Raising the curtain of The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's pins as didactic performance

Abstract

The premise of this paper is that Adam Smith was first a teacher and second an economist and writer. Set this, it aims to show that one of the causes of the remarkable success of The Wealth of Nations was the didactic rhetoric that the author put into practice in communicating his thoughts. It focuses on the well-known example of the manufacture of pins, previously not studied from this perspective, because of its important function as a proem to the work, place in which it is a priority to adapt to the imagination of students, listeners and readers, capturing their sympathy so that they wish to continue learning, listening and reading. After identifying the previous formulations of the example by other authors, it analyses the different versions provided by Smith, identifying in them three relevant levels from the point of view of education: visual, emotional and historical. In addition, it gives relevance to the didactic context of Scotland of his time and to the interconnection of Smith's different cultural interests, especially his connections with rhetoric. Its conclusion is that Smith based his didactic rhetoric on perspicuity and sympathy, building a teaching discourse, first, and textual, later, that created an immersive visual environment in which students, listeners and readers felt intuitively protagonists inside the conceptual world exposed (that of the new economic science) and, with this, agents of their own formative process, which has an undeniable topicality.