"It has been called “the outpouring not only of a great mind, but of a whole epoch.” Yet it is not, in the strict sense of the word, an “original” book. There is a long line of observers before Smith who have approached his understanding of the world: Locke, Steuart, Mandeville, Petty, Cantillon, Turgot, not to mention Quesnay and Hume again. Smith took from all of them: there are over a hundred authors mentioned by name in his treatise. But where others had fished here and there, Smith spread his net wide; where others had clarified this and that issue, Smith illuminated the entire landscape. The Wealth of Nations is not a wholly original book, but it is unquestionably a masterpiece."
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Classical economistsAcademics from ScotlandPhilosophers from ScotlandEconomists from ScotlandSociologists from Scotland
Original Language: English
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Sources
Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers 7th ed. (1999), Chapter III. The Wonderful World of Adam Smith
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
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Adam Smith
1723 – 1790
schottischer Moralphilosoph und Ökonom
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