Economics as Theology: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith onthumosand irrational economic ‘man’

“…10 Our innate regard for the trappings of wealth and greatness (which fuels the work and saving motivation) is a deliberate 'deception' orchestrated by 9 Theodicy is any attempt to reconcile a belief in an omnipotent, benign God with the apparent evils of life; in other words, it is an attempt to explain the puzzle: if God is good, why evil? (Waterman 2002). 10 It should be noted here that there is a large and growing literature on whether Smith's system should be read as Providentialist but, given my earlier and detailed work on the topic (Hill 2001(Hill , 2004, I do not intend to defend this assumption here.…”

Moral Philosophy or Economic Analysis?The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith

“…(Nicole 1670, 204-205;cited in Faccarello 1999, 28) The general, Augustinian ('providentialist') position was summarized by Domat: from so evil a passion as our self-love, and from a poison so contrary to the mutual love which ought to be the foundation of society, God created one of the remedies which enable it to survive; for from the principle of division He constructed a link which unites all men in a thousand ways and which maintains most agreements. (Domat 1689, 25, cited in Faccarello 1999 As did Smith in WN (Waterman 2002), Boisguilbert (1704, 29) explicitly identified 'Providence' with 'Nature.' But he went beyond Nicole and Domat in understanding that the way Providence ; Nature operates in a market society is through the unintended consequence of the competition of agents, each motivated by selflove: a state of 'harmony' or 'equilibrium'.…”

“…We have sufficient reason, if we choose, to read WN as a work of natural theology in much the same way as the Principia and the Optics of Smith's great exemplar Newton were read in his own day (Waterman 2002). Whether or not WN was ever so read, there is no doubt that the 'Christian political economists' of the next generation or two-Malthus, Chalmers, J.B. Sumner, Copleston and Whately-regarded WN and its author as fully compatible with the orthodox Christianity of their day.…”

Optimizing Energy - The Epistemology of Primitive Economic Man

“…There has been much recent revisionist literature in economics concerning the role of empathy and individualism in Smith's writings (e.g., Alvey, 2004;Hill, 2004;Lamb, 1974;Nieli, 1986;Peart and Levy, 2004;Prieto, 2004;Waterman, 2002), none of which negates the central role that individualism was perceived to play in his vision of the ideal Capitalistic market operating within an optimally functioning society.…”