Adam Smith as a Scottish Philosopher

Abstract

Was Adam Smith a Scottish philosopher? The question seems an odd one. He was a philosopher and he was Scottish. What more could we need to know, in order to arrive at the simple answer ‘yes?’ And in any case, why does it matter? On reflection, however, neither the question nor the answer seems so simple, and both are more consequential than might be thought at first. Consider the case of David Hume. Hume was Scottish, and Hume was a philosopher, but at one time he was regularly excluded from the canon of ‘Scottish philosophy.’ The reason is not hard to find. For a century or more Scottish philosophy was especially identified with Thomas Reid, the founding figure of the Scottish School of Common Sense, a school that arose from sustained opposition to Hume. In The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense Selwyn Grave writes:

The philosophy of Common Sense became ‘the Scottish philosophy’ and schooled several generations of Scotsmen ... Its history in Scotland began at Aberdeen with Thomas Reid’s teaching at King’s College and his papers to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society.... The society, important both for the origin and expansion of the philosophy of Common Sense, was formed in 1758 and during its early years gravitated in a distant orbit round Hume ... Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, based on his papers to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society was published in 1764 ... The philosophy of Common Sense arose as an ‘answer’ to Hume. (Grave, 1961, pp. 1–4)

I am grateful to Sam Fleischacker for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.