This year is being celebrated as the tercentenary of the birth of Adam Smith, one of the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment. A polymath, he was both a philosopher and an economist and is widely regarded as ‘the Father of Economics’.
While for Smith a nation‘s economic state helps define its social and political structures, he categorically stated that the moral character of a people is the ultimate measure of their humanity. Smith offers models for how people should treat themselves and others. A blue-print of a just society was also offered by him in which the society concerns itself with its least well-off members, not just those with economic success. He had great belief in free market, yet in this system he did not want to see human beings merely as homo economicus