Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Alain Alcouffe and I will resume our series on Adam Smith in Switzerland in the next day or two, but in the meantime I am sharing my love of the parranda, a Puerto Rican musical tradition that takes place during the Christmas … Continue reading →

What did Adam Smith learn during his Swiss sojourn in late 1765/early 1766? As Alain Alcouffe and I mentioned in our previous post, he must have learned a lot, for The Wealth of Nations contains a plethora of references to … Continue reading →

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have surveyed several different facets of Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766 — such as his close contacts and encounters with the well-connected Dr Theodore Tronchin and with the great Voltaire … Continue reading →

Continued from yesterday: What was the Voltaire-Tronchin conspiracy, and why did these two leading denizens of Geneva decide to conspire to ruin Rousseau’s reputation and expose him as an intellectual and moral fraud? (And where does Adam Smith, who was … Continue reading →

Continued from yesterday’s post — footnotes and references are below the fold: The correspondence between Dr Theodore Tronchin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau resumed in the spring of 1759, when the Swiss philosopher wrote to the doctor in Geneva asking for medical … Continue reading →

One aspect of Rousseau’s thought that may have piqued Adam Smith’s admiration, curiosity, and intellect, even before his travels to Geneva in 1765-66, was the Swiss philosopher’s Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles, first published in 1758, the original … Continue reading →

Pictured above is Dr Théodore Tronchin (1709-1781), one of the most celebrated — in some quarters, despised — medical doctors of the Age of Enlightenment. In this post, Alain Alcouffe and I will discuss what we like to call “the … Continue reading →

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) descended from a long-line of Genevan watchmakers, for his father Isaac Rousseau (1672–1747) and his grandfather David Rousseau (1641–1738) — as well as his great- and great-great grandfathers! — were master clockmakers in the city-state of Geneva. … Continue reading →

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have explored Adam Smith’s possible motives for visiting the Swiss city-state of Geneva in the fall of 1765 (cf. the map of Geneva below, circa 1760). Among other things, we established a possible connection … Continue reading →