While recognizing the fundamental importance of capital, labor, and the production of surplus value, Adam Smith and Karl Marx both struggle with existential questions about what it means to be human and about the nature of human flourishing.  Urgent questions erupt from their economic and historical models which both complicate and elucidate the elementary assumptions of each.  This talk will focus on unearthing those questions and examining their implications for our understanding of each author and of their impact on the development of political and social thought.  The talk will pay special attention to the coherence and continuities between the two thinkers.