Sarah Skwire on Adam Smith and Grief

The Great Antidote

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Adam Smith was a man who read the Stoics. He liked them, too, talking them up in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, particularly in the section on grief.

Then he lost two of his closest relations (old timey, right?), David Hume and his mother. These world-shaking events caused him to reevaluate what he said about grief in TMS and change our interpretation of his commentary on grief.
So what did he say about grief before, and how did the actual experience of grief change his mind? How does grief work, and how do we get through hard times? How do art and philosophy play different roles in the human experience?
Today, I’m excited to welcome Liberty Fund’s Sarah Skwire back to the podcast. She is a Senior Program Officer there, and a resident scholar on people-who-thought-things-and-wrote-things. I truly enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too!

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