Professor Bob Davis, Dr Philip Tonner, and Dr Julie McAdam held a workshop on Smith and Education as part of the Adam Smith Tercentenary celebrations on 8th June 2023.

Adam Smith is a towering figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period that his older contemporary, the philosopher David Hume, referred to as ‘the historical Age’ of the ‘historical Nation’. Smith is perhaps most famous for his writings on political economy, his monumental An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations(1776), has proven to be a classic of the developing field of economic thought, and his investigation into Homo economicus remains a starting point for subsequent investigations of the behaviour of human beings in economic and political contexts. As a moral philosopher, questions of economic and social justice were never far from Smith’s mind, and educational considerations would play a key role in his thinking on these issues. Connecting his Wealth of Nationsand his earlier The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) is a concern for moral education, together with a concern for religion and justice. Smith argues that economics can be assessed in moral terms: ‘economic policy is bad policy if it has morally unacceptable consequences’ (A. Broadie, A History of Scottish Philosophy, (EUP 2009), p199). One unacceptable consequence of the division of labour is the potential moral and spiritual damage it will do to people in the performance of endlessly repetitive microtasks. To ameliorate this, Smith proposed that, along with defence of the realm and the administration of justice, governments should support a system of schooling that would protect workers moral lives. This workshop explores this crucial educational dimension of Smith’s thought.

First published: 26 June 2023

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