Smith studied
social philosophy at the
University of Glasgow and at
Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by his fellow
Glaswegian John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the
University of Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with
David Hume during the
Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time he wrote and published
The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith then returned home and spent the next ten years writing
The Wealth of Nations, publishing it in 1776. He died in 1790 at the age of 67.
Formal education
Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow far superior to that at
Oxford, which he found intellectually stifling.
[8] In Book V, Chapter II of
The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: "In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of
David Hume's
Treatise on Human Nature, and they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it.
[5][9][10] According to William Robert Scott, "The Oxford of [Smith's] time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework." Nevertheless, Smith took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Oxford library. When Smith was not studying on his own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, according to his letters. Near the end of his time at Oxford, Smith began suffering from shaking fits, probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown. He left Oxford University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.
In Book V of
The Wealth of Nations, Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager intellectual activity at
English universities, when compared to their Scottish counterparts. He attributes this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and
Cambridge, which made the income of professors independent of their ability to attract students, and to the fact that distinguished
men of letters could make an even more comfortable living as ministers of the
Church of England.
Smith's discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents with the fervor and earnestness of his orations (which he sometimes opened to the public). His lectures endeavored not merely to teach philosophy but to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives, appropriately acquiring the epithet, the preacher of philosophy. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder; rather it was his magnetic personality and method of lecturing that so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson" – a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume and influential mentor Francis Hutcheson.
Teaching career
Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 in University of Edinburgh, sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames. His lecture topics includedrhetoric and belles-lettres, and later the subject of "the progress of opulence". On this latter topic he first expounded his economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty". While Smith was not adept at public speaking, his lectures met with success.
David Hume was a friend and contemporary of Smith.
In 1750, he met the philosopher
David Hume, who was his senior by more than a decade. In their writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion, Smith and Hume shared closer intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
In 1751, Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching
logic courses, and in 1752 Smith was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, having been introduced to the society by Lord Kames. When the
head of Moral Philosophy died the next year, Smith took over the position.
[19] He worked as an academic for the next thirteen years, which he characterized as "by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period [of his life]".
Smith published
The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work was concerned with how human morality depends on sympathy between agent and spectator, or the individual and other members of society. Smith defined "mutual sympathy" as the basis of
moral sentiments. He bases his explanation, not on a special "moral sense" as the
Third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, nor on
utility as Hume did, but on mutual sympathy, a term best captured in modern parlance by the twentieth-century concept of
empathy, the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another being.
Following the publication of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith became so popular that many wealthy students left their schools in other countries to enroll at Glasgow to learn under Smith. After the publication of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith began to give more attention to
jurisprudence and economics in his lectures and less to his theories of morals. For example, Smith lectured that the cause of increase in national wealth is labor, rather than the nation's quantity of gold or silver, which is the basis for
mercantilism, the
economic theory that dominated
Western European economic policies at the time.
In 1762, the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). At the end of 1763, he obtained an offer from
Charles Townshend – who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume – to tutor his stepson,
Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch. Smith then resigned from his professorship to take the tutoring position, and he subsequently attempted to return the fees he had collected from his students because he resigned in the middle of the term, but his students refused.
Tutoring and travels
Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, during which time he educated Scott on a variety of subjects – such as proper Polish. He was paid£300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300 per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher. Smith first travelled as a tutor to Toulouse,France, where he stayed for one and a half years. According to his own account, he found Toulouse to be somewhat boring, having written to Hume that he "had begun to write a book to pass away the time". After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva, where Smith met with the philosopherVoltaire.
From Geneva, the party moved to
Paris. Here Smith came to know several great intellectual leaders of the time; invariably having an effect on his future works. This list included:
Benjamin Franklin,
Turgot,
Jean D'Alembert,
André Morellet,
Helvétius, and, notably,
François Quesnay, the head of the
Physiocratic school. So impressed with his ideas Smith considered dedicating
The Wealth of Nations to him – had Quesnay not died beforehand. Physiocrats were opposed to
mercantilism, the dominating economic theory of the time. Illustrated in their motto
Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même! (Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself!). They were also known to have declared that only agricultural activity produced real wealth; merchants and industrialists (manufacturers) did not. This however, did not represent their true school of thought, but was a mere "smoke screen" manufactured to hide their actual criticisms of the nobility and church; arguing that they made up the only real clients of merchants and manufacturers. The wealth of France was virtually destroyed by Louis XIV and
Louis XV to ruinous wars, by aiding the American insurgents against the British, and perhaps most destructive (in terms of public perceptions) was what was seen as the excessive consumption of goods and services deemed to have no economic contribution – unproductive labour. Assuming that nobility and church are essentially detractors from economic growth, the feudal system of agriculture in France was the only sector important to maintain the wealth of the nation. Given that the English economy of the day yielded an income distribution that stood in contrast to that which existed in France, Smith concluded that the teachings and beliefs of Physiocrats were, "with all [their] imperfections [perhaps], the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy". The distinction between productive versus unproductive labour – the physiocratic
classe steril – was a predominant issue in the development and understanding of what would become classical economic theory.
Later years
In 1766, Henry Scott's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter. Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy, and he devoted much of the next ten years to his magnum opus. There he befriended Henry Moyes, a young blind man who showed precocious aptitude. As well as teaching Moyes, Smith secured the patronage of David Hume and Thomas Reid in the young man's education. In May 1773, Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and was an instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.
In 1778, Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother in
Panmure House in Edinburgh's
Canongate. Five years later, as a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter, he automatically became one of the founding members of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, and from 1787 to 1789 he occupied the honorary position of Lord
Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness and was buried in the
Canongate Kirkyard. On his death bed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more.
Smith's literary executors were two friends from the Scottish academic world: the physicist and chemist
Joseph Black, and the pioneering geologist
James Hutton. Smith left behind many notes and some unpublished material, but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication. He mentioned an early unpublished
History of Astronomy as probably suitable, and it duly appeared in 1795, along with other material such as
Essays on Philosophical Subjects.
Smith's library went by his will to
David Douglas, Lord Reston (son of his cousin Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry, Fife), who lived with Smith. It was eventually divided between his two surviving children, Cecilia Margaret (Mrs. Cunningham) and David Anne (Mrs. Bannerman). On the death of her husband, the Rev. W. B. Cunningham of Prestonpans in 1878, Mrs. Cunningham sold some of the books. The remainder passed to her son, Professor
Robert Oliver Cunningham of Queen's College, Belfast, who presented a part to the library of Queen's College. After his death the remaining books were sold. On the death of Mrs. Bannerman in 1879 her portion of the library went intact to the New College (of the Free Church), Edinburgh.
Character
