Around 40 papers were selected from the call for papers for the 2009 Oxford conference. This page sorts the session contributions by theme rather than alphabetically, so you can see the range of questions asked.
Smith and his contemporaries
Richard van den Berg looked at a French reader of Smith, P. L. Roederer. John McHugh compared Hume and Smith on sympathy and the social self. James McClellan and Karin Brown presented on Sophie de Grouchy’s French translation. Lauren Brubaker and Jonathan Rick each addressed Rousseau, while Eric Schliesser explored Smith’s engagement with Plato’s Laws.
Ethics and moral psychology
Remy Debes wrote on the value of persons, and Patrick Frierson on intrinsic value. Christel Fricke asked whether moral norms are conventions or universal principles. Maria Alejandra Carrasco discussed the double meaning of self-command. Patricio Fernandez and Nicholas Teh compared Smith with John McDowell on moral objectivity. Alice MacLachlan considered resentment and injustice, and Andrew Terjesen asked whether sympathy works through imagination or correspondence.
Politics and society
Richard Boyd spoke on nationalism, Fonna Forman-Barzilai on Smith’s scepticism toward cosmopolitanism, and Jeffrey Young on justice, property and markets. Spiros Tegos took up the problem of authority, and Robert Urquhart the tensions between the two major books.
Arts, literature and nature
Emily Brady examined nature and aesthetic judgment, Maureen Harkin Smith on literature, and Arby Siraki his theory of tragedy.
Ancient and religious sources
Gloria Vivenza considered Cicero and Seneca, Thornton Lockwood moral education in Aristotle, and Paul Oslington Newton and Smith on divine action. Sergio Cremaschi and Ryan Hanley dealt with scepticism.
Other topics
Toni Vogel Carey wrote on accounting for moral as for natural things, Robert Mankin on dying, Neven Leddy on the book’s editions, Tom Ford on reification, Angelica Nuzzo on Hegel, Roberto Scazzieri on social mirrors and Alvaro Santana-Acuña on the self.
See also the programme and plenary speakers.