| FA-52307-06 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | Ryan Patrick Hanley | Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue | 9/1/2006 - 8/31/2007 | $40,000.00 | Ryan | Patrick | Hanley | | | | Marquette University | Milwaukee | WI | 53233-2225 | USA | 2005 | Political Science, General | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 40000 | 0 | 40000 | 0 |
Recent scholarship has shown that Adam Smith defended commercial society on the grounds that its material benefits outweigh its moral deficiencies. But less emphasized has been his diagnosis of the ethical ills of market-based societies and the remedy he proposed to cure these deficiencies. My book argues that his normative remedy is to be found in the revisions he made to his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" after publishing the "Wealth of Nations." In particular, his new study of the "character of virtue," I claim, was intended to promote within modernity a recovery of the classical ethical virtues of prudence, magnanimity and beneficence, the virtues that Smith considered threatened by commercial society yet necessary for its ennoblement. |