David F. Hardwick and Leslie Marsh, eds., Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies on the Philosophy of Adam Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2014), pp. xviii + 283, $115 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781137321681.

Abstract

two scholars from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia (Canada), have collected a series of articles by philosophers, economists, and political scientists specializing on Adam smith. The foreword is by the economist vernon L. smith, 2002 laureate of the swedish National Bank's Prize in economic sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Though brief, this foreword shows the interest that Adam smith's work can hold for an experimental economist, provided one looks beyond the prejudices often conveyed about it. And, according to vernon smith, this is precisely the merit of Hardwick and Marsh's book. indeed, its aim is to do justice to Adam smith's work from three aspects: (1) its consistency, (2) its philosophical contribution/legacy, and (3) its ideological significance. These three aspects run throughout the three parts into which the book is divided: the first part, entitled "Context," deals with general issues concerning smith's intellectual, social, and cultural environment; the second, "Propriety," emphasizes key concepts of his moral philosophy such as "sympathy" and the "impartial spectator"; and the third, "Prosperity," is concerned with smith's use of the "invisible hand." Regarding the first aspect, consistency, the book seeks to dispel an apparent contradiction between smith's two major works, the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which we may say concerns "propriety," and the Wealth of Nations (1776), whose subject is "prosperity." This apparent contradiction is supposed to turn on smith's view of human nature in the respective texts: as benevolent in the former, and self-interested in the latter. The appearance of contradiction had already been called into question by commentators such as Robert B. Lamb (1974), Terence w. Hutchison (1976), David D. Raphael and Alec L. Macfie (1976), Athol Fitzgibbons (1995), and Jeffrey T. Young (1997). Thus, Hardwick and Marsh's book is in line with other contributions that have tried to challenge the so-called Adam smith Problem, at least since the publication of his complete edited works in the 1970s. An historian of ideas might well regret that the two editors are not explicit about the new light their collection sheds on the consistency between smith's two major works as compared with these older contributions, and all the more so in that there is no obvious link between part ii of the book, which is mainly about smith's moral philosophy, and part iii, which deals with the economic aspects of his work. Yet, the book should be credited for establishing new connections among the different dimensions of smith's work, connections that go beyond the usual link between the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. Brian Glenney, for instance, in his contribution, "Adam smith on sensory Perception: A sympathetic Account," draws parallels between smith's account of morality in Theory of Moral Sentiments and his account of sensory perception in "on the external senses," which is far less famous. Along the same line, eugene Heath's contributi...