Taming Egoism: Adam Smith on Empathy, Imagination and Justice

Religion and Spirituality: Adam Smith versus J-J Rousseau

Adam Smith and J-J Rousseau share some common ground when it comes to religion, namely that they were born into  and educated in cultural contexts deeply shaped by Reformed Christianity. However, close consideration of their writings on religion reveal marked difference. This paper explores those differences and finds that Rousseau and Smith are radically at odds on this score. Smith has almost...

Adam Smith and Greed

Egoism, Empathy, and Self-Other Merging

Some philosophers and psychologists have evaluated psychological egoism against recent experimental work in social psychology. Dan Batson (1991; forthcoming), in particular, argues that empathy tends to induce genuinely altruistic motives in humans. However, some argue that there are egoistic explanations of the data which remain unscathed. I focus here on some recent criticisms based on the id...

Adam Smith , Behavioral

Adam Smith , Behavioral Economist