Polity and Economy: With Further Thoughts on the Principles of Adam Smith

Rating:
Summary: Best Book on Smith
Review: Cropsey has written the best book on Smith (it was written, to be accurate, almost fifty years ago). That said, it is also a very strange book. Cropsey concedes, at the start of the book, that Smith is not a systematic thinker on the order of Hume, Kant, Locke, etc., but he then proceeds to ascribe all sorts of systematic intentions to Smith that load more weight on Smith's "system" than it was meant to bear.

For example, he ascribes to Smith a consistent "materialism" that Smith nowhere explicitly defends. It would be more accurate and cautious to concede that in fact Smith was largely agnostic on such ontological questions. On the basis of Smith's supposed "materialism" Cropsey finds a contradiction in the very notion of "natural liberty" that is unconvincing.

The best argument that Cropsey makes is to articulate Smith's replacement of the intellectual virtues by the passions. To this cause Cropsey traces Smith's entire revaluation of the traditional teaching regarding the cardinal virtues, a revaluation in which generosity is replaced by prudence and wisdom disappears. Despite these criticisms, Cropsey gets closer to Smith's intentions than any other scholar. The book is well worth reading.