Guess Whose Birthday It Is?

Today, June 5, we celebrate the 283rd Birthday of Adam Smith, born in Kirkcaldy (pronounced kir-kawdy), Scotland, about 10 miles north of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth. 

Actually, the precise date of his birth is unrecorded and unknown, but we do know that he was baptized on June 5, so that has become his "received" birthday, as it were.

You may celebrate—or not, but that would be a grievous oversight—in your own way, but I choose today to remark upon the publication of a new book about his life and thoughts, reviewed in The Telegraph. (Yes, for those of you who've followed or will follow the links, the name of the book is different in the UK than the US; and if anyone from the publishing industry can tell me why "Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty" is preferred across the pond to "The Authentic Adam Smith:  His Life & Times" on this side, I'd be fascinated to hear from you.  Being completely promiscuous when it comes to all things Adam Smith, I'd buy the book were it titled, "What Adam Smith's Dog Had for Breakfast," but I digress.)

Amazon has this to say:

"The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) has been adopted by neoconservatives as the ideological father of unregulated business and small government. Politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promoted Smith's famous 1776 book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as the bible of laissez- faire economics. In this vigorous, crisp, and accessible book, James Buchan refutes much of what modern politicians and economists claim about Adam Smith and shows that, in fact, Smith transcends modern political categories."

Although I might not have put it in such a Manichean fashion (neoconservative = Thatcher/Reagan = unregulated business = laissez-faire), the publicist has a point, and it's the key insight into Adam Smith's thinking that I've always subscribed to:  He does, indeed, "transcend" categorization.

The Telegraph review makes the same point far more nicely:

"James Buchan's short, sharp biography makes a powerful case for thinking that, for Smith, these divisions [in his own thinking] were creatively enabling rather than self-canceling: they were what gave his writing its characteristic sense of balance and poise."

By and large, the Telegraph is laudatory, which is altogether fitting and proper for this June 5, 2006.

I leave you, gentle reader, with these two observations on this site's progenitor:  The reviewer describes Adam Smith's style as "modest, generous and urbane, with the occasional hint of wistfulness or acid," and sums up the book as "the perfect celebration of a man who did so much to alter modern economic thinking, and claimed towards the end of his life: "I meant to have done more." "

Happy Birthday.