The Real Adam Smith: Economist and Philosopher

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]No one thinker has been more important to the development of today's widespread prosperity than the revolutionary 18th century philosopher Adam Smith.

[00:00:09]Most people today remember only half of what makes him important, his economic [music] principles.

[00:00:15]They associate Adam Smith with free markets, but few think of him as the great moral philosopher that he was.

[00:00:22]We need to put both sides of the man together to find the real Adam Smith.

[00:00:27]Smith's primary concern as a political economist and a moral philosopher is the well-being of the poor.

[00:00:35]Ryan Hanley is associate professor of political philosophy at Marquette University.

[00:00:39]His work concerns the moral aspects of Adam Smith's worldview.

[00:00:43]So in many ways Smith subverts our conventional distinction between left and right by sharing with the contemporary left a deep concern for the goods and the well-being of the poor and with the contemporary right a belief that the proper means for achieving this, the most efficient means are in fact free markets.