The idea usually expressed is that God accomplishes his purposes in history in spite of the intentions of human agents. As Viner stated in correspondence November 3, 1965, responding to questions from Alec Macfie about Smith’s personal faith “I am not really interested in Smith’s views re religion except as items of intellectual history to be analysed if at all for their logical character and their relevance to his thought on other matters”.Ĭommentators have speculated about where Smith might have picked up the invisible hand language-ranging from straightforward associations with divine hands in the Bible to Emma Rothschild’s ( 1994) suggestion that it could be bloody and invisible hand of Shakespeare's Macbeth.Ī recent thorough investigation of previous usage by the historian of science Peter Harrison ( 2011) shows that hidden and invisible hands were frequently discussed in sermons, devotional works and Biblical commentaries in the seventeenth century.

554), if correct, is about Smith's personal faith rather than the influence of theology in forming Smith's ideas, which was the more important question that interested Viner. Coase’s conclusion “it seems to me that Viner much exaggerates the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God” ( 1976, p. Two scholars who took up Viner's questions were Bitterman ( 1940), whose work reinforced Viner’s conclusions and Coase ( 1976) who disagreed. The Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton contains many kilograms of evidence of his pursuit. Two posthumously published works (Viner 1972, 1978) give some indication of Viner’s vast reading over subsequent decades as he pursued the question of the religious background of eighteenth century political economy. Jacob Viner, after writing his classic paper for the Chicago celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Wealth of Nations, published little else on the topic.

Adam smith invisible hand passage