Salim Rashid (1990) purports to have established some facts about Adam Smith's scholarship, significant among which are (a) Smith's plagiarism, (b) the poor quality of Smith's arguments or ideas compared with those of his predecessors or contemporaries, and (c) Smith's inconsistent arguments regarding laissez faire. Alas, Rashid's case is faulty, as well as often misleading and vexatious. This ...

This article leverages insights from the body of Adam Smith’s work, including two lesser-known manuscripts—the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Lectures in Jurisprudence—to help answer the question as to how companies should morally prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and stakeholder claims. Smith makes philosophical distinctions between justice and beneficence and perfec...

AdamSmith’s account of themoral sentiments resonateswithmodern themes in evolutionary biology. His distinction between our reasons and the reasons for these reasons recalls the evolutionary biologist’s emphasis on different levels of causal explanation. In this view, the proximate goals of our psychologicalmotivations are different in kind from the ultimate reasons why we have evolved these mot...

In his lectures of 1978–79, published posthumously as The Birth Biopolitics, Michel Foucault addressed versions liberalism in which an invisible market appears immune to government intervention. Among the thinkers discussed were Adam Smith and Ferguson. This essay offers critical reflections on Foucault’s description emphasizing invisibility economy, well interpretation “invisible hand” ascript...