Burke’s Nuanced Praise of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments:

'The Religious Character of Burke’s Notion of the Sublime in his Philosophical Enquiry'

Nobuhiko Nakazawa, Kansai University, Osaka, in Studies in Burke and His Time.

"The friendship between Adam Smith and Edmund Burke has attracted much scholarly attention; but the precise nature of any intellectual affinities and differences shared by these two great thinkers still remains difficult to determine, despite a considerable amount of previous research. In order to push the frontiers of research on this theme, this paper attempts a close examination of Burke’s praise for The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter, TMS), Smith’s first book, published in early 1759, with special reference to Burke’s aesthetic treatise published two years earlier, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (hereafter, Enquiry). [footnotes omitted]"

See Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 39 and (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 36.