Hume, Wollstonecraft and Smith stand united in regarding modesty as a real virtue, one important for both the individual and society. They differ of course in the details. I present the details of the three accounts to find areas of agreement, and discuss the implications of the differences between them. My main aim will be to argue that combined, their views show us that modesty remains an...
As perceptive as Adam Smith was examining the society around him, he seems to have surprisingly little to say about women in the economic and in the private life. In the Wealth of Nations he dismisses women's work, both the wide range of domestic work and the laboring outside of home. In the Lectures of Jurisprudence women do have a role in the presentation of emergence and significance of the...
This paper proposes to reassess Smith’s historical analysis of the condition of women and slaves in LJ. Unfortunately, these sections have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Under the earliest form of marriage discussed by Smith, polygamy, ‘the wife is intirely the slave of the husband, and has no more interest in his affairs than any other slave’ (Smith, LJA, p. 160). In...
