Guerra-Pujol on Love or Liberty? A Short History of Adam Smith in Love @lawscholar

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida; Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, is publishing Love or Liberty? A Short History of Adam Smith in Love in Econ Journal Watch. Here is the abstract.

Who were Adam Smith’s lost loves, and how does the enigma of Smith’s love life inform his defense of personal and economic liberty? With a view toward systematizing the available evidence and extending the work of previous scholars, I will re-assemble all the admissible amorous evidence, subject such facts to critical scrutiny, and draw reasonable inferences from these sundry proofs. First, I will present four pieces of primary evidence regarding Adam Smith’s lost loves. Secondly, I will make several new conjectures and revisit several intriguing hypotheses concerning Doctor Smith’s sexuality and romantic attachments. Thirdly, I speculate about Smith’s adamant desire to have his private papers and correspondence destroyed upon his death and about the possibility of a lost travel diary from his Grand Tour of France, and lastly, I will consider two additional clues that may shed light on this amorous enigma. Specifically, I will revisit Adam Smith’s analysis of love and lust in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and I will conclude this paper by exploring the geographical dimension of Adam Smith’s enigmatic love life: the strict ecclesiastical regulation of sex in the Scotland of Doctor Smith’s youth.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.