Historian Nicholas Phillipson captures Adam Smith’s ideas in a portrait of the man and his times
A few weeks ago I paid a maiden visit to Edinburgh and spent some very enjoyable days at the renowned annual Festival. I had the chance to pass by Adam Smith’s grave at Canongate churchyard and admire his imposing statue outside St Giles Kirk (they call churches “kirks” in Scotland) in the Royal Mile. So when I was invited to review Nicholas Phillipson’s new biography of Adam Smith, I gladly accepted the opportunity to learn more about this towering figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Most economists of my generation have read, or at least dipped into, The Wealth of Nations during one’s student years or later, although I suspect this is no longer true of younger members of my tribe. But even for those who have not read Smith’s writings, he remains an iconic figure, perhaps the founding father of classical economics. Even many non-economists would typically associate Adam Smith with notions of the “invisible hand” of the market guiding the actions of all economic agents and the productivity gains to be reaped through “division of labour” according to specialisation in production and trade. These seminal concepts are certainly an important part of Smith’s intellectual legacy. But they provide only a partial view of the breadth and depth of Smith’s thinking and how it evolved.
Phillipson, a historian, provides an absorbing account of Smith’s intellectual development in the historical and social context of mid-18th century Scotland and traces the evolution of his main ideas. Smith did not begin his professional life as an economist. Actually, in 1737, when he went to Glasgow University at the age of 14 (he was something of a prodigy), practically no one did, since the subject was yet to be defined. He went to study philosophy and was deeply influenced by a small group of outstanding professors, especially Frances Hutcheson, the Professor of Moral Philosophy. After three years, Smith won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He spent his next six years there, although, in the Whig Presbyterian circles to which Smith belonged, Phillipson writes, “Oxford was notorious… for being an intellectually stagnant, High Church and high Tory institution.” During his six years of largely private study, Smith encountered the philosophy of David Hume, the other great flower of the Scottish Enlightenment, although he did not actually meet him till 1749-50: “Smith became at Oxford as he remained, the perfect Humean; and it was as a perfect Humean that he was to become Hume’s closest friend.”
On his return to Scotland, Smith got his big break quite soon when Henry Home, “the most formidable of Edinburgh’s cultural entrepreneurs” and a cousin of Hume’s, invited Smith to deliver two sets of high-profile lectures on rhetoric and jurisprudence at Edinburgh between 1748 and 1751. Smith seized this opportunity wholeheartedly. Although his lecture texts have not survived, reasonable approximations have since been compiled on the basis of notes taken by students. These lectures established the young (mid-20s) philosopher as a creative, top-class thinker and “laid out the foundations for his science of man”, which he later elaborated in his two seminal works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776). They also helped ensure his appointment as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1751 at the age of 28.
Phillipson does a fine job of linking and juxtaposing Smith’s main ideas with those of prominent contemporary thinkers, including Hume, Hutcheson and Mandeville in Britain, and Montesquieu, Rousseau and Quesnay in France. He shows how his lectures and writings in the early 1750s presaged his subsequent major treatises. Thus, the early Smith was writing, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” This simple but profound plea for limited but good governance and low taxes as the key requisites for economic development resonates not just in The Wealth of Nations, 20 years later, but in many party manifestos in America and Europe after 250 years.
With The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith became established as a leading moral philosopher in Europe. As Phillipson puts it, the book “was Smith’s extraordinary attempt to develop a coherent and plausible account of the processes by which we learn the principles of morality from the experience of common life without descending into wanton religious skepticism, Mandevillian cynicism or Rousseaunian despair”. In general, Phillipson’s treatment of Smith’s ideas on moral philosophy is lucid and persuasive. It also does justice to Smith’s contributions to the subject and amply demonstrates his claims as a significant philosopher. This serves as a timely counterpoint for the vast majority of people who think of Adam Smith solely as a great classical economist.
In something of a contrast, and a disappointment, Phillipson’s two chapters on The Wealth of Nations are adequate but not nearly as educative and compelling as his previous four chapters on Smith’s moral philosophy. But perhaps such an assessment reflects the predictable bias of an economist reviewer. In any case, he ends on the right note: “The Wealth of Nations is the greatest and most enduring monument to the intellectual culture of the Scottish Enlightenment. It contains a theory about the behaviour of human beings… about agents who are deeply committed to the improvement of mind, manners and property, and who are able to believe that in following what seems to be the path of nature they are acting in a way that will serve the public good.”
To know about Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, read this book.
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The author is honorary professor at ICRIER and former chief economic adviser to the Government of India
ADAM SMITH
AN ENLIGHTENED LIFE
Author: Nicholas Phillipson
Publisher: Allen Lane
Pages: xx + 346
Price: Rs 899