Thought
I have found that Smith’s balanced judgement on the desire for wealth and greatness in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he explains that this desire is not necessarily a vice, led him to make the central assumption of The Wealth of Nations, which says that the motivation to better one’s own condition is positive and natural for humans, and this assumption allowed him to present the positive consequences of self-interested behavior for society. My essay is an attempt to present how certain insights from The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be used to trace the origin and better understand the context of some concepts in The Wealth of Nations.
