More specifically concerning: adam smith
Citation (55)
18 June 2016, around 6.31.
on the best society…
tautologous (2)
24 December 2016, around 4.25.
These are by no means all of the books I read this year that I found enjoyable or good, but they are the ones that, when thinking back over the year, stood out to me as some of the better ones – or at least the ones that were the right books for me at […]
tædium
8 January 2017, around 5.31.
It has been unexpectedly cold, and on that particularly evening we were preparing for a very cold weekend, with frost and potentially snow. The puddles from recent rains had frozen, which is a rare thing – if I had a better memory, I could probably count on one hand the number of times this has […]
lying-before-us
10 January 2020, around 8.57.
William Orpen, ‘Group associated with the New English Art Club’ What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. —Francis Bacon, ‘Of Truth’ There was an odd passage in a woodworking memoir I read because I was taking the long way ’round in trying to think about craftsmanship. The woodworker had […]
human kindness, curdled
25 February 2021, around 5.23.
‘A plan of the cities of London and Westminster’, etc., by Johns Roque, Pine, and Pinney (ca. 1746) We disputed about some poems. Sheridan said that a man should not be a poet except he were excellent; for that to be a mediocris poeta was but a poor thing. I said I differed from him. […]
Adversaria (9)
31 December 2023, around 4.28.
An awareness of over-interpretation needn’t imply a kind of unattainable (and undesirable) objectivity, but rather a thoughtfully subjective approach, which does not involve second-guessing the artist. When content and materials are interpreted and combined in a balanced way, the result can be greater than the sum of its parts. A transformation of the given matter […]
3.i.2024
3 January 2024, around 7.40.
‘…all the passionate confidence of interested falsehood’ —Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, vol. 2, p. 82)
frost point
15 January 2024, around 11.36.
One cannot say that it is unseasonably cold, because it is winter and it should, after all, be cold, but it is unusually cold, to the point that the streets have been, for the past two days, uncommonly empty, except for dogs and their owners and (on Saturday) postal carriers. Going out without gloves leaves […]
all we like sheep
17 January 2024, around 4.17.
Our woollen manufacturers have been more successful than any other class of workmen, in persuading the legislature that the prosperity of the nation depended upon the success and extension of their particular business. They have not only obtained a monopoly against the consumers, by an absolute prohibition of importing woollen cloths from any foreign country; […]
Adversaria (10)
31 January 2024, around 4.56.
In a certain sense, I think that my writing gets along better with the features of digital presence than physical presence. That’s why I’m sometimes tempted to post texts online, because there they can enjoy a continuous existence and, at least to all appearances, remain oblivious to worldly travails. The joy of forgetting and persisting […]
conveniency
7 February 2024, around 10.19.
Drawing of the Apulian shepherd, Claude Lorrain (ca. 1657) There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are […]
tracings
11 February 2024, around 13.33.
In the course of his travels, he generally acquires some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application, […]
addendum
15 February 2024, around 11.20.
The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. —Adam Smith (…Wealth of Nations, vol. 2, p. 424) I […]
baggage
19 February 2024, around 8.49.
There is a bit in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments that I misremembered, misunderstood, or made up entirely, but the gist of it was that if one takes on one of a thinker’s ideas, one has to take on their entire system of thinking and being – the faults in their logic and the faults […]
viola
21 February 2024, around 13.40.
…But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called metaphysics. Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, […]
lability
26 February 2024, around 14.17.
It is surely now time that our rulers should either realize this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people; or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. —Adam Smith […]
roundabout
4 March 2024, around 9.40.
Far from being able to satisfy the yearning for immortality by trustfully throwing oneself upon the bosom of the Eternal by an immediate moral and religious act, the individual felt constrained to take a long and circuitous route. —Jacob Burckhardt (The Age of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas, p. 154) My major reading project […]
moth-eaten notions
5 May 2024, around 4.35.
Minerva and Arachne, engraving by Johann Wilhelm Baur (1641) …a garment becomes a real garment only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real house… —Marx (Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, p. 91) But truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a […]
gutsiness
12 August 2024, around 10.45.
…if we are to understand their world, we must try to project ourselves into minds very remote from our own and endowed with these unfamiliar powers. A world in which men naturally talk of the lip of a cup, the teeth of a rake, the mouth of a river, a neck of land, handfuls of […]