IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v19y2012i1p1-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adam Smith on thumos and irrational economic ‘man’

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa Hill

Abstract

The classical origins of Adam Smith's use of the concept of thumos within his social and economic psychology has escaped notice by scholars of his thought. This paper explores the antique provenance and character of thumos in Smith, establishes its dominant role within his social and economic system, and examines how it informed his attitudes to luxury, consumption and wages. The paper also seeks to resolve confusion created by Smith's apparent ambivalence about the irrationality and moral effects of thumos by recourse to his theodicy. In doing so, it shows that thumos -driven agents (unwittingly) sacrifice own utility to system utility.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa Hill, 2012. "Adam Smith on thumos and irrational economic ‘man’," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 1-22, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:1-22
    DOI: 10.1080/09672561003632550
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672561003632550
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09672561003632550?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristini, Hélène & Kauppinen-Räisänen, Hannele & Barthod-Prothade, Mireille & Woodside, Arch, 2017. "Toward a general theory of luxury: Advancing from workbench definitions and theoretical transformations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 101-107.
    2. Elazar, Yiftah, 2022. "Adam Smith and the Wealth-Worshipping Spectator," OSF Preprints j5pt6, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:1-22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.