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Today’s reader recommended book is:

Central Notions of Smithian Liberalism by Daniel B Klein

Central Notions of Smithian Liberalism explores notions jural, political, and economic, focusing on Adam Smith and the liberalism he shared with David Hume and Edmund Burke.

Author Dan Klein does intellectual history as a way of theorizing—that is, to advance political theory, jural theory, moral theory, social theory, and economic theory. This book develops theories in engagement with these writers, who represent classical liberalism at its best—what is today aptly called conservative liberalism.

The chapters derive mostly from substantial articles previously published in scholarly journals, though revised. Chapters expound Smith’s tri-layered justice, liberty, jural dualism, Humean conventionalist political theory, and Smithian liberalism. A chapter written with Erik Matson, “Convention without Convening,” explains natural convention, transcending “nature” and “convention” and attesting to the place of Hume and Smith in natural law traditions and enlarging our understanding of those traditions. Another chapter asks and answers, “Is It Just to Pursue Honest Income?” Another exposits the conservative liberalism of Hume, Smith, and Burke. Another identifies four sets of nonconflating rules, namely (1) government law, (2) commutative justice, (3) ethics writ large, and (4) just government law.

Other chapters relate Smithian liberalism to: Iain McGilchrist’s concept of the divided brain; being grateful for without being grateful to; and the Export-Import Bank. The final chapter considers the fortunes of liberalism in relation to prevailing attitudes toward allegory and God.

You can buy the book here (Amazon link).

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