Das Adam Smith Professor Problem

Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Footnotes are below the fold.) “On the surface, Adam Smith’s years in academia are not all that mysterious. After all, we know that this pivotal chapter in his life began in January of 1751, when Smith was appointed Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasgow – then known as the College of Glasgow or ‘the College'[1] — and that it ended in January 1764, when he went overseas to France with the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. In all, Smith was a professor at Glasgow for 13 years, which the Scottish philosopher himself once described ‘as by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period’ of his life.[2] It was also during this time that Smith wrote his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, and was awarded a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree in the fall of 1762. “What is…