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Preface - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 1 The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759]

Edition used:

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie, vol. I of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Preface

This is the first volume of a new edition of the works of Adam Smith undertaken by the University of Glasgow. In editing The Theory of Moral Sentiments we have received a great deal of help from the introduction and notes to Walther Eckstein’s German translation of the book, published in 1926. Dr. Eckstein kindly added one or two further facts in private correspondence and showed a warm interest in this project of the University of Glasgow. We were sad to learn of his death a few years ago.

We are indebted to a number of other scholars who have given us information or suggestions. They include the late H. B. Acton, W. R. Brock, J. C. Bryce, the late C. J. Fordyce, L. Davis Hammond, K. H. Hennings, Nicholas M. Hope, I. D. Lloyd–Jones, the late W. G. Maclagan, J. C. Maxwell, Ronald L. Meek, W. G. Moore, Ernest C. Mossner, Sylvia Raphael, James Ritchie, Ian Ross, Andrew S. Skinner, Peter Stein, David M. Walker, Derek A. Watts, and W. Gordon Wheeler. All of them were most generous in responding to questions, but a special word of appreciation is due to J. C. Bryce and Andrew Skinner.

D. D. Raphael is grateful to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and to the University Court of the University of Glasgow for enabling him to spend more time on editorial work, first as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls for six months in 1967–8, and then as the Stevenson Lecturer in Citizenship at Glasgow in the autumn of 1972.

He also wishes to thank Mrs. Anne S. Walker, his secretary at Glasgow University, and Miss Hilary Burgess, his secretary at Imperial College, for the care with which they have typed the editorial matter.

Appendix II, always intended for this edition, has been published previously, with some minor changes, as an article by D. D. Raphael under the title ‘Adam Smith and “the infection of David Hume’s society” ’, in Journal of the History of Ideas, xxx (1969), 225–48. (The article contained an error on p. 245, saying that Smith refers to Hume in TMS II.ii.1.5. The reference is in fact to Kames.)

D.D.R.

A.L.M.