Political Economy as Moral Philosophy: Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh (original) (raw)

I Dugald Stewart was professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh during t h c last decade of the eighteenth century and the first decade of t h e nineteenth. H e was also the first professor t o dclivera highly popular and influential course oflectures on political economy at any British university. Both J a c o b Hullander (1927) and James have emphasized the importance of these lectures. which were delivered between 1798 and 1808, in propagating Smithian political economy.' Even if W E consider Stewart as a n unoriginal expositor of the Wealth of Nations, it is surprising. in view of the considerable attention paid to the spread of Adam Smith's ideas, that n o detailed study of these lectures has been made. However. recent research has cast doubt on t h e speed with which Smithian ideas came to dominate British economic thought . In view of Stewart's authoritative position at a time when the ideas of Adam Smith. Sir James Stcuart and the Physiocrats were all jostling for supremacy. his lectures deserve scrutiny. More recently, it has been claimed that Stewart's offering a separate course of lectures o n political economy served t o make political economy independent of Moral philosophy' (Berg 1980. Whether o r not such independence was intended by Stewart has not however been queried.