The article offers a foray into the life, work and influence of Adam Smith.

„Smith’s magnum opus is probably one of the most cited, least read, and most ideologically exploited books. Here it is emphasized that he was concerned with understanding the comprehensive socioeconomic transformation taking place before his eyes, the formation of a completely new kind of accumulation regime with an increasingly autonomous economic sphere, without lapsing apologetically into a market liberal fundamentalism in his analysis.

Smith stood in the tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment, which, in contrast to the continental European one, was primarily concerned not with positive knowledge but with skeptical questioning and controversial suggestions, which explains, among other things, his supposedly ambiguous theory of value. Furthermore, the differences and tensions of his main work are elaborated in comparison with his - more complex than often claimed - theory of moral feelings and his lectures on the theory of law.“ (H. Peukert)