Abstract

Adam Smith published Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and in addition authorized some essays to be published posthumously. Among the works that Smith had planned to complete during his lifetime was a theory of jurisprudence, but just prior to his death he ordered his unfinished manuscripts destroyed, including all notes to his work on jurisprudence. ;More than 100 years after his death, in 1895, a set of lecture notes from Smith's course on jurisprudence delivered at Glasgow University in 1763-4 was discovered and published. In 1958, a second, more extensive bet of notes was found from the course that Smith taught in 1762-3; an edited version appeared in 1978. Smith himself stressed the importance of this work during his career, and just before he died. Lectures on Jurisprudence has commanded some attention by scholars, but few efforts have been made to determine the relationship between it and the other published works, and its effect on understanding Smith's work as a whole. The period from which they come is indeed an important one as their delivery occurred in the intervening years between the publication of his two great works. ;A biographical sketch in the first chapter places Lectures on Jurisprudence within the larger context of Smith's teaching and writing. The presentation and summary of Lectures on Jurisprudence in the second chapter allow for some tentative conclusions about Smith's anticipated work. The themes of property and justice are used in the third chapter to determine if Lectures on Jurisprudence enhances the reading of Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations and if the three works can be read as a whole. The last chapter responds in the affirmative to the primary question guiding the dissertation, Does the work on jurisprudence serve to unify the thought and writings of Smith? ;A study of Lectures on Jurisprudence provides a broader foundation from which to judge Smith's works and encourages consideration of them in the larger tradition of political philosophy. The conclusion of the last chapter addresses Smith's contributions to political philosophy