Volume 4 appeared in November 2008. Its central feature is a symposium on the writers and traditions that Smith drew on, guest edited by Douglas Den Uyl.
The symposium on Smith’s sources
The papers range across antiquity and the eighteenth century:
– Gloria Vivenza contributed two pieces, one on classical themes behind Smith’s ideas about justice for criminals and one on the origin of his first use of the “invisible hand”.
– Leonidas Montes presents Smith as an eclectic Stoic.
– David Levy and Sandra Peart discuss the evil of independence.
– Ryan Hanley compares the style and sentiment of Smith and Swift.
– James Otteson traces Shaftesbury’s evolutionary morality.
– Henry Clark examines Montesquieu in Smith’s method of theory and history.
– Neven Leddy places Smith’s moral philosophy within eighteenth-century French fiction.
– Robert Mankin looks at the sources of the Encyclopédie through the pin-making example.
Thirty years of the Glasgow Edition
A separate section marks three decades since the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, starting with an editor’s introduction and an interview with A. S. Skinner.
Cambridge Companion symposium
Fonna Forman-Barzilai introduces a group of essays on the Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, with contributions on language, literature and imagination (Ryan Hanley), the philosophical subtlety of Smith (Eric Schliesser), and impartiality and utility in jurisprudence (S. M. Amadae and Dennis Rasmussen).
Book reviews
The reviews cover recent books on Smith as a moral philosopher, Hont on international competition, essays by new scholars, interpretations of Smith as a radical egalitarian, an Italian introduction to the Wealth of Nations, Raphael’s study of the impartial spectator, Craig Smith on spontaneous order, and a history of theories of financial disturbance. Most carry an author response.