期刊名称：Reason Papers : A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies
印刷版ISSN：0363-1893
出版年度：2011
卷号：33
页码：95-101
出版社：Reason Papers
摘要：In Volume 32 of Reason Papers, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen examine Adam Smith‟s views regarding commerce and happiness, making extensive reference to my earlier article on the subject.1 The editors kindly invited me to respond to Den Uyl and Rasmussen, and I was very happy to accept because they raise some important questions that call for further discussion. I appreciate their generally sympathetic appraisal of my article, as well as their aspiration to show that Smith can be seen as a kind of forebear of the emerging literature on happiness or “subjective well-being” in economics, psychology, and other fields. In what follows I would like, first, to correct an important misinterpretation of my argument, and then to address an interesting (and thorny) question that Den Uyl and Rasmussen raise but that I did not take up in my article—namely, the question of whether the free market or the welfare state would be more likely to encourage happiness, given Smith‟s assumptions.
