The Market into the Agora: The Deliberative Rhetoric in Adam Smith

Abstract

This paper aims to evince the need to interpret Adam Smith’s work from rhetorical theory. More specifically, to interpret The Wealth of Nations from deliberative rhetoric. To do this, it studies the origin of his theory of language, identifying and analyzing its sources from the catalog of his personal library, evincing that Smith didn’t deem language as an epistemic resource but as a collective means to build social reality through deliberation. This leads to the definition of The Wealth of nations as a text more rhetorically deliberative than scientifically Newtonian. The main conclusion revises the interpretation of Smith as only an apologist for the free market, proposing instead that his great work was constructed as a harmonious dialogue of multiples voices and views. From this derives, as second conclusion, the need to redefine the epistemological status of economic theory, that must be integrated as one more voice in the ever-recurring debate around the social construction of reality.