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Adam Smith’s Methodology: Imagination, Rhetoric, and Rene Descartes book cover

1st Edition

Adam Smith’s Methodology Imagination, Rhetoric, and Rene Descartes

By Jorge López Lloret Copyright 2027
208 Pages
by Routledge

Most previous studies of Adam Smith’s methodology, with a few exceptions, have placed considerable emphasis on the undeniable influence of Newtonian physics and Humean empiricism. This book argues that other sources are at least as important: Smith’s own didactic rhetoric and the methodological writings of René Descartes. Smith began his public life in 1748, lecturing on rhetoric in Edinburgh.... Read more

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. Introduction. Adam Smith and Rhetoric

2. Smith’s Connection to Descartes: Basic Evidence

3. Wonder: From Descartes to Smith

Case study 1: The Invisible Hand as an Effect of Wonder

4. Imagination as the Core of Smith’s Thought

Case Study 2: Instrumental Music and Philosophical Method

5. Smithian Method: Between Rhetorical Arrangement and Philosophical Methodology

Case Study 3: Language as Historical Machine

6. Conclusion: Smith as Global Rhetorician

Index

Biography

Jorge López Lloret is professor of Aesthetics and Arts Theory at the University of Seville (Spain). He is specialized in the philosophy and aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially the French and Scottish Enlightenment. He has published articles on Adam Smith, René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin. He has also translated into Spanish and critically edited Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres and Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages, from which the present investigation has emerged.

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