Samuel Fleischacker

Friendship, he thinks, is the most important thing in human life.

So in these senses, he's not at all a believer that everyone should just do their own thing, that individuals are on their own.

He really sees us as enmeshed in a society and relating to other people.

Yes, and actually that goes with his life, where these books come from.

He was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow following his own teacher, Francis Hutchison, and he taught a year-long course which started with moral philosophy

Then went to philosophy of law.

He never published that part.

And that ended with a discussion of policy, mostly economic policy.

So he published the beginnings and the ends.

He published the moral philosophy as a theory of moral sentiments.

He published the economic stuff as the wealth of nations.

He didn't put in the law stuff in between, but he saw this all as one large project.

Mm-hmm.

And I think, I mean, among other things, if you do see the project as a whole, you realize, for one thing, why he doesn't want governments to run our lives morally.

That's also something that he, a core of truth in the libertarian view.

He didn't think governments should impose religion.

He didn't think they should give moral instruction.

And one reason for that is that he thought everyday social interaction with your friends and neighbors would do that better than government could ever do.

Exactly.

In fact, he spends a lot of time arguing against that.