This week marks the birthday of Adam Smith, who was born on June 5, 1723, in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Although he is known as the founder of modern economic science, he was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and his first book, less known than later Research into the nature and causes of the wealth of nationswas engaged in something other than economics: Theory of moral feelings.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to visit Edinburgh because I already knew about Smith and his friendship with the philosopher David Hume, thanks to Dennis C. Rasmussen’s fantastic book (The Infidel and the Professor), where he describes one of the most productive friendships in recent history. Adam Smith’s grave is in Edinburgh’s Canongate churchyard, ten minutes’ walk from Hume’s grave. My surprise when I tried to conduct this unusual tour was that the locals I consulted did not know where the graves were. At the University of Glasgow, where Professor Smith taught, the 1967 building that bore his name was a dilapidated industrial-style structure. Since then, the University has approved the construction of a new building for its Adam Smith School of Business, which is due to open soon.

It was only in 2008 that the Adam Smith Institute in Edinburgh unveiled the main monument to the Scottish philosopher and economist in the city where he worked and lived. The statue stands on the Royal Mile, in front of the old market, looking back towards where he lived in Canongate and towards the harbor and sea.

Adam Smith’s grave is in the Canongate churchyard in Edinburgh.

Despite the fact that many cite the invisible hand theory, either to undermine or support an argument in some current debate, few have stopped to understand the counterpart of this idea. Adam Smith appreciated the human being as it is, he did not want to reshape it. He started from the modest assumption that we know too little to impose our will on another:

“The doctrinaire man (…) imagines himself to be very wise and is almost always so fascinated by the supposed beauty of his ideal political project that he does not support the slightest deviation from any part of it (…). He imagines that he can organize the various members of a large society with the same ease with which he arranges the pieces on a chessboard. He does not perceive that the chess pieces are devoid of any other moving principle than the one that the hand imprints on them, and that on the vast chessboard of human society each piece has its own moving principle, completely independent of the one that the law arbitrarily decides to impose on it. .

Smith recognized individual interest as the driving force of action in the work The Wealth of Nations, while in the work The Theory of Moral Sentiments he emphasized the following in the first line: “However selfish a man may be, it is evident that there are some principles in his nature which make him interested in happiness of others and make his happiness necessary, even though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. This is not a contradiction, but rather an acknowledgment of the complexity of humans, we are both selfish and compassionate towards others. (OR)