There is a long and tortuous history of misinterpreting Smithian social theory. After rehearsing that history we offer here a way of understanding Smith that, unlike much of recent revisionist Smith scholarship, does not further add to this confusion. Our proposal is to understand the relation between moral and economic behaviour in Smith as analogous to the way in which Habermas makes strategic (and normatively oriented) behaviour parasitic on a more basic communicative competence. Given this analogy, it is ironic that Habermas's own understanding of Smith's theory also leaves much to be desired.
Avio, K.L. and Pegler, S. (1997) `On a Correspondence between Habermasian Ethics and Smithian Sentiments', Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology15: 139-73.
2.
Brown, V. (1994) Adam Smith's Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience. London: Routledge.
3.
D'Entreves, M. P. and Benhabib, S., eds (1996) Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on the Philosophical Discourses of Modernity . Cambridge: Polity Press.
4.
Durkheim, E. (1972) Selected Writings, ed. A. Giddens.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
Durkheim, E. (1982) The Rules of Sociological Method [1895] and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, ed. S. Lukes.London: Macmillan.
6.
Fleischacker, S. (1996) `Values Behind the Market: Kant's Response to the Wealth of Nations', History of Political ThoughtXVII(3) (Autumn): 379-407.
7.
Foucault, M. (1989) The Order of Things, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Routledge.
8.
Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. F. G. Lawrence. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
9.
Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalisation of Society, trans. T. McCarthy. London: Heinemann.
10.
Hume, D. (1973[1739]) A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. with an analytical index by L. A. Selby-Bigge.Oxford: Clarendon Press.
11.
Montes, L. (2003) `Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins, the Stages of the Current Debate, and One Implication for Our Understanding of Sympathy' , Journal of the History of Economic Thought25(1): 63-90.
12.
Otteson, J.R. (2002) Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Raphael, D. D., ed. (1969) British Moralists. Oxford: Clarendon Press .
14.
Smith, A. (1976[1759]) The Theory of Moral Sentiments , ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15.
Smith, A. (1984[1776]) The Wealth of Nations. Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin Books.
16.
Stephen, L. (1991[1876]) History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquarian Books.
17.
Wilson, D. and Dixon, W. (2004) `The Irreducibly Social Self in Classical Economy: Adam Smith Meets G. H. Mead', History of Economics Review42 (Summer): 121-36.
18.
Wilson, D. and Dixon, W. (2008) `A Contribution to the Critique of Economic Theory: Homo Economicus Meets G. H. Mead', The American Journal of Economics and Sociology67(2): 241-63.
19.
Witztum, A. (1998) `A Study into Smith's Conception of the Human Character: Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited', History of Political Economy30(3): 489-513.
