Does Commerce Make Us Trivial?
Adam Smith on Magnanimity
A Conversation With Justin Hawkins
12.00-1.30pm | Friday, February 14
Elm Library, 31 Whitney Avenue
Adam Smith is commonly thought to be the intellectual father of a system of economic life that prioritizes self-interest over virtue, competition over cooperation, and conformity over nobility. But attention to his version of magnanimity in the Theory of Moral Sentiments calls each of these assumptions into question. It turns out that Smith, in his later years, came to be wary of the commercial society he helped bring into existence.
Justin Hawkins is a postdoctoral research fellow in bioethics at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
This event is open to all members of the Yale community. Lunch will be served.
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It is almost a general rule that wherever manners are gentle there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, manners are gentle.
—Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws