Adam Smith’s curiosity continues to enlighten us—or at least those who understand his views

I’ve long thought that calling Adam Smith the father of economics seriously understates his significance. In some ways he was indeed the first economist, and The Wealth of Nations, published 250 years ago this week, was indeed the discipline’s seminal text. But his ambitions and insights extended so much further than the dismal science as now conceived.

In many ways, his modern followers, intent on narrowing and thereby desiccating the field, have let him down.The breadth of his thinking is hard for modern readers to grasp because his prose was ornately opaque even by the standards of his time. Scholars argue about what he really meant and didn’t mean—a literature that doesn’t rival the one dedicated to Karl Marx (who was much influenced by Smith) because nothing could, but which trundles on and shows no sign of exhausting the source material. Meantime, for non-specialists, Smith is simply an avatar of laissez-faire capitalism.

What a pity his legacy has come to this. The right way to mark the anniversary is to celebrate not only the works but also the remarkable intellectual temperament that produced them.I say ‘works’ because Smith conceived The Wealth of Nations as a companion to its predecessor, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and they need to be judged together. His critics have often said they’re at odds: one concerned with commerce and the machinery of economic progress, the other with the source of moral values; one dedicated to the power of self-interest and “greed is good,” the other to the roots of benevolence.