18,362 research outputs found

    ADAM SMITH'S OPTIMISTIC TELEOLOGICAL VIEW OF HISTORY

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    Adam Smith's four-stage theory provides the framework for his writings on history. The fourth stage is the commercial epoch; the culmination of history in this stage is a key component in the conventional interpretation of Adam Smith as a prophet of commercialism. In two historical case studies Smith shows the capacity of commercial society to regenerate itself. This potent capacity suggests that commercial society is inevitable. At a certain point in time it also overcomes the major obstacles to its permanence. Smith's philosophy of history anticipates the end of history views of Kant and Hegel.Political Economy,

    How Might Adam Smith Pay Professors Today?

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    Adam Smith’s proposal for paying professors was intended to induce increased faculty knowledge. If students have imperfect information about what they learn, and universities can only imperfectly measure the input of faculty time in student learning, publications may be used to measure faculty knowledge. If professors’ ability to publish is positively related to their ability to produce student learning, which universities can imperfectly measure, publications may be necessary to attract more able professors. Since research signals faculty knowledge, schools that do not value publications per se could require higher publication standards and pay higher wages than schools that value only publications.

    ADAM SMITH'S VIEW OF HISTORY: CONSISTENT OR PARADOXICAL?

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    The conventional interpretation of Adam Smith is that he is a prophet of commercialism. The liberal capitalist reading of Smith is consistent with the view that history culminates in commercial society. The first part of the article develops this optimistic interpretation of Smith's view of history. Smith implies that commercial society is the end of history because 1) it supplies the ends of nature that he identifies; 2) it is inevitable; and 3) it is permanent. The second part of the article shows that Smith has some dark moments in his writings where he seems to reject completely such teleological notions. In this more civic humanist mood he confesses that commercial society does not supply the ends of nature, nor is it inevitable, nor is it permanent. Both views exist in Smith and the commentator is forced to choose between passages in Smith's work in order to support a particular interpretation of the former's view of history.Political Economy,

    Children\u27s Book Festival: Adam Rubin

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    Adam Rubin is the author of Those Darn Squirrel

    Adam Smith and Roman Servitudes

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    This essay is a preprint of an article that appeared at: Tijdschrift voor Rechstsgeschiedenis, 72 (2004), 327–57.This essay discusses Adam Smith historical jurisprudence and his use of Roman law materials in his Lectures on Jurisprudence. It argues that Smith found it difficult to maintain his theory of legal development in the face of a highly developed body of Roman law literature

    THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF ADAM SMITH'S WORK

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    The paper will discuss the theological foundation to Smith's writings. Teleology, final causes and divine design were initially seen as central to understanding Smith's writings. Over time, this view fell out of fashion. In the period after World War II, with the rise of positivism, commentators tended to overlook or downplay this interpretation. In the last decade, or so, teleology has started to be restored to its former position as an essential element in understanding Smith. After spelling out Smith's teleology and his view of final causes, divine design and the ends of nature, we try to explain the Panglossian nature of the 'new theistic view' of Smith. While our view differs somewhat, we agree with the essence of the 'new view' claim: a theological view exists in Smith which underpins his moral and economic theories.Political Economy,

    Interview. Matthew Joseph with Adam Gussow, musician and author

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    Interview in which Adam Gussow discusses hill country blues musi

    Książę Adam Jerzy Czartoryski i jego stronnicy w świetle historiografii ukraińskiej

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    In 1937, the Warsaw historian Marceli Handelsman published a work entitled Ukraińska polityka ks. Adama Czartoryskiego przed wojną krymską [Ukrainian politics of Prince Adam Czartoryski before the Crimean War]. So far, this book has been used by historians as the primary source of information on the Ukrainian issue in the views of the Hotel Lambert’s leader. The author of this text has decided to collect Ukrainian works referring to the topic inaugurated by Handelsman. Unfortunately, no larger study has been prepared on the Ukrainian side. However, a number of articles and encyclopaedic notes showing Prince Adam and his Eastern policy (especially during his stay at the court of Tsar Alexander I Romanov) has been published. Ukrainian authors paid much more attention to Czartoryski’s associates, who tried to put his ideas into practice. Ukrainian researchers wrote mainly about Michał Czaykowski (Sadyk Pasha) organizing the Cossack troops in the Ottoman Empire, about Hipolit Terlecki striving for the union of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, and finally about the ethnographer and writer Franciszek Duchiński clearly separating Ukraine from Russia in his writings

    Adam smith and the Church of Scotland

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    In contrast to the French Enlightenment, the Scottish Enlightenment was neither anticlerical nor anti-religious. Intellectuals such as William Robertson, a historian, Hugh Blair, professor of rhetoric and belles letters, Adam Ferguson, professor of natural and later moral philosophy, John Home, playwright, Alexander Carlyle, author of numerous pamphlets were all ministers in the Church of Scotland and belonged to the Moderate party. Adam Smith shared the culture of intellectuals of this party. They had a love of learning, faith in reason and science, a preference for social order and stability and a commitment to religious tolerance and freedom of expression. Smith was one of the founding members of the Select Society and one of contributors of Edinburgh Review with William Robertson and others. In Wealth of Nations Smith had mentioned on the Church of Scotland. He praised ministers as ‘a learned, decent, independent and respectable sets of men’ and that they maintained ‘the uniformity of faith, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere morals in the great body of the people’.departmental bulletin pape

    The Black Londoner Experience: Exploring Black Life through Records of the Court, 1720-1840

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    Black Londoners have lived in the city for centuries. This collection brings 10 Black London lives together in an accessible volume to share the diversity of their experiences in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with new readers. Drawing on the records of the Old Bailey criminal courthouse, these ten carefully selected trials have been chosen to show some of the breadth of Black experience in London during the age of enslavement (c. 1720-1840). The volume includes Black victims, witnesses, and defendants; men, women, and children; sailors, servants, and entertainers; locals, immigrants, and visitors. Some were treated well by the justice system, and others were met with cruelty. Each had their own experience. While the volume contains details of crime and conflict, crime is not the sole focus. The sources also give us glimpses into the daily lives of these Black individuals as they interacted with the city and its inhabitants. We learn where these Black people spent their time, with whom, doing what, and sometimes even what they had in their pockets. Each of the ten cases has been accessibly formatted for classroom use or personal study, and features illustrations by Manon Wright. The sources are arranged like plays, making them easy to read aloud as a means of better understanding the theatre of the courtroom and the power dynamics at play. Dr Crymble offers notes and reflections on tricky or foreign concepts in each case, as well as issues that he has noted through experience that students often misinterpret by making modern assumptions about the past. John Humphreys, 1727 John Cross, 1749 Elizabeth Gift, 1755 Esther Allingham, 1782 John Thomas, 1786 James Wallis, 1801 Dolby Jackson, 1808 Thomas Johnson, 1818 'The Busker' 1831 Louis James Grant, 1840 For serious scholars of Black experience in 18th/19th century London criminal records, the author also recommends the following works: Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard, Jamie McLaughlin, et al, the Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674-1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8, 2018. Adam Crymble and Emma Azid, 'Black Lives, British Justice: Black People in London Criminal Justice Records, 1720-1841' Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation vol. 2, no 2. (2021): 1-11. Kathleen Chater. Untold Histories: Black People in England and Wales during the Period of the British Slave Trade, c. 1660-1807 (Manchester, 2011). Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past (Frank Cass, 1996). Marika Sherwood. ‘Blacks in the Gordon Riots’, History Today, vol. 47 (1997), 24-28
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