Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0143105922 ISBN 13 : 9780143105923

Editeur : Penguin Classics, 2010

Best known for his revolutionary free-market economics treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he investigated the flip side of economic self-interest: the interest of the greater good. Smith's classic work advances ideas about conscience, moral judgement and virtue that have taken on renewed importance in business and politics. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Book Description :

Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) lays the foundation for a general system of morals, and is a text of central importance in the history of moral and political thought. By means of the idea of sympathy and the mental construct of an impartial spectator, Smith formulated highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment and the virtues. This volume offers a new edition of the text with helpful notes for the student reader, together with a substantial introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical context.

From the Back Cover :

"In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith assigned himself a difficult and dangerous task: to establish for educated men in an increasingly revolutionary age the reasonableness of morality and the necessity of the fruits of virtue - illustrated by the wisdom of the classical authors of antiquity. This book, Adam Smith's first, is, then, proof to skeptics of the importance of morality; and an antidote to those who think that free-market economics can be divorced from a moral society."--BOOK JACKET.