How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

Adam Smith (1723-1790), one of the founders of economics and political science, published more than 100 years ago his main work The Wealth of Nations in 1776. This work about the importance of free markets, division of labor and capital accumulation came to be considered a cornerstone of modern economic thinking. Others in his lifetime, however, knew him as a philosopher and moralist, whose other writings on human nature were much more interesting. His best known work for this second field was Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which he wrote because he puzzled over how self-interest so often seems to lead to harm rather than harvest, as would be true if rational agents were guided by ‘self-interest’ alone. He noted that self-interest ‘is by no means sufficient to make us either happy or miserable’ [... ]. Indeed it is not in our power so to accommodate our minds to our present circumstances as to be happy in them.