Description: Although Adam Smith is best known as the founder of scientific economics and an early proponent of the modern market economy, political economy is only one part of his comprehensive intellectual system. Consisting of a theory of mind and its functions in language, arts, science and social intercourse, Smith's system was a towering contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment. This Companion provides an up-to-date examination of all aspects of Smith's thought. Collectively, the essays take into account his multiple contexts--Scottish, British, European, Atlantic, biographical, institutional, political and philosophical.
Brief description: Knud Haakonssen is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Sussex. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, he is the author and editor of numerous books and texts, most recently Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment and, with Andrew S. Skinner, Index to the Works of Adam Smith.
Review Quotes: "Historian Haakonssen has assembled arguably the most wide-ranging perspective yet published on the social vision of Adam Smith." -- Choice