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PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS

ADAM SMITH (1723-1790) was born at Kirkcaldy, on the east coast of Scotland, in 1723, and received his early education at the local burgh school. He subsequently attended Glasgow University (1737- 1740), where he studied under Francis Hutcheson, and Balliol College, Oxford (1740-1746). Two years after his return to Scotland, Smith moved to Edinburgh, where he delivered lectures on rhetoric, which did much to establish his early reputation. In 1751 Smith was appointed Professor of Logic at Glasgow, but was translated to Hutcheson’s old chair of Moral Philosophy in 1752. He held this appointment until 1764, during which tenure he published, in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In 1764 Smith resigned his professorship to become tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch, at the invitation of Charles Townshend. This office took him to France, where he traveled extensively, meeting many of the leading thinkers of the day, including Voltaire, Quesnai, Turgot, and Helvetius, and where he began writing The Wealth of Nations. The book was published in 1776, the same year the Declaration of Independence was adopted. In 1778 Smith became a resident of Edinburgh, on his appointment as Commissioner of Customs, and remained there until his death in 1790. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1787, in succession to his friend Edmund Burke. Smith’s life was relatively uneventful and his disposition absent-minded and retiring. Yet he wrote with vigor and did not lack personal courage, a fact attested by his defense of the character of the alleged atheist David Hume, after the latter’s death.

AMARTYA SEN is Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1998 until 2004. His books include Development as Freedom, Identity and Violence, and The Idea of Justice.

RYAN PATRICK HANLEY is the author of Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue. An assistant professor of political science at Marquette University, he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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First published in Great Britain by A. Millar, London and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh 1759
This edition with an introduction by Amartya Sen and notes by Ryan Patrick Hanley
published in Penguin Books 2009

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.
The theory of moral sentiments / Adam Smith ; introduction by Amartya Sen ;
edited with notes by Ryan Patrick Hanley.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics)
“The version published here is that of the sixth edition, which appeared in 1790”—P.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

eISBN : 978-1-101-46001-6

1. Ethics—Early works to 1800. I. Hanley, Ryan Patrick, 1974—II. Title.
BJ1005.S6 2006
170—dc22 2009033354

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