Adam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of 'The Wealth of Nations' and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas have become icons of the modern world. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important.
This book reconstructs Smith's intellectual ancestry and formation. Above all it explains how far Smith's ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, David Hume.
