Article: The Robert Heilbroner problem *.(Part I: Heilbroner's methodology)

1. THE PROBLEM

When historians and economists refer to the "Adam Smith problem" they mean the difficulty of reconciling the highly empathetic and socialized individual presented in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 with the asocial, self-interested individual Smith elaborated in The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. The difference between the two is so remarkable that Smith would seem to have forgotten his earlier and more complex conception of the individual in his later and most famous work on economic progress.

A comparable problem arises in interpreting the writings of Robert Heilbroner over the past 50 years. Heilbroner's ...

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