The Philosophy of Adam Smith contains essays by some of the most prominent philosophers and scholars working on Adam Smith today. It is a special issue of The Adam Smith Review, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. Introduction Part 1: Moral phenomenology 1. The virtue of TMS 1759 D.D. Raphael 2. The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the inner life Emma Rothschild 3. The standpoint of morality in Adam Smith and Hegel (...) Angelica Nuzzo Part 2: Sympathy and moral judgment 4. Smith and Rousseau in dialogue: sympathy, pitié, spectatorship and narrative Charles L. Griswold 5. Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy and its contemporary interpretations Bence Nanay 6. Smith’s ambivalence about honour Stephen Darwall 7. Sentiments and spectators: Adam Smith’s theory of moral judgment Geoffrey Sayre-McCord 8. Smith’s anti-cosmopolitanism Fonna Forman-Barzilai 9. Resentment and moral judgment in Smith and Butler Alice MacLachlan Part 3: Economics, religion, aesthetics and value theory 10. Adam Smith’s problems: individuality and the paradox of sympathy Robert Urquhart 11. Scepticism and naturalism in Adam Smith Ryan Patrick Hanley 12. Adam Smith’s solution to the paradox of tragedy Arby Ted Siraki 13. Smithian intrinsic value Patrick Frierson Memoir on Adam Smith’s life 14. Adam Smith’s smile: his years at Balliol College, 1740–6, in retrospect Ian Simpson Ross. (shrink)

This review covers two recent monographs on Adam Smith: Samuel Fleischacker’s Adam Smith and John McHugh’s Adam Smith’s ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’: A Critical Commentary. Fleischacker’s work fills a significant gap in Smith scholarship. There have been relatively few attempts to present Smith in a way that is inviting to non-specialists while also doing justice to him as a systematic thinker. Adam Smith presents a compelling picture of a philosopher who makes the (...) case for freedom and a life of virtue during a time of political and moral upheaval. McHugh’s Adam Smith’s TMS is an inspiring, personal journey through Smith’s masterwork in ethics, which has the added value of paying close attention to TMS VII, the most overlooked section of the text. Fleischacker’s and McHugh’s books represent the best of what Smith scholarship currently offers to specialists and non-specialists alike. Anyone looking to dive deeper into Smith’s work, or to wade into it for the first time, would benefit from using these works as a guide in the process. (shrink)

With Being Me Being You, Samuel Fleischacker provides a reconstruction and defense of Adam Smith’s account of empathy, and the role it plays in building moral consensus, motivating moral behavior, and correcting our biases, prejudices, and tendency to demonize one another. He sees this book as an intervention in recent debates about the role that empathy plays in our morality. For some, such as Paul Bloom, Joshua Greene, Jesse Prinz, and others, empathy, or our capacity for fellow-feeling, tends (...) to misguide us in the best of cases, and more often reinforces faction and tribalism in morals and politics. These utilitarians, as Fleischacker refers to them, propose that empathy take a back seat to cost-benefit analysis in moral decision-making. As an intervention, the book is largely successful. Fleischacker’s defense of empathy is nuanced and escapes the myopic enthusiasm to which many partisans of empathy are prone. Anyone looking to understand the relationship between empathy and morality would do well to grapple with Being Me Being You. Still, Fleischacker overlooks that Smith would most likely be less convinced of the idea that greater empathy can help us overcome the great challenges of our time. (shrink)

The orthography of the relative pronoun and the near demonstrative pronoun in the Byblian dialect of Phoenician is exactly the same, meaning that the grapheme z in introductions to dedication inscriptions has been left to interpretation. The historically related nature of these pronouns and their linguistic development led to this situation, in which the written expression of both pronouns in Byblian is identical. In this article, I examine this situation from a variety of perspectives, using both inner-Phoenician word order and (...) comparative data from related languages, in order to show that two patterns underlie the pronoun z in the introduction to Byblian dedication inscriptions. First, I present the historical data regarding the development of the near demonstrative and relative pronouns in Phoenician. Next, I provide an analysis of the syntax of Phoenician dedication inscriptions and offer comparative material in mortuary inscriptions in Phoenician as well as evidence from Old Aramaic and Samʾalian. In doing so, I argue that, in light of comparative evidence, there is good reason to posit that two patterns exist underlying Byblian z, one in which the grapheme indicates the relative pronoun and another in which the grapheme indicates the near demonstrative. (shrink)

Converse contended that the ideological disorganization, attitudi‐nal inconsistency, and limited information of American voters make them a politically disengaged mass, not a responsible electorate. I illustrate the shortcomings of Converse's line of reasoning by showing that he misread his two most prominent examples of the electoral consequences of his theory: voting on the Vietnam War in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, and public opinion about the 1948 Taft‐Hartley Act. In both cases, voters were better able to sort candidates and policies (...) than Converse reported, despite their lack of ideological sophistication or their knowledge of specific legislation. Converse's interpretive errors here stem from mistaken assumptions about information processing and recall, and from questionable normative standards about what constitute meaningful and competent political orientation. His criteria underestimate the public's ability to make responsible choices, and the effect of campaigns on the choosing process. (shrink)

This article examines the ways that new communications technologies change the organization of politics as well as the content of news. Changes in the media lead to changes in the mediators, the persons who choose and interpret the news for the public. When new mediators convey different news stories or offer different interpretations from the previous regime, they redistribute control of politics and culture.