News & Events

The Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy is pleased to be hosting the 2019 meeting of the International Adam Smith Society at Chapman University’s campus in Orange, California.

We’ve put together an exciting program featuring some of the world’s leading Smith scholars. The program will include keynote lectures from Professors Vernon Smith and Fonna Forman. In addition to the keynote lectures the program will also include approximately two dozen plenary sessions and several author meets critics sessions for recently published or forthcoming books.

The meeting will begin on the morning of Friday January 18th, and will conclude just before lunch on Sunday January 20th. Participants should register here as soon as possible.

More information is available on the Smith Institute’s site. 

The Liberty Fund, with support from a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, has launched a new website, “Adam Smith Works,” devoted to Smith and Smith scholarship. The website has excellent resources for educators, including a text repository and a scholars’ portal for members. We encourage you to check out the site and to share it widely.

IASS member Sule Ozler shares news of a new book published with her colleague Paul Gabrinetti:

Ozler, S., & Gabrinetti, P. A. (2018). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Work of Adam Smith: Towards a Theory of Moral Development and Social Relations. Taylor & Francis.

A book description and reviews can be found at the Routledge website here and this is the Amazon link. The table of contents follows below.

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. An intersubjective interpretation of sympathy
Chapter 3. Sympathy, empathy and evidence from developmental psychology
Chapter 4. The impartial spectator conscience and morality
Chapter 5. The role of the Deity in Smith’s moral system
Chapter 6. A known world: an analysis of defenses in Adam Smith’s the Theory of Moral
Sentiments
Chapter 7. Defenses and morality: Adam smith, Sigmund Freud and Contemporary
Psychoanalysis
Chapter 8. An evolutionary psychological and adaptive defenses view of relations between
markets and morality
Chapter 9. On dependency
Chapter 10. On friendship
Chapter 11. A Jungian interpretation of the place of women in Smith’s works
Chapter 12. Conclusions

On September 13, 2018, NOUS hosts a workshop in Berlin on the legacy of Adam Smith. Keynote speaker will be Professor Maria Pia Paganelli from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, a leading Smith scholar and co-editor of the “Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith”.

NOUS invites young scholars interested in the history of political economy and philosophy to submit essays on one of the two following topics: “The continuing relevance of Adam Smith” or “Adam Smith, ordoliberalism, and ‘Ordnungspolitik’”. Submitters are expected to contribute original thoughts on the legacy and the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment in the fields of philosophy, politics, and economics.

The contest winner with an essay on “The continuing relevance of Adam Smith” will have the opportunity to discuss his/her work in depth with Professor Paganelli following her lecture. The contest winner with an essay on “Adam Smith, ordoliberalism, and ‘Ordnungspolitik’” will discuss his/her work with Dr. Karen Horn following her lecture. Both winners will also participate in the two general discussion panels featuring Dr. Daniel Brühlmeier (Bern), Prof. Dr. Stefan Kolev (Zwickau), Dr. Julian F. Müller (Hamburg), and Dr. Reinhard Schumacher (Potsdam). NOUS will take care of the winners’ travel expenses.

A short-list of particularly original contributors will also be invited to attend the workshop.

Please submit your essay (5000 words maximum) by August 15 to contest@nous.network.

More information here: http://nous.network/en/2018/07/call-for-essays-adam-smith/

The Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and the IASS invite submissions for the 2019 IASS Southern California Conference. The conference will bring together scholars working on Smith from across the globe and will aim to build on the success of the Smith Society’s recent meetings in Chile, Scotland, and Italy.

Abstracts of approximately 500 words should be sent to chapmansmithconference@gmail.com by September 22, 2018. Proposals for author meets critics sessions to discuss books that have been published in the last two years (or that are forthcoming) are also encouraged. Proposers of such sessions should solicit interest in participating from the author and at least two critics prior to submission.

For more information, please visit the Smith Institute.

Smith Society CFP

 

Longtime IASS member (and former Board member) Charles Griswold has written a well-received new work, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter.” Flyer (with discount for purchase) linked below!

Rousseau and Smith Flyer

From the Adam Smith Global Foundation:

LAUNCH OF THE TARTAN CENTS CROWDFUNDING INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN WHICH HAS BEEN ORGANISED TO CELEBRATE THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF TARTAN WEEK – INTRODUCING THE ADAM SMITH BIRTHPLACE INITIATIVE

Adam Smith Global Foundation are privileged to have been chosen as one of only three pilot projects from across Scotland to take part in the first ever Tartan Cents International Initiative which runs from 6th April to the 6th May 2018.

Tartan Cents is a Crowdfunding platform which is founded on the premise that Scotland matters well beyond her borders and we are asking all those who love Scotland’s rich culture and heritage to help us create a better Scotland for all to live, work, play and visit.

Adam Smith Global Foundation is hoping to raise £100,000 of funding through the Tartan Cent Platform to support its Birthplace Initiative projects.

This funding would allow us to build upon the historically significant restoration of the Adam Smith Heritage Centre and Close as well the delivery of the very successful Adam Smith Festival of Ideas which attracted over 5,000 visitors to Smith’s home town of Kirkcaldy.

Visitors to the Festival enjoyed seeing and hearing from Sandi Toksvig, David Tennant, and Arabella Weir to name but a few. The Adam Smith Festival of Ideas which took place in March this year attracted interest from around the world.

The next stage in the Adam Smith Birthplace Initiative will see the development of two projects. Firstly, Adam Smith’s Garden which is of international historical significance, will be restored to its former 18th century glory. The Garden is located at the rear of Adam Smith’s Heritage Centre within the heart of Kirkcaldy’s Town Centre and will play a pivotal role in the development of Adam Smith’s Birthplace Initiative contributing to the social and economic regeneration of his home town.

The second project will see the Adam Smith Exhibition and Heritage Trail come to life with our ambitious Augmented Reality project. This project will bring Smith the boy, the man, the philosopher, and the economist to life. Visitors to Kirkcaldy will be able to walk in the footsteps of Adam Smith and see first-hand the people and the environment which shaped his thinking, leading to the writing of his greatest works in his hometown, from which the Scottish Enlightenment grew and developed.

To find out more and support the Adam Smith Birthplace Initiative please visit http://www.patronicity.com/adamsmith.

(Original obituary posted at The University of Edinburgh)

It is with great sadness that the School of History, Classics and Archaeology announces the death, on 24 January 2018, of Nicholas Phillipson, Emeritus Reader in History and Honorary Fellow at the School. (Published 29 January, 2017)

Nicholas Tindal Phillipson studied as an undergraduate at the universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, and completed his PhD at Cambridge in 1967. He joined the History department at Edinburgh as a Lecturer in 1965, and was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer and Reader, before retiring in 2005.

Nick’s research over more than five decades had a transformative impact on the field of Scottish Enlightenment scholarship, which he helped to connect to the study of the European Enlightenments more widely. He did so in particular by emphasising the key role played by provincial centres like Edinburgh in shaping the intellectual and cultural activity of the period. Many of his publications have become classics of historical scholarship: examples include his chapters on ‘Culture and Society in the Eighteenth-Century Province: the Case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment’ (1975) and ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’ (1981), as well as his books on Hume (Hume. The Philosopher as Historian, first published in 1989 and reissued by Penguin in 2011) and, most recently, on Adam Smith (Adam Smith. An Enlightened Life, published by Allen Lane in 2010).

In the course of his distinguished career, Nick held visiting appointments at the Davis Center at Princeton University, the University of Tulsa, Yale University, the Folger institute, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He was a founding editor of the CUP journal Modern Intellectual History, which he helped to establish as a leading publication in its field. From 2002 until 2006, Nick was co-director, with the late Susan Manning, of a large, Leverhulme-funded project on the ‘Science of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment’. When he died, he had been writing a major new book on the Scottish Enlightenment.

Nick was a brilliant teacher to several generations of undergraduates and graduate students, and an inspiring and generous mentor to many younger colleagues. He will be greatly missed by many in the department and beyond.

– Dr Thomas Ahnert, Head of History (University of Edinburgh)

Through generous support from the John Templeton Foundation, Liberty Fund, Inc. has launched the “Adam Smith’s Enlightened World” project and will host a Resident Scholars Program. Applications for an extended fellowship (6-9 months, must conclude by December 13, 2019) will be accepted until May 1, 2018. Resident scholars will be offered both an honorarium and living stipend paid on a monthly basis. Decisions will be announced May 31, 2018.

To submit an application, submit the following to Eleanor E. Schneider, Liberty Fund Fellow, at schneider@libertyfund.org.

• Current academic CV
• Brief biography (175-200 words)
• One page or less abstract and title of proposed project
• Desired dates of residence
• If you are willing to be considered for a 1-3 month fellowship, if not selected for extended fellowship
• International scholars must also provide proof of right to work in the United States at date of application

For more information, see the full announcement: Smith Scholar Annoucement 9 mo