The pride of man, the vanity of the philosopher, the misfortune of the king

Join Professor Jacob T. Levy (McGill University) at King’s College London for a lecture on the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, during the year of his tercentenary. This lecture is supported by the University of Glasgow and funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Adam Smith’s work offers a profound and insightful account of pride, power worship, and the love of domination, which leads him through politically important discussions on topics ranging from race and slavery to imperialism to constitutional reform.

This lecture will offer a reading of Smith as a political scientist, one of the first real scholars of the modern state. It will argue that the cautious liberalism we find in Smith's politics, once we take seriously his arguments about power and domination, is one with important lessons for our own time.

The lecture will be followed by a reception.

Please note: The lecture will be taking place from 18.00 in the Anatomy Museum, located in the Strand building, at King's College London.

SPEAKER

Jacob T. Levy is an American political theorist and Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. He is the chair of the Department of Political Science at McGill, as well as the co-ordinator of McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the founding director of McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Jacob Levy is known for his expertise on multiculturalism, liberalism, and pluralism.