Below is a recap of my first five posts in this series:
- Adam Smith as a Person (March 25, 2023), where I introduce an essay with the same title by English essayist Walter Bagehot.
- Walter Bagehot and Adam Smith, part 1 (March 27), where I identify several themes in Bagehot’s Adam Smith essay.
- Adam Smith’s dream (March 28), where I describe the ambitious nature of Smith’s massive scholarly project: to identify the universal and law-like rules of behavior that men, merchants, and law-makers should live by.
- Balliol College and the road to Adam Smith’s Damascus (morning of March 30), where I survey the last stage Smith’s formal education–his seven years of study at Oxford–and take notice of his momentous decision in 1746 to abandon his religious vocation.
- Adam Smith’s patrons and possible father figures (afternoon of March 30), where I identify two prominent men who took Smith under their protective wings: the jurist Lord Kames and the mechant/slave trader Provost Cochrane.
Stay tuned; I will pick up where I left off (with the publication of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759) and resume my Bagehot/Smith series on Monday, April 3 …
prior probability 