Introduction: The New Science of Welfare and Happiness

Abstract

Adam Smith’s importance as a political thinker has been underestimated, due, in part, to the misplaced perception that his political project lacked coherence and even the belief that he evinced no interest in politics. A key aim of this book is to challenge those perceptions and show that Smith does have a politics but that it has been obscured by his attempts to make the art of governing less ideological, more social-scientific and, most of all, more productive of good effects. Although he showed some interest in conventional political science topics, his main concern was to reconfigure the art of governing according to a new set of methods, values and concerns. It is no use trying to read into the text what we ourselves might expect to discover but to try and allow Smith himself to come through. What he offers is a rich, subtle and original edifice well worth the trouble.