James Otteson on Adam Smith

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2011

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

James Otteson of Yeshiva University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Adam Smith. The conversation begins with a brief sketch of David Hume and his influence on Smith and then turns to the so-called Adam Smith problem--the author of The Wealth of Nations appears to have a different take on human nature than the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith worked on both books throughout his life, yet their perspectives seem so different. Otteson argues that the books focus on social behavior and the institutions that sustain that behavior--market transactions in The Wealth of Nations and moral behavior in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Both books use the idea of emergent order to explain the evolution of both kinds of social behavior and social institutions. The conversation concludes with a discussion of what Smith got right and wrong.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is June 15th, 2011, and my guest is Jim Odison, joint professor of
0:45.9	philosophy and economics at Ishiva University. His latest book is Adam Smith, and he is also the
0:51.4	author of Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life, Jim. Welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you very
0:56.4	much. It's a pleasure to be here, Russ. Our topic for today is not surprisingly, it's Adam Smith.
1:01.3	We're going to talk about a number of issues that Jim has insight into, and I want to start with
1:06.8	something that, as a very amateur student of Smith, I find confusing at times, which is David Hume.
1:17.4	David Hume is a famous philosopher. I took a number of philosophy classes in college,
1:25.3	so I know I read some Hume, and I heard of him. He is Adam Smith's good friend. What do I need to
1:33.0	know about Hume to help me understand Smith? And what do I need to know about Hume in general,
1:37.8	if anything? What's he important for? He was very important and for a number of different
1:42.4	reasons. So just in general, a couple of things you should know about Hume. He was one of the
1:46.9	principles alongside Adam Smith and a few others of the Scottish Enlightenment. That's this period
1:50.7	in the 18th century in Scotland, which was a period of really astonishing learning at the people
1:56.6	who were at the forefront of almost every discipline of human inquiry were in Scotland during the 18th
2:01.9	century. It was really an astonishing period. Hume was one of the central people there,
2:07.4	and arguably, and in fact, I think this is true, he's the greatest and most brilliant
2:12.0	philosopher ever in the English language. And that's saying a lot. And this of course was,
2:18.3	that includes people like John Locke who had preceded him and all of the greats who've come after
	...

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