Historians Interpretation of Adam Smith History essay
In this series I criticized Herbert Butterfield's discussion of “the whig interpretation of history” as unfair and inaccurate. The leading classical liberal historians, I argued, did not follow the progress of freedom in the linear, simplistic manner that Butterfield attributed to them. Three generations ago, intellectual historians wrote books that considered central texts and intellectual figures as the most important figures. sources of whole thought bodies. The metaphors of 'influence' and 'origin' were common specific arguments associated with those texts, and thinkers were thought to shape and create traditions of thought..