On Moral Sentiments

The "Key Issues" series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. Each volume brings together some of the key responses to the works. This anthology brings together the reactions that greeted the publication of Adam Smith's major philosophical work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759). Spanning over 100 years of critical responses, the collection includes three different sections: the initial reply from Smith's friends David Hume, Edmund Burke and William Robertson; the opinions put forward by Smith's contemporaries, fellow Scots philosophers such as Lord Kames, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson or Dugald Stewart; and the later 19th-century views expressed by a new generation of philosophers.