CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 310Historical Economic and Legal ThoughtSociety, Economy, and Ethics ResearchPhilosophical Ethics and Theory

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue

Hanley, Ryan Patrick·2009·Cambridge University Press eBooks
DOI 10.1017/cbo9780511581212
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a renewed debate over the costs at which the benefits of free markets have been bought. This book revisits the moral and political philosophy of Adam Smith, capitalism's founding father, to recover his understanding of the morals of the market age. In so doing it illuminates a crucial albeit overlooked side of Smith's project: his diagnosis of the ethical ills of commercial societies and the remedy he advanced to cure them. Focusing on Smith's analysis of the psychological and social ills endemic to commercial society - anxiety and restlessness, inauthenticity and mediocrity, alienation and individualism - it argues that Smith sought to combat corruption by cultivating the virtues of prudence, magnanimity and beneficence. The result constitutes a new morality for modernity, at once a synthesis of commercial, classical and Christian virtues and a normative response to one of the most pressing political problems of Smith's day and ours.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/cbo9780511581212

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Hanley, R. P.
Affiliations
Marquette University (US)
Corresponding author
Hanley, Ryan Patrick
ORCID
Hanley, Ryan Patrick
Venue
Cambridge University Press eBooks
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published
2009-06-22
DOI
10.1017/cbo9780511581212
OpenAlex
W4292249351
Cited by
310
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 16 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 61 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 30 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 5
FWCI
5.32
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 137 d)
Locations
Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Historical Economic and Legal Thought
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Society, Economy, and Ethics Research
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
Keywords
Adam Smith, virtue ethics, commercial society, ethics, capitalism, prudence, magnanimity, beneficence, alienation, individualism, anxiety, inauthenticity, Christian virtues, classical virtues, modernity, free market

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review