Editing Adam Smith (section)

==Personality and beliefs==

===Character===
[[File:AdamSmith1790b.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Smith by [[John Kay (caricaturist)|John Kay]], 1790|alt=A drawing of a man standing up, with one hand holding a cane and the other pointing at a book]]

Not much is known about Smith's personal views beyond what can be deduced from his published articles. His personal papers were destroyed after his death, per his request.<ref name="buchan 2006 88" /> He never married,<ref>{{harvnb|Buchan|2006|p=11}}</ref> and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before him.<ref>{{harvnb|Buchan|2006|p=134}}</ref>

Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".<ref>{{harvnb|Rae|1895|p=262}}</ref> He was known to talk to himself,<ref name="Bussing-Burks 2003 53" /> a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions.<ref name="skousen 2001 32">{{harvnb|Skousen|2001|p=32}}</ref> He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness,<ref name="Bussing-Burks 2003 53" /> and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study.<ref name="skousen 2001 32" /> According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a [[Tanning (leather)|tanning]] factory, and while discussing [[free trade]], Smith walked into a huge [[Tanning (leather)|tanning pit]] from which he needed help to escape.<ref name="Buchholz 14">{{harvnb|Buchholz|1999|p=14}}</ref> He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he had ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up {{convert|15|mi|km}} outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality.<ref name="skousen 2001 32" /><ref name="Buchholz 14" />

[[James Boswell]], who was a student of Smith's at Glasgow University, and later knew him at the [[The Club (Literary Club)|Literary Club]], says that Smith thought that speaking about his ideas in conversation might reduce the sale of his books, so his conversation was unimpressive. According to Boswell, he once told [[Joshua Reynolds|Sir Joshua Reynolds]], that "he made it a rule when in company never to talk of what he understood".<ref>Boswell's ''[[Life of Samuel Johnson]]'', 1780.</ref>

Smith has been alternatively described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment" and one whose "countenance was manly and agreeable".<ref name="Buchholz 1999 12" /><ref>{{harvnb|Ross|2010|p=330}}</ref> Smith is said to have acknowledged his looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books."<ref name="Buchholz 1999 12" /> Smith rarely sat for portraits,<ref>{{cite book |last=Stewart |first=Dugald |title=The Works of Adam Smith: With An Account of His Life and Writings |publisher=Henry G. Bohn |location=London |year=1853 |page=lxix |oclc=3226570 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FbYCAAAAYAAJ |no-pp=true |access-date=13 May 2020 |archive-date=13 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200613114606/https://books.google.com/books?id=FbYCAAAAYAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> so almost all depictions of him created during his lifetime were drawn from memory. The best-known portraits of Smith are the profile by [[James Tassie]] and two [[etching]]s by [[John Kay (caricaturist)|John Kay]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rae|1895|pp=376–377}}</ref> The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th-century reprints of ''The Wealth of Nations'' were based largely on Tassie's medallion.<ref>{{harvnb|Bonar|1894|p=xxi}}</ref>

===Religious views===
Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Smith's religious views. His father had shown a strong interest in Christianity and belonged to the moderate wing of the [[Church of Scotland]],<ref>{{harvnb|Ross|1995|p=15}}</ref> and the fact that he received the Snell Exhibition suggests that he may have gone to Oxford with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church of England.<ref>{{cite journal|date=24 July 1790|title=Times obituary of Adam Smith|url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1790/Obituary/Adam_Smith|journal=[[The Times]]|access-date=24 October 2012|archive-date=10 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130510035102/http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1790/Obituary/Adam_Smith|url-status=live}}</ref>

Anglo-American economist [[Ronald Coase]] challenged the view that Smith was a [[deist]], based on the fact that Smith's writings never explicitly invoke God as an explanation of the harmonies of the natural or the human worlds.<ref name="Coase">{{harvnb|Coase|1976|pp=529–546}}</ref> According to Coase, though Smith does sometimes refer to the "[[Great Architect of the Universe]]", later scholars such as [[Jacob Viner]] have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God",<ref name="Coase-God">{{harvnb|Coase|1976|p=538}}</ref> a belief for which Coase finds little evidence in passages such as the one in the ''Wealth of Nations'' in which Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the "great phenomena of nature", such as "the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals", has led men to "enquire into their causes", and that "superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them, from more familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with than the agency of the gods".<ref name="Coase-God" /> Some authors argue that Smith's social and economic philosophy is inherently theological and that his entire model of social order is logically dependent on the notion of God's action in nature.<ref name="hidden theology">{{cite journal |last1=Hill |first1=L. |doi=10.1080/713765225 |title=The hidden theology of Adam Smith |journal=The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought |volume=8 |pages=1–29 |year=2001 |s2cid=154571991 }}</ref> Brendan Long argues that Smith was a [[Theism|theist]],<ref>{{Citation |last=Long |first=Brendan |editor-first1=Vivienne |editor-last1=Brown |title=Adam Smith's natural theology of society |date=2006 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203966365-10/adam-smith-natural-theology-society-brendan-long |work=The Adam Smith Review |volume=2 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9780203966365 |isbn=978-0-203-96636-5 |access-date=31 May 2022}}</ref> whereas according to professor Gavin Kennedy, Smith was "in some sense" a Christian.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=Gavin |date=2011 |title=The Hidden Adam Smith In His Alleged Theology |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-history-of-economic-thought/article/abs/hidden-adam-smith-in-his-alleged-theology/5A697C438BD0D7C1716C0E5CD85BF475 |journal=Journal of the History of Economic Thought |language=en |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=385–402 |doi=10.1017/S1053837211000204 |s2cid=154779976 |issn=1469-9656}}</ref>

Smith was also a close friend of [[David Hume]], who, despite [[David Hume#Religious views|debate about his religious views in modern scholarship]], was commonly characterised in his own time as an [[atheist]].<ref name="hume on religion">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/ |title=Hume on Religion |encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |access-date=26 May 2008 |archive-date=15 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180915103209/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The publication in 1777 of Smith's letter to [[William Strahan (publisher)|William Strahan]], in which he described Hume's courage in the face of death in spite of his irreligiosity, attracted considerable controversy.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Eric Schliesser |year=2003 |journal=Hume Studies |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=327–362 |title=The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher: Adam Smith's Reflections on Hume's Life |doi=10.1353/hms.2003.a383343 |s2cid=170901056 |url=http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v29n2/schliesser/schliesser-v29n2.pdf |access-date=27 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120607171230/http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v29n2/schliesser/schliesser-v29n2.pdf |archive-date=7 June 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>