism that he assumed was buried somewhere in the human character that made us want to improve the ­general wellbeing.

The metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’ as Smith used it did not bring out ‘compassion or altruism’; it was a metaphor he used in Moral Sentiments (1759) for ‘proud and unfeeling’ landlords having no choice but to feed their retainers and peasants, albeit at subsistence levels, to ensure each season’s crops, upon which their ’greatness’ depended (without a ‘thought for the wants of their brethren’), and in the case of merchants in Wealth Of Nations (1776), the metaphor was about those who considered foreign trade too risky, who chose to invest in the home and not foreign markets, which had nothing to do with their ‘compassion or altruism’. Their individual motive of risk-aversion (as we would say today) led them unintentionally to add to national ‘revenue and employment’, the latter of which benefitted the poor and the former of which benefitted themselves.

I completely agree with John Calder that “Dr Phillipson’s book is unlikely to be bettered”, my quibbles notwithstanding.

After Nicholas Phillipson' New Book, No Excuse For Ignorance of Adam Smith's Legacy

Bill Dunlop reviews a talk by Nicholas Phillipson given at the Edinburgh International Festival on 19 August HERE

'A New Look At The Ideas Of The Founder Of Modern Economics’

"The Wealth of Nations" has never been out of publication since it first appeared some two hundred and thirty years ago… Phillipson points out that until early in the previous century, Smith’s work was not regarded as a defence of capitalism, far less as a tract for libertarianism…

… He explains commerce as an extension of language, created to facilitate exchange between strangers, and thus part of the foundation of trust enabling the "good society" to progress. Smith’s humans are frail animals, subject to the savage natural world around them, compelled to co-operation for survival and thereby to association with and trust of their fellows…

The discovery of extensive notes from Smith’s University of Glasgow lectures on Rhetoric and Jurisprudence offer a glimpse of Smith not only as teacher but as thinking through other aspects of his theory which have not survived in other forms.

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that the phrase "the invisible hand", beloved of free-market economists, appears but three times in Smith’s work; as a close friend of the intellectually rigourous atheist David Hume, Smith’s own views were likely similar, but living with his mother in douce Kirkcaldy whilst writing The Wealth of Nations, he may well have felt a need to appear to conform to something close to conventional piety.’

Comment
Follow the link.

Bill Dunlop's review is remarkably clear at explaining key point about Adam Smith's works and this is a credit to the Book Festival's organisers' choice of reviewer - no mere hack could produce such an erudite understanding of Nicholson Phillipson's purpose.

'Tis a pity, as David Hume would have put it, that so many modern economists, tenured, well-paid and highly regarded by their peers, have not taken the trouble to read Adam Smith and learn something about what he actually wrote and its context.

Now that Nicholas Phillipson's book, Adam Smith: an enlightened life (Allen Lane, London) is available they will have no excuse for their various atrocities to Adam Smith's legacy.

An Interview with Nicholas Phillipson

Nicholas Phillipson Interviewed in Edinburgh Festivals (The Scotsman) HERE:

"Interview By Susan Mansfield
: Nicholas Phillipson - 'This is Adam Smith as mountain gorilla"

Nicholas Phillipson took the David Attenborough approach to his biography of the great Scottish economist, he tells Susan Mansfield

'IF I were to travel back 210 years, from the spot where I'm sitting now in The Scotsman's Holyrood offices, I might be able to make out plumes of smoke from a bonfire rising above Edinburgh's Canongate. At his home in Panmure House, Adam Smith is dying, and at his behest his papers are going up in smoke.

Correspondence, lectures notes, chapters from unfinished books - historians today can only speculate at all which was carried away on the wind that day in 1790. "But Smith does things right," says Dr Nicholas Phillipson, whose new biography has just been published. "So he did his bonfire right. It all went up. We have the account of his executors who had to do it."

It does mean that anyone undertaking a biography of Smith has rather less to go on than for many of the other great figures of the Enlightenment. The author of The Wealth of Nations, the man described as the father of modern economics, was determined that his legacy would live on only in his published works.

"What makes the thing even worse is that Smith was a lousy letter writer," Phillipson continues. "Take any of the great 18th-century letter writers - David Hume, James Boswell, Rousseau - these are people who are writing letters the whole time, as much as we write e-mails, they're chattering to each other in letters. Someone tried to collect Smith's letters; it's not a very fat volume - you find friends ticking him off for not answering letters."

So Phillipson, who is an honorary research fellow at the University of Edinburgh and a leading Enlightenment scholar, knew that a different approach would be required. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life is the product of years of research, telling the story of Smith's intellectual formation, the various forces which shaped the mind of the studious boy from Kirkcaldy into one of the great thinkers of his day.

"I'm not an economist and I'm not a philosopher, I'm an observer," Phillipson says. "What I want to do is to watch Smith at work. When I look at what philosophers do, I see myself as David Attenborough pursuing a rare species of mountain gorilla. It's enormous fun just going into the jungle and watching what these extraordinary creatures do and how they behave, and to do it in the knowledge that it's inherently fascinating and not altogether incomprehensible. This is Smith as mountain gorilla."

He deliberately decided to study Smith's intellectual life without making the assumption that everything he did led up to the writing of what is now regarded as his masterwork, The Wealth of Nations. "I don't want to make any ex-historical judgments about which is the most important [of his works]. At the very end of his life, Smith said that he actually preferred [his earlier book on ethics] The Theory of Moral Sentiments."

Comment
That is just a taster from a relatively long and insightful report of an interview with Nicholas Phillipson, author of the new intellectual biography of Adam Smith from Allen Lane, London: Adam Smith:An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson is published by Allen Lane, London.

Follow the link and find out more, both of Adam Smith and Nicolas Phillipson. It's a good read.

Yet Another Good Review of Nicholas Phillipson's Enlightened Life of Adam Smith

Adam Smith: an Enlightened Life By Nicholas Phillipson (Allen Lane, London). Reviewed by Diane Coyle (New Statesman, 16 August) HERE:

'The myth of Adam Smith is that he was the hard-nosed high priest of self-interested capitalism. A new biography shows that his intellectual goals were far greater and nobler.

Adam Smith's best-known book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, still exerts an extraordinary influence, well over 200 years after it was first published in 1776. Many people know some of the book's most celebrated passages; a few even still read it. It is acknowledged as one of the founding texts of economics, and widely believed to be an apologia for unrestricted free markets. This belief dates from the enthusiastic adoption of Smith by free-market politicians and economists a generation ago. In this new biography, Nicholas Phillipson reclaims the author from that ideological fringe. He gives us the rounded man in place of the caricature.

… In setting out the scope of his subject's intellectual goals, Phillipson has portrayed an Adam Smith for our times. Perhaps every generation gets the Smith it is looking for. We are certainly living in an era when the idea that self-interest is a principle sufficient for a well-ordered society and economy has lost the appeal it once had. But more than that, this new biography reminds us that the goal of constructing a Science of Man was a driving force of the epoch of discovery in the 18th century. Men like Smith and Hume did not regard the study of human visual perception, say, as a field of endeavour separate from and unrelated to the study of the division of labour. Today, there is once again convergence between the academic disciplines as we learn about the evolutionary roots of patterns of human thought and behaviour. (I am sure that Smith, were he alive today, would have been enthralled by these discoveries - he would likely be an avid participant in TED­Global conferences.)

For all its . . . daring, his philosophy is the work of a modest man who set out to reflect on a simple, apparently unremarkable characteristic of human nature: our desire, when all things are equal, to improve our own lot, that of our families and that of the civil society to which we belong. It was a disposition the day labourer shared with the aristocrat, the young person making his or her way in the world with the sage and elder statesman.

Human nature hasn't changed; Smith's question is still the one to answer.'

Comment
Diane Coyle’s review is both sympathetic to Phillipson’s project and in my view a fair representation of Adam Smith’s life’s work. I cannot say the same for two commentators.

‘Tim’ writes: ‘Smiths' explanation of markets reaching equilibrium due to the "invisiable hand" is a a fallacy. Markets do not always reach equilibrirum and the failure of economist to challenge this rather than accept equilibrium theory as a given shows a lack on itntellectual rigour’.

That the invisible hand metaphor has become a myth since the 50s (Samuelson) does not discredit Adam Smith: he never wrote anything about the invisible hand in relation to markets, nor did he write about equilibrium in markets. For Smith they were always in flux.

‘William’ takes the biscuit: ‘he (Smith) never examined the world’.

This a preposterous nonsense. His ‘world’ took him from Greco-Roman times back and forwards to 18th-century Europe, India, China, South-central-and North America. His use of data is tiring (not missing) and his examples multiple which one reason for the book being so long and so off putting to modern readers as poorly informed about history as they are of the contents of Wealth Of Nations.

Best Review of Nicholas Phillipson's 'Adam Smith: an enlightened life.'

James Buchan writes, what I regard as the best and most authoritative review, so far, of Nicholas Phillipson’s, Adam Smith: an enlightened life, Allen Lane, London in The Guardian, 14 August, HERE.

James Buchan is himself a worthy biographer of Adam Smith (Profile Books) and has written on 18th-century Edinburgh in the Enlightenment generation (Capital of the Mind Birlinn, Edinburgh).

In The Guardan review he writes (my comments are in square [ ] brackets).

‘Smith destroyed many of his unpublished manuscripts, leaving posterity a few ravishing fragments, a couple of hundred letters and two highly finished essays in philosophy, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).’

[He also left a short (70-pages] essay, known as the History of Astronomy (written 1740-50s; published posthumously, 1795), the first part of which is an insightful demolition of the ‘pusillanimous superstition’ of pagan and heathen religion, also lightly hinting at the inadequacies of the ‘revealed religion’ that raplaced them.]

Dugald Stewart's eulogy, delivered to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the winter of 1793, supplied most of what little there was to know of Smith's life, and was supplemented by anecdotes in John Rae's Victorian biography in 1895. That year, a set of lecture notes from Smith's jurisprudence course at Glasgow turned up in Edinburgh and began to transform our notion of the man. The "Scottish Enlightenment" was invented. Scott (1937), Ross (1995) and now Phillipson present Smith as the model intellect of the 18th century, in which thought itself changes direction and modernity begins to take form.

Far from being the unworldly fellow of Stewart or an economist avant la lettre, this new Smith passed a long life wrestling with a stupendous theory of everything. Phillipson calls this project nothing less than a "Science of Man", in which introspection in the manner pioneered by David Hume and a profound study of ancient and modern history would lay bare the principles of social organisation, the well-springs of the arts and sciences, and the ideal government and code of laws. Such an enterprise, wildly ambitious even in antiquity, was in the much broader circumstances of the 18th century utterly doomed, and Smith died in 1790 in a dejection bordering on despondency. According to one of his last visitors, "I meant (said he) to have done more."

[Yes, but, the significance of his seeking to be appointed a Scottish Commissioner of Customs in 1778, and then not treating it as a sinecure, is missed by Buchan and all other biographers, when the Customs House records show that Smith diligently attended 4-days a week, and signed the majority of its correspondence and minutes. The purpose: to avoid completing his third book on Jurisprudence, which would have to address the phenomenon of the United States Constitution with all of its uncomfortable (for Smith) implications as a critique of Britain’s constitutional monarchy.]

‘Phillipson … brings a great knowledge of the industrial and commercial processes transforming Scotland after the 1730s, and a sensitivity to the currents of religion in Scotland and philosophy in Britain and France.’

‘… Phillipson's chronology [reduces] the juvenile the influence of both Presbyterianism and the classical authors. For Phillipson, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a response to the cult of savagery in Rousseau (who is not mentioned in it) rather than the stoicism of Cicero and Epictetus (who are, often).

In Phillipson's reading, the theory is not so much an ethics as a theory of polite sociability, contra Rousseau and also Hobbes, and per Hume, in which imagination plays the starring ethical role. Through the exercise of imaginative sympathy, we form notions of justice, morality, beauty, taste, good manners and order and also, this being the 18th century, subordination. This "natural" sociability also – and this is the hinge of Phillipson's argument – justifies the new world of luxury and commerce opening to Scottish 18th-century view.’

‘There follows a master stroke. Phillipson argues that, having established sociability in The Theory, Smith had no need to take commercial society back to its root in The Wealth of Nations, but could content himself with a sort of shorthand (the non-benevolent butcher, brewer and baker; truck, barter and exchange one thing for another; invisible hand). Alas, the economists took these rather vulgar aphorisms as the foundation of their science and ignored those parts of Smith's system that concerned humanity's sociable, moral, intellectual and aesthetic nature.’

‘Here is the problem. The transformation in Smith's biography since the discovery of the first jurisprudence lectures in 1895 has had no influence at all on the theory and practice of economics. Economists reject biography, as they reject history. Yet having failed so royally to predict or ameliorate our present distress, some economists may come to examine their assumptions and be drawn to this fine book and its mighty subject.’

[This last paragraph is absolutely beautiful as an expression of what modern economists from the 1940s (Samuelson, et al) have done to Adam Smith’s legacy.

One, they never understood it (most probably never read it), and two, they invented a wholly false version of it to suit, early public concerns of the vulgar critique of capitalist economics and institutions, as represented by Stalin’s Marxian socialism, and then to regularize their claimed legitimacy for their influence on economics and academe and their concomitant access to public fame and private incomes.]

Follow the link to The Guardian to read Buchan's review in full.

Another Review of Phillipson's New Book on Adam Smith

Another review of Nicholas Phillipson's excellent Adam Smith: an enlightened life (Allan Lane) on Blomberg, HERE. This one is written by James Pressley.

The review is supportive of the qualities of Nicholas Phillipson’s new book, as I believe it should be.

However, it is always difficult to review a reviewer’s interpretation of an author’s work, particularly when the reviewer reports some things that do not quite fit with known facts about the subject.

For instance James Pressley asserts that ‘Only 193 of Smith’s letters have survived’, which rings false when Adam Smith’s Correspondence (1977; Oxford University Press) published 323 letters from and to Adam Smith, from 1740 - 1790.

Moreover, some new letters have been obtained and are to be published in the forthcoming new edition of definitive biography of Smith by Ian S. Ross: The Life of Adam Smith, 2nd ed. 2010, Oxford University Press. There are, of course, also letters from Adam Smith in his official capacities of Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University (1752-64) and scores more from his Commissioner’s work at the Customs House in Edinburgh, 1778-90.

James Pressley, the reviewer and journalist, cannot resist the temptation to appear ‘with it’ (as we used to say in 1960s) by quipping that the alleged paucity of letters to and from Smith was:

‘a vanishing act befitting the man who described how “an invisible hand” guides the economy.’

The problem with this attempt to be ‘with it’ is that Smith never described ‘how “an invisible hand” guides the economy’.

The notion that he did has nothing to do with anything that Adam Smith wrote about the economy. The notion that he did was ‘invented’ in the 20th century by modern economists seeking to differentiate the capitalist economy from the Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

James Pressley adds to his offence to Adam Smith’s legacy with the classic modern myth by asserting that:

‘And so it is that every individual pursuing his own gain is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention,” as Smith later wrote in “The Wealth of Nations.”’

We can trace the origins of this particular myth to Paul Samuelson on page 36 in his otherwise excellent textbook, Economics: an introductory analysis, 1948, McGrawHill. It certainly will not be found in anything Smith wrote.

Smith referred to the consequences of an individual trader, who for his own security, invested locally rather than abroad, who thereby added to national output and employment, which was a pubic benefit (and major consideration from Smith).

Smith used the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’ to describe the less obvious consequence of a merchant’s insecurity, which is precisely what a metaphor is supposed to do, namely, as Adam Smith expressed it in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1762, November 29) from giving ‘due strength of expression to the object to be described and at the same time does this in a more striking and interesting manner’ (p 29).

In short, 'an invisible hand' was Smith's metaphor, not a theory, principle, nor paradigm.

Lastly, I think James Pressley, in repeating an oft stated observation of the actual coincidence of the publication of Wealth Of Nations and the rebellion of the British colonies in North America, misses the point and the facts:

'He wrote amid the Tea Act, the Boston Tea Party and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. It’s no coincidence that it was published in 1776.’

Smith’s manuscript of Wealth Of Nations was written from 1764 to 1773 and was ready for publication in 1773, but it was delayed until 1776 by Smith’s active involvement in trying to influence British policy (he was in London from 1771-76) on the rebellion, largely in broad but not uncritical sympathy with the British colonists.

Smith did not add much to the final text of Wealth Of Nations. His intervention came too late to change British policy. But the publication and the rebellion were a coincidence, nothing more.

Many potential purchasers of Phillip Nicholson’s book read Bloomberg and I hope many will buy it; my quibbles with its reviewer, James Pressley, notwithstanding.

Another Endorsement of New Book on Adam Smith

Another great review (‘Making Adam Smith’( in The Economst) of Nicholas Phillipson’s new book on Adam Smith HERE:
http://www.economist.com/node/16740415?story_id=16740415&fsrc=rss

Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. By Nicholas Phillipson. Yale University Press; 368 pages

‘ADAM SMITH has inspired some fierce books in recent years: books that seek to rescue him from the economists, or indeed, to rescue economics from him. Nicholas Phillipson’s diligent biography is a quieter work of scholarship, ignoring Smith’s disciples and critics to reclaim him for the historians. Mr Phillipson is more interested in documenting Smith’s influences than in exploring his influence. He traces the ancestors of Smith’s ideas, but largely ignores their many offspring, legitimate and illegitimate.

This intellectual story is nonetheless lively. It is like the tale of a sporting hero who springs from relative obscurity to triumph over a string of worthy opponents, often by assimilating their techniques. Smith’s early patron was Henry Home, a philosopher and lawyer who sponsored the Edinburgh lectures that launched Smith’s career in 1748 when he was just 25. His great sparring partner was his friend and fellow Scot, David Hume, who taught Smith many of his best punches. Most of Smith’s opponents were French or French-speaking, including the philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac and the Baron de Montesquieu.

Smith’s first book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, “turned the tables” on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that society enslaved man to vanity and ambition. Smith argued, instead, that society taught man to be good. This tuition started from man’s capacity for “sympathy”: his ability to feel what another man feels. It continued with his capacity for sympathy squared: his ability to sense what other men feel about him, putting himself in the shoes of other men putting themselves in his shoes. The moral education was complete when a person chose the perfect shoes in which to put himself: those of an “impartial Spectator”, who “considers our conduct with the same indifference with which we regard that of other people”.

Comment
This is a significant endorsement of Nicholas Phillipson’s intellectual biography of Adam Smith. It is receiving the positive attention that I have expected since I heard about what Phillipson told me about it some years ago.

Two Reviews of Nicholas Phillipson's New book on Adam Smith

Two reviews (so far) of Scottish historian, Nicholas Phillipson’s, new book, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, (Allen Lane, London, 368 pages), described best as an intellectual biography, which I have been waiting for these past five years, since he first told me about what he was doing when I met him in Colombia University, New York in 2005 (though we both live in Edinburgh).

At that initial meeting, I spoke to him after had delivered a short talk on Adam Smith that was far and above one of the better lectures at what was, for me, a disappointing conference on Adam Smith (I disagreed with most of the papers – but with outstanding papers from Samuel Fleischcker, Emma Rothschild, and Ivan Hont.

Nicholas told me he was writing an intellectual biography – ‘his ideas not his life’ - and now it is out five years later. My copy should be waiting for me in Edinburgh for when I return in September.

So far, I have read two reviews, both good for Nicholas, as I would expect. I have a couple of comments on the reviews.

The first, by Noel Malcolm in the Daily Telegraph (1August), includes this passage:

‘But the Duke’s patronage then became counterproductive. Buccleuch wangled for him the well-paid post of Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh, and the burdens of this office absorbed most of Smith’s energies until his death; several further treatises (on literature, on the 'imitative arts’, and on law and government) remained unwritten.’

This seems to suggest that the Duke of Buccleuch somehow imposed on Adam Smith a post he did not seek, which is not supported by Smith’s correspondence (Adam Smith’s Correspondence, Oxford University Press, 1983).

From this we see that Smith was approached by two persons seeking his interest in support for their applications for the vacant post of Scottish Commissioner of Customs, to which he obliged by letters to Sir Grey Cooper. However, he announced that he too was a candidate himself as early as 27 October, 1777. He asked William Strahan (MP and his publisher) to seek out ‘intelligence’ on his chances of success.

He was told my Alexander Wedderburn (MP; 30 October, 1777; p. 226-27) that neither of the two men he had ‘warmly recommended’ would be appointed. Wedderburn also reported that the Duchess of Buccleuch was active is promoting Smith as a candidate and she had passed to him a note of Smith’s interest in the post, which Wedderburn passed immediately to Lord North (Chancellor of the Exchequer, and later Prime Minister) which had ‘its full effect’.

Most interestingly, Sir Grey Cooper, MP, Secretary to the Treasury, wrote to Smith on 7 November, a coded letter, effectively, telling Smith that he would be successful in his application, talking of him in the third person that:

‘His merit is so well known to Lord North and to all the world, that (Alas what a Bathos) He will very soon, if I am not much mistaken, be appointed a Commissioner of the Customs in Scotland.’ (p. 228).

Smith’s post, and his overly assiduous attention to his Commissioner’s duties, saved him to embarrassment of fulfilling his long-standing promise (from 1759) to write on the laws and constitution ought to govern every country. This would have required detailing (sympathetically) with the government of the former colonies in North America, which could not help but be seen as critical of the British constitutional monarchy. Smith avoided that conundrum (he respected the Sovereign’s role) by working four-days a week at the Customs house up to just before he died in 1790 (see ‘Why Smith did not complete his third book’ in my, Adam Smith: a moral philosopher and his political economy, 2008, 1st edition, pp 92-97).

Ian Maclean’s review (2nd August, Financial Times) is excellent as is to be expected by Professor of Politics at Oxford University, and the author of ‘Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian’ (Edinburgh University Press). However, his reviewer writes:

‘[Smith] comes to life only at a few dramatic moments, especially in 1776. In that year Hume died. Smith’s brave eulogy showed that an atheist could live and die as nobly as a Christian.

But, less bravely, Smith refused to publish his friend’s Dialogues on Natural Religion, in spite of Hume’s deathbed request.
Why did the author of TheTheory of Moral Sentiments, which derives its morality from what would seem right to an impartial spectator, refuse his best friend’s deathbed request? If it was cowardice, it was an odd cowardice, because Smith’s eulogy to Hume got him into serious trouble from Christians; whereas the dialogues, when finally published by Hume’s nephew, caused none.’

Comment
This was a curious incident. That much I can agree with the reviewer. However, I am not so sure that his account is the whole story. Set aside for a moment the morality of the incident. Add in the other concerns of Smith.

His Wealth Of Nations had just been published and he was known to be sensitive to the reaction of the protestant presbyteries on Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Glasgow Presbytery had charged three of the University’s Professor’s of Moral Philosophy with ‘heresy’, all three of them long-standing Christian members and doctors of divinity, (Simmons, 1729, Hutcheson, 1737; and Leechman, 1746).

I think the main problem is that modern commentators and reviewers sometimes write as if they have no idea of the religious tyranny of the Church in Smith’s day (Maclean would know better). Zealots abounded and hounded those they perceived to be wayward in behaviour and speech.

Adam Smith was very wary of the zealots. For my account, see my: The Hidden Adam Smith in His Alleged Theology (forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought). He had just published Wealth of Nations (March) and did not want to damage sales (or his influence). He was also worried about the impact of Hume’s Dialogues on sales of Hume’s new History volume was at the printers (he advised Strahan to publish Hume’s History first before the Dialogues to protect sales of the former (Smith to Strahan 5 Sept and 16 Sept, 1776).

This was not ‘cowardice’; it was ‘prudence’.

Also, Smith’s mother was a devoted Christian; Smith wasn’t, and publication associated with controversy risked upsetting her. After she died in 1784, Smith made many changes to the 6th edition of Moral Sentiments (1789-90) which were all in one direction only; they diluted or excised many of the overly Christian theological tones of the earlier editions, all published while she was alive.

Some letters and pamphlets were published after his remarks on Hume were published, but he was not persecuted further. His friends, including prominent Christians (Dr Robertson, Moderator of the Church of Scotland and Principal of Edinburgh University, and n intimate friend both Hume and Smith) stood by him. The Rev. George Horn, principal of Oxford University and Bishop of Norwich, wrote a pamphlet exorcising Smith, but today it reads as written by a fool.

Of course, no author is responsible for his or her reviewers.

I think, on the whole Nicholas Phillipson will be happy with his reviewers. I expect many more reviews will appear around the world and Nicholas’s book on Adam Smith will achieve what it deserves in multiple citations among Smithian scholars for years to come.

PS: I last met Nicholas Phillipson at a conference in Glasgow University, in 2009, commemorating Smith’s Moral Sentiments (1759), and spent some time in his company discussing Adam Smith. I found much to concur with in his thinking. I expect to enjoy his new book, and I shall review it here in due course.