Editor’s note: In 1776, Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the book that laid the foundations of economics as a science. Two hundred and fifty years later, Smith remains one of the most quoted thinkers in the world, and, as Amartya Sen once suggested, one of the least read. To mark the anniversary, Daily27 revisits Lidia Bordanoba’s article, which invites us to read Smith “with the book in hand” and to rediscover, alongside The Wealth of Nations, the moral philosopher of The Theory of Moral Sentiments: a far more human thinker than the caricature of the “invisible hand”.
Adam Smith and His Impostors
By Lidia Bordanoba · October 8, 2024
Drawing on a seminar at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans devoted to reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Bordanoba argues that many of those who invoke Smith as the “father of capitalism” know him only second-hand, and that reading his work reveals a thinker concerned with prosperity and people’s well-being.
Adjunct Professor in Sociology at the University of Barcelona