Adam Smith

In1723, one of the most famous moral philosopher and political economist, Adam smith had been given birth. His work led to the modern day theories today. He was seventeen years old when he went to Oxford University to study on a scholarship. He stayed there for 6 years and practically read books because Oxford wasn’t as dominating as it is today. It is said that professors at the time gave up teaching. Smith was an absentminded but intelligent philosopher. He came up with theories no one could come up with. It was here when he took interest in Greek and gradually began to have interest in it more. He took work from Locke, Steuart, Turgot, and other known philosophers but the difference in their work and smiths work was that he illuminated the whole background of the economy and how it could be improved and they clarified some parts of the issue that concerned the economy. He absorbed the things he read and thought about them with great understanding. In 1751, smith became the chairman of logic at the University of Glasgow. Shortly after, he was offered to be a professor at the University for Moral Philosophy. He enjoyed staying at the University of Glasgow; now known as Scottish Enlightenment, and continued his work there. Smith had a personality and certain manners which weren’t appreciated by the other professors. Although he had a great personality, his abstractions would show him of a lesser personality. In 1759, Smith published his first book which gave him a new meaning to life, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. His second book was published in 1776 called Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith returned to Scotland after his stay at London and Glasgow in 1778 and was appointed Commissioner of Customs for Edinburgh. He died in his sixties in 1790 when the French Revolution took place.
Adam smith was known as the ‘funding father of economics’. He wrote 2 famous books, known to be two of his famous works on the theory of markets. The first book is called, Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, where he wrote about the moral and political thoughts he had about the market and the society as a whole. He divided moral philosophy into certain parts such as ethics, rights; both economic and political rights and private rights and explained each one briefly. The main thread that actually ran through his work was the strong pledge of a human beings judgments and a way to change them by replacing them with better “systems,” as he would say, invented by intellectuals. After Smith moved to France in 1764, he started his work on a treatise of political economy, a subject he taught at Glasgow and discussed with David Hume. The second book was then published in 1776 called, Nature and Causes of the wealth of Nation, after 12 years of work. The message of this book was ‘Economic Growth.’ He talked to different Philosophers in France including Francois Quesnay. Heilbroner said, “To see that labor, not nature, was the source of “value,” was one of Smith’s greatest insights.” Smith explains everything in detail about England in this book. Heilbroner says, “When we have a finished the nine hundred pages of the book we have a living picture of England in the 1770s, of apprentices and journeymen and rising capitalists, of landlords and clergymen and kings, of workshops and farms and foreign trade.” He says that Adam gives a big picture of how England was back in the year 1770. Smith was the person who called England “a nation of shopkeepers.” He wrote, “By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound.” He writes about the tax system and how each person should have to pay a definite amount and not be subjective to one. He wanted the government to provide and support justice and provide public goods and standardize banking. He wanted them to grant copyright protection.
His other works included Essays on Philosophical