The soul of modern economic man

by Milton L. Myers

Adam Smith's classic, The Wealth of Nations, is generally regarded as the source of modern economics, the first statement of the principles of laissez-faire and free market economics. In his own time, however, Smith was not the "first economist" but rather the end of a long line of moral philosophers. He offered an economic solution to a moral question: can individual self-interest be a constructive force for the collective welfare? In The Soul of Modern Economic Man, Milton L. Myers offers the first detailed account of the debate over the legitimacy of self-interest that had raged among the English literati from the time of Hobbes. His account will interest students of political and social philosophy as well as historians of economics.^ ^^The Wealth of Nations was the most influential and decisive reply to Hobbes's scathing indictment of self-interest in Leviathan, but Myers contends that the doctrine of free markets could not have been seriously considered if earlier writers had not