Adam Smith infused the expression “impartial spectator” with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which normally would aptly take the definite article the, and which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator of an...

These brief, casual remarks were delivered at an event to discuss Russell Roberts’s book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. I provide nine quotations from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, each quotation stating a source of vice, disorder, and corruption in human life. Smith...

This piece is a review of Dennis C. Rasmussen's book, The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Response to Rousseau (2008). The book superbly explains Rousseau's criticisms of commercial society and Smith's concern with and response to those criticisms. Rasmussen helps us...

Martin Pánek asked me to write a Foreword to a new edition of a Czech translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He gave me permission to post my original English-language text here. The book will be published by the Liberální Institut, edited by Pavel Chalupníček,...

In academia most economists practice technical crafts. Academic incentives strongly favor such crafts, and economists pursue academic rewards, perhaps with a faith in the applicability of "the invisible hand" to their own "industry." But the crafts are mostly irrelevant to policy issues and...