Abstract

While Adam Smith develops a sophisticated account of the natural development of moral sentiments that denies the necessity of stringent religious or other moral indoctrination, he is aware of the limits of such sentiments in guaranteeing morality. Sympathy and the desire for the approval of others can, depending on the circumstances, lead either to conventional morality and social harmony or to the aggravation of political faction or religious zeal, depending on whose sympathy we seek. Even the love of virtue and the love of wisdom, when embodied in false religious or philosophical doctrines, are not immune to fanaticism. Our natural sociability, while more a more accurate understanding of human nature than the "selfish system of morals" of Hobbes, Locke, and Mandeville, turns out to be a mixed blessing. Nature or natural morality needs help. ;Similarly, while he develops a sophisticated account of the benefits of political and economic liberty, he is aware that such liberty requires substantial political prudence both to establish and maintain. Despite this understanding that nature needs human help, and his efforts to benefit mankind as a philosophic advisor to statesmen, he is also aware of the severe limits of philosophy, and particularly systematic political or economic philosophy. If it is systematic, it is simplistic and runs the danger of aggravating ideological fanaticism and generating harmful unintended consequences. If it avoids that danger, its moderation tends to guarantee its impotence. His system is thus an anti-system and relies on institutional changes that he hopes will indirectly promote a moderate politics largely free of religious and political fanaticism. ;Despite his reputation as a dogmatic systematizer, Smith is really a non-dogmatic skeptic. His attitude towards natural harmony and the human situation is neither Stoic resignation nor utopian hubris, neither the cynicism of Mandeville nor the romanticism of Rousseau. He thus displays a combination of superior prudence and skeptical humility. One may ask whether he does not also display more benevolence than more aggressive enlighteners, with their utopian imprudence and dogmatic skepticism.