Adam Smith

Date of Birth: June 5, 1723
Date of Death: July 17, 1790

Regarded as the founder of modern political economy. Though he wrote and lectured on a wide range of subjects, Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations were his only full-length treatises, whose underlying philosophy and methodology seems to have been established early in his life, and both, though superficially inconsistent, reflect a single view of the world. In Moral Sentiments he explored the ethical conduct of men under the influence of social pressures; the Wealth of Nations was concerned with economic processes resulting from the operation of self-interest, and was used to illustrate the nature of economic relations in a market society, including the economic policies appropriate to such an order. Its remarkable success meant that it effectively defined the scope and content of political economy for later generations and was widely cited as an authority in favor of free market, laissez faire economics, but is much more than the unsubtle apologia for private enterprise that it has been made to seem, allowing as it does an important regulating function to government.