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: Well, Adam Smith was one of the foremost thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, which is entangled in the great all-encomping era known as the Enlightenment. Unlike the English & French especially and other "Enlightenment" thinkers, the Scottish thinkers [most notably Smith, Hume, Ferguson, Hutcheson, Kames, and others], argued against the idea of the social contract of Hobbes and Rousseau. They believed in Locke's "tabula rasa" -- the idea that man was innately a blank slate that then was formed by his experiences -- and also they were greatly influenced by Newton and his scientific approach. So they gathered and used "empirical" evidence, to find what was universal in man. Hume had great theories on causality, etc. which are important to their process, but briefly, they found that man had always been and is naturally and universally, social. So the social contractarian's ideas of government being established by the mutual coming together of innately independent and anitsocial people to protect them against death and provide for survival. The "state of nature" talked about by the social contractarians, was absurd to the Scottish thinkers, as their data had proven man had always been social and also since political legitimacy could not originate in violence and usurpation, it must begin in a "social compact," Hume refuted this by stating that ALL nation's originated in bloodshed and usurpation and that it was only time alone that would dull the wound and make people forget their government's beginnings and focus rather on the institutions. : Since for the Scottish man was social, the universal traits of man were: instincts/pions, friendship, loyalty, self-interest, ambition, fellowship, etc. Also, what was found to be universal was the 4 stages thesis which was the progressional/evolutional process of society -- 1st stage - hunting/gathering : 2nd stage - herding : 3rd stage - farming : 4th stage - commerce : at the same time the 3-level process of complexity of ideas is : 1st stage - savagery : 2nd stage - barbarism : 3rd stage - civilization : these are interlinked and simultaneous. the idea being that as the ideas of private property/property relations grow more complex from purely what is "in possession" in the beginning; to the symbolic branding of cattle in the herding stage; the "alienation of land" by the inception of wills and hereditary possession; and to the idea of "credit" in the commercial age. So, as property relations grow more complex, the ideas of these more evolved people are more abstract and complex. The Scottish believe that this process is linear progress and that commercial civilized society is a great improvement to the stages before for various reasons. These ideas were the ideas that Adam Smith believed in and helped to create. "Wealth of Nations" was viewed by Smith himself to be necessarily read with "Theory on Moral Sentiments" a book written a little earlier, where more focus is given on the process of judging a fellow human being, or morality, that man goes through universally. Then in that text he looks at what he considers to be virtues and justice. The idea os "spontaneous generation of order" the completely original and solely Scottish Enlightenment notion and the way overused "invisible hand" of Adam Smith are linked to each other. The idea that Adam Smith believed in greedy, avaricious pursuit of narrow self-interest, is really quite wrong. This interpretation does not really see his pages on why man works so hard to gain more money out of his desire to be noticed and accepted by his fellow man. And that in the end toward his death man would realize that money does not make one happy once they get it, and so everything they had strived for in their life was worthless and that they had wasted their life. This doesn't soudn like the best liberitarian argument. Anyways, Smith was a Professor of Morality, in Scotland and his works are part of and directly inflenced by the Socttish Enlightenment thinkers and their refutations of the idea of the "social contract" of Hobbes, Locke and later Rousseau, but are also taking on Locke's "tabula rasa" and some of his ideas of private property, etc. : Hope this helps. email me if you have questions or whatever.

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