Adam Smith's System: A Re-Interpretation Inspired by Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric, Game Theory, and Conjectural History

by Andreas Ortmann, Benoït Walraevens

Overview

Inspired by his lectures on rhetoric and by game theory, this book provides a new interpretation of Adam Smith’s system of thought. It highlights its coherence through the identification of three reasoning routines and a meta-reasoning routine throughout his work on languages, rhetoric, moral sentiments, self-command, and the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. The identification of these reasoning routines allows the authors to uncover a hitherto poorly understood deep structure of Smith’s work and to explain its main characteristics. How these routines emerged in Smith’s early research on the principles of the human mind is also traced.

This book sheds new light on Adam Smith and his work, highlighting his sophisticated understanding of strategic interaction in all things rhetorical, moral, and economic. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the history of ideas, the history of economic thought, game theory, Enlightenment studies, and rhetoric.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030997038
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Series:	Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Andreas Ortmann is Professor of Experimental and Behavioral Economics at the School of Economics, UNSW Business School, Australia. Prior to his appointment at the Business School, he was Professor of Economics at CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic. Prior to that appointment, he taught at Bowdoin and Colby College, Maine, USA. He also was, for a year each, a visiting scholar of the Program on Non-Profit Organizations at Yale University, the Max-Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and the Harvard Business School. His work has been published in journals such as Management Science, Energy Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, Journal of Economic Theory, International Journal of Game Theory, Experimental Economics, Psychological Methods, Experimental Psychology: LMC, Economic Journal,European Economic Review, History of Political Economy, Rationality & Society, and many others. His interests are wide-ranging and include game theory, corporate finance, experimental economics, the experimental methods in the social sciences, and the history of economic thought. His Google scholar based index is currently 31 (last five years: 22). He uses Facebook heavily and also writes occasionally for outlets such as The Conversation.

Benoit Walraevens is Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Caen Normandy in France where he teaches economics at Cherbourg Institute of Technology, Caen’s Institute of Business Administration and IESEG Business School in Paris. His main fields of inquiry are the history of economic thought, economic philosophy, eighteenth-century political economy and moral and political philosophy. He has published papers in the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, History of Economic Ideas, Revue économique and Cahiers d’économie politique.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- Chapter 1: Schumpeter’s Assessment of Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations: Why He Got It Wrong.- Chapter 2: Adam Smith's Rhetorical Strategy in The Wealth of Nations, against the Commercial System of Great Britain.- Chapter 3: The Nature and Causes of Corporate Negligence, Sham Lectures, and Ecclesiastical Indolence: Adam Smith on Joint-Sk Companies, Teachers, and Preachers.- Chapter 4: Self-Command in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. A Game-Theoretic Reinterpretation_Chapter 5: A Game-theoretic Re-evaluation of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.- Chapter 6: Adam Smith’s economics and the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: the language of commerce.- Chapter 7: Adam Smith's Reasoning Routines, The Deep Structure of His Oeuvre, and Why It Turned out the Way It Did.- Chapter 8: Open questions.

Editorial Reviews

This collection of essays offers an interpretation of Smith’s thought that is particularly informed by Smith’s conception of rhetoric and by game theory. It is undoubtedly the claim to show that Smith’s social science is better and more clearly understood via the vehicle of game theory that will attract attention … . it is highly commendable for its extensive documentation of, and close engagement with, much extant Smith scholarship … .” (Tony Aspromourgos, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, May 8, 2023)

From the Publisher