Brown - Adam Smiths discourse

235 Pages·1994·1.56 MB·English

by  Vivienne Brown

ADAM SMITH’S DISCOURSE
Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience challenges the canonic
reading of Smith’s corpus of writings as constituting a founding statement of modernity
and a free market order. Instead of seeing his works as espousing the values of an
emerging commercial society, the reading presented here underscores the deep
ambivalences and tensions in Smith’s texts.
Adam Smith’s Discourse examines the textual complexity of all Smith’s major works
by analysing their stylistic, figurative and rhetorical features and by reading them in the
context of Enlightenment discourses on the moral, jurisprudential, political and economic
aspects of society. Of central importance for the structure of Smith’s discourse is Stoic
moral philosophy, which provides a set of values that are fundamentally antithetical to
both classical republican virtues and the aspirations of an acquisitive commercial society.
Although The Wealth of Nations has been celebrated as a clarion call for a modern
manufacturing and commercial order, Adam Smith’s Discourse shows that its attack on
mercantilism was based on a critique of what was seen as an overexpansion of trade and
manufactures.
Vivienne Brown teaches Economics at the Open University, UK.

ADAM SMITH’S DISCOURSE
Canonicity, commerce and conscience
Vivienne Brown

London and New York
First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,
NY 10001
© 1994 Vivienne Brown
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Brown, Vivienne. Adam Smith’s discourse:
canonicity, commerce, and conscience/ Vivienne Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical
references and index. 1. Smith, Adam, 1723–1790. I. Title. B1545.Z7B76 1994 192–dc 20 93–
24462 CIP
ISBN 0-203-01486-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-15454-1 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-415-08160-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-09593-x (pbk)
For Ali and Siby

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1
1 READING ADAM SMITH’S DISCOURSE 7
2 SIGNIFYING VOICES: READING THE ADAM SMITH PROBLEM 19
3 THE DIALOGIC EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIENCE 48
4 TMS AND THE STOIC MORAL HIERARCHY 67
5 JUSTICE AND JURISPRUDENCE 88
6 THE EMERGENCE OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 125
7 THE SYSTEM OF NATURAL LIBERTY 142
8 CONCLUSION: COMMERCE AND CONSCIENCE 182

References 194
Index 206

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Annette Flynn and her colleagues in the library of the Open
University for their efficiency and patience in dealing with my numerous Inter-Library
Loan requests. I have also appreciated the facilities of the Reading Room of the British
Museum and the courtesy of its staff. I would also very much like to thank Alan Jarvis at
Routledge for his encouragement.
My greatest debt, of course, is to my family: to my daughters, who have seen so much
less of their mother than they have a right to expect, and to Ronnie, who has given me so
much support at a time when he was the one who needed it most.
Chapter 2 was first published by Cambridge University Press as ‘Signifying voices:
reading the “Adam Smith Problem”’ in Economics and Philosophy 7, 1991, pp. 187–220.
Chapter 3 was first published as ‘The dialogic experience of conscience: Adam Smith
and the voices of Stoicism’ in Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, 1992–3, pp. 233–60. I
would like to thank both journals for permission to use this material here.