IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/euhchp/978-3-031-63261-7_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Puzzle of Adam Smith’s Conception of Man

In: 300 Years of Adam Smith

Author

Listed:
  • Reinhard Blomert

    (WZB – Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung)

Abstract

During the first hundred years, the German reception of Smith’s Wealth of Nations was very widespread but not without questions and critic. When with the German industrialization the so called Katheder Socialists of the younger historical school went mainstream, Smith’s seemingly liberal positions were seen as antisocial and outdated. Knies saw the misinterpretation, and with August Oncken, the contradiction between the Theory of moral sentiments and the Wealth of Nations would be defined as “Adam Smith Problem.” The many approaches to solve this problem that were since discussed rest on the abstract definition of functional differences between an economical and a moral sphere. This is unsatisfying. The solution, which is presented here, goes back into the historical time and looks at the court society, which was Smith’s surrounding world. This society was the breeding place of a new psychic element, which by Smith was called sometimes “the impartial spectator,” sometimes “the inner judge,” and by Freud the superego. The studies of Norbert Elias on the life circumstances of the reigning class of that society make that clear.

Suggested Citation

  • Reinhard Blomert, 2024. "The Puzzle of Adam Smith’s Conception of Man," The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, in: Jürgen G. Backhaus & Günther Chaloupek & Hans A. Frambach (ed.), 300 Years of Adam Smith, pages 167-189, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:euhchp:978-3-031-63261-7_10
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-63261-7_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:euhchp:978-3-031-63261-7_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.