ABSTRACT This paper has three main aims. First, to make good on recent suggestions that Adam Smith offers a genealogy of the origins of religious belief. This is done by offering a systematic reconstruction of his account of religion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, demonstrating that Smith there offers a naturalised account of religious belief, whilst studiously avoiding committing himself to the truth of any such belief. Second, I seek to bring out that Smith was ultimately less interested in (...) the truth of religious beliefs than in evaluating and understanding the place of religion in healthy ethical living. Third, I put Smith’s account into contrast with the more famous treatment offered by Nietzsche (as well as Bernard Williams’s later, Nietzschean, reflections), and suggest that Smith offers us the more plausible picture of both religion and morality, a finding of both historical and contemporary philosophical import. (shrink)

This study examines the leading early nineteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Dugald Stewart’s discussion of the origin and development of religion. Stewart developed his account in his final work, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828), in an effort to show that the fact that polytheism was the first religion of humankind does not undermine the truth of monotheism. He wrote in response to similar discussions presented in David Hume’s “Natural History of Religion” (1757), which argued for (...) the primacy of polytheism, and Stewart’s old moral philosophy tutor Adam Ferguson’s Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), which argued for the primacy of monotheism. Stewart accepted the conclusions of the Scots’ enlightened study of religion, which argued for truth of Hume’s account, but aimed to reassert many of the natural theological arguments about the naturalness of religion that the “Natural History” had challenged. Stewart’s discussion acts as a useful way by which we can assess the achievement of the literati’s study of religion. (shrink)

It has been claimed that Adam Smith, like David Hume, has a ‘reflective endorsement’ account of the authority of morality. On such a view, our moral faculties and notions are justified insofar as they pass reflective scrutiny. But Smith's moral philosophy, unlike Hume's, is also peppered with references to God, to divine law, and to our being ‘set up’ in a specific way so as to best attain what is good and useful for us. This language suggests that there is (...) another strategy available for accounting for the authority of morality, one that would align Smith with teleological accounts of human nature and theological accounts of morality. The authority of Smith's impartial spectator would, on such an account, be derivative – it would be derived from the supreme authority of God. Such a view poses a serious challenge for contemporary interpreters of Smith who seek to read him as an empiricist, naturalist, and sentimentalist moral philosopher. This paper examines the textual evidence for this view, focusing on the role of the explicitly religious language found in a key section of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that this language should neither be interpreted as merely ornamental, nor as providing a theological justification of morality. Rather, it is part of Smith's illustration of the psychological influence of religious beliefs, especially the beliefs in an all-seeing judge and in a just afterlife where all human actions will be accounted for and appropriately rewarded or punished. (shrink)

This essay analyses the ethical importance and religious implications of ‘the man within’ in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. Not introduced until the second edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, ‘the man within’ appears as the internalization of the impartial spectator. With the invention of the man within, Smith was able to explain how moral agents pursue virtues and behave morally beyond immediate and quotidian concerns with either praises or blames from society. Having complied with the general dictates of the impartial (...) spectator with conscience, humans become morally autonomous individuals whose moral judgements are derived from constant dialogues with the man within in an ethical microcosm within their breasts. The man within possesses a transcendent nature that preempts social judgements. Because of that transcendent nature, Smith also denominated the man within as ‘the substitute of Deity’. This essay also argues that even conscientious and virtuous individuals can be wronged and misjudged by socie... (shrink)