Abstract
There was a time when many commentators thought that there was a problem with Adam Smith. The tendency to read Smith’s thought as marred by supposed tensions between the ‘sympathy’ of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and the ‘selfishness’ of The Wealth of Nations (WN) has long since been debunked.1 Smith scholars are coming increasingly to agree that Smith is remarkably consistent in his views; that he employs a consistent methodology and that this consistency is an indication of the ‘systematic’ spirit of his thought (Phillipson, 2010, p. 4). However, recognizing the consistency of approach that Smith adopts does not reduce the potential disagreement among Smith scholars about how best to characterize many aspects of his overall outlook.
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Smith, C. (2014). Smith, Justice, and the Scope of the Political. In: Hardwick, D.F., Marsh, L. (eds) Propriety and Prosperity. Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321053_14
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