Ryan Patrick Hanley (ed.), Adam Smith. His Life, Thought and Legacy, Princeton Univeristy Press, Princeton-Oxford 2016, pp. 571

Abstract

is a col lection of essays devoted to Adam Smith's philosophy and economy, reaching out to the wider context, as well as including remarks concerning modern approach to Smith's legacy. Essays collected in the Adam Smith... refer to numerous aspects of Adam Smith's philosophy. Each of the chapters has been written by a different author who has managed to include his or her own approach to the subject. As usually, such a composition of the book has its advantages and disadvantages: contributions of numerous respected scholars on the one hand allow to become familiarized with different approaches towards one author and getting to know different points of view, whereas, on the other hand, they result in a partial incon sistency of the book. The book has been divided into five sections that cover different aspects of Smith's thought and each of them seems to play its part in the book treated as a whole. The first section is composed of seven chapters devoted to Smith's biography, his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Lectures on Jurisprudence, Essays on Philosophical Subjects and the best known of Smith's works: the Wealth of Nations. The last chapter of this section aims to present Smith as Scottish philosopher, a member of the Scottish Enlightenment, providing a wider perspective. All these essays provide a very brief