… contemporaries were far from accepting the apparent emphasis on self-love at the heart of Smith’s explanation of morality and sociability. Several of his readers, from Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid to Dugald Stewart, complained that … amounted to little more than a theory of good breeding or politeness, rather than an investigation into authentic morality (Hont 29-30). Others among the Scottish moderates, as Thomas Ahnert has demonstrated, insisted on the … and its expansion toward North America, replacing the allegedly too subjective (even if inter-subjective) founding of morality by Hume and Smith with the concept of common sense. Revising his book several times, Smith felt obliged to …
Britishness | Commerce | Cosmopolitanism | Enlightenment | Gender | Moral philosophy | Manners | Politeness | Public sphere
… of liberal investigation. Such subjects in Arts, Sciences, Literature, Criticism, Philosophy, History, Politics, and Morality, as shall be found useful and entertaining to society,’ were there to ‘be lectured upon, and freely debated’ …