Date of Award
Summer 8-12-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Eric Wilson
Second Advisor
Christie Hartley
Third Advisor
Sebastian Rand
Abstract
Adam Smith is often thought to be an unequivocal advocate of capitalism based on unfettered self-interest. Against this caricature, I argue that his attitudes towards commercial society are, in fact, more ambivalent. To ground this claim, I outline Smith’s account of ambition, a passion responsible for the dynamism of commercial economies but deleterious to individual happiness, and focus on the rhetoric Smith deploys in his portraits of three ambitious characters: the poor man’s son, the ambitious man, and the prudent man. Next, I challenge alternative interpretations. In particular, I contest Samuel Fleischacker’s view that Smith no longer sees ambition, motivated by vanity, as the driving force behind economic growth in commercial society by the time he writes the Wealth of Nations and, thus, is not meaningfully ambivalent. In the last section, I draw on recent work by Amelie Rorty to argue that Smith’s ambivalence towards commercial society is both appropriate and constructive.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/8684274
Recommended Citation
Pearsall, Zakary, "Adam Smith's Circle of Ambition." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2016.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/8684274
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