Table of Contents

Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Needs and justice in the Wealth of Nations: an introductory essay Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff; 2. Where had the Scottish economy got to by the third quarter of the eighteenth century? T. C. Smout; 3. Gershom Carmichael and the natural jurisprudence tradition in eighteenth-century Scotland James Moore and Michael Silverthorne; 4. The Scottish professoriate and the polite academy, 1720–46 Peter Jones; 5. From applied theology to social analysis: the break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment John Dunn; 6. The Scottish Enlightenment at the limits of the civic tradition John Robertson; 7. Adam Smith as civic moralist Nicholas Phillipson; 8. The legal needs of a commercial society: the jurisprudence of Lord Kames David Lieberman; 9. Cambridge paradigms and Scotch philosophers: a study of the relations between the civic humanist and the civil jurisprudential interpretation of eighteenth-century social thought J. G. A. Pocock; 10. Adam Smith's 'enduring particular result': a political and cosmopolitan perspective Donald Winch; 11. The 'rich country-poor country' debate in Scottish classical political economy Istvan Hont; 12. John Millar and individualism Michael Ignatieff; 13. Scottish echoes in eighteenth-century Italy Franco Venturi; Index.

Promotional Information

A reassessment of the Scottish Enlightenment's remarkable contribution to modern economics and theories of capitalism.

Reviews

'All the essays in Wealth and Virtue touch on issues of central significance in understanding why some of the most profound eighteenth-century thinkers felt that greater freedom in the pursuit of commerce and profit would provide a secure foundation for the stability, prosperity and peace of mankind.' Eighteenth-Century Studies

' … a significant contribution to our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment.' Economic Journal

'All thirteen essays combine to make this volume an important study which will repay close reading.' Economic History Review

'This collection of thirteen essays is undoubtedly the high point, for the time being, in the revival of the study of the Scottish Enlightenment during the last fifteen years or so.' International Review of Social History

'The focus is Scotland, but the perspectives are wide, a strong Cambridge awareness from contemporary historical practice, but also a healthy willingness to question the received Scottish view, and to add to that view an English, a North-American, and in one valuable essay an Italian view.' Books in Scotland

' … it is clear that the provocative, erudite essays in Wealth and Virtue deserve to become the new point of departure for anyone seeking to understand eighteenth-century Scottish political economy within the philosophical context from which it sprang.' Philosophical Books