Just Sentiments: 22 Smithian Essays

In March 2022, Adam Smith Works, a website of Liberty Fund, launched a new monthly feature called Just Sentiments. Collected here are the 22 essays that appeared during 2022-2023. Most are on the thought of Adam Smith, by scholars who study Smith. Each author draws on his or her own lengthier scholarly works, to offer interpretations that are important, textually grounded, and compactly expressed. The topics are: the polysemy of ’natural;’ natural convention; jurisprudence, honest income, and the Great Enrichment; Smith’s dual moral authorizations; David Hume on English liberty; Smith and Jamesian pragmatism; prudent entrepreneurship; words in and not in Smith’s two masterpieces; the History of Astronomy; polygamy and kin networks; ＂By the Same Author＂; poverty and liberty; moral judgment and governmentalization; the labor theory of value; Parmenides addresses Plato; French liberal economics 1695-1776; virtue and the court of princes; moral innovation and the man within the breast; Smith parries Philo on the problem of evil; Smith’s endorsement of an interest-rate cap; Smith and Confucius; Smith on school funding.