A Deeply Human Vision (Samuel Gregg, Law & Morality)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations plainly are different books in terms of their respective topics. The first text is an exploration of moral psychology and its significance for the eternal philosophical question of how people become happy. The second book is an attempt to explain the nature of that sphere of life which we call “the economy,” as well as how what Smith described as the “obvious and simple system of natural liberty” allows humans to escape poverty and the oppressive economic structures associated with the mercantile system that dominated the eighteenth-century European world.
The differing subject matter of the two books, however, should not distract us from the fact that, in each volume, Smith is studying the same human beings. Indeed, as Helen Dale demonstrates in her essay, “Adam Smith’s Gift,” Smith is convinced that the commercial society which he describes and analyzes in The Wealth of Nations cannot do without the morally sensitive being of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, if markets and liberty more generally are to be sustained over the long-term.