Adam Smith on savages and philosophers
Sergio Cremaschi
The life of a savage, when we take a distant view of it seems to be a life either of profound
indolence, or of great and astonishing adventures; and both these qualities serve to render it
agreeable to the imagination (A. Smith 1756 12; emphasis added)
I. Overview
First, I try to reconstruct the issue of the image Adam Smith’s writings offer of savages: their beliefs, values,
mentality; I try to account for this image in terms of Adam Smith’s own views on the human mind, logical
processes, knowledge; I compare his account of logical processes followed by natural philosophers with his
reconstruction of the savage mind. Secondly, I explore then the following issues: how far his theory of the
life of the mind in terms of imagination accounts in basically the same way for science and lore, how far this
makes for a less ethnocentric than the one of most eighteenth-century philosophers, how far his view of
scientific thinking and of the savage mind is more sophisticated than various kinds of cheap relativism.
Thirdly, I propose my own interpretation of Adam Smith’s unwritten system of ideas as a post-skeptical
philosophy as a framework accounting for his view of philosophers as savages and of savages as
philosophers.
II. Savages and the principles of human nature
In the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries there was a sustained discussion on the New World (Gerbi 1955).
The point of the discussion is for us not too easy to grasp. It verged around issues as such as whether the
New World was better than the older, whether nature in that world was less corrupted, more vigorous,
closer to a primeval state than in the Old World, and finally whether Americans were better or worse than
the inhabitants of the old world. The main point to try to understand is that the New World was, for
European travellers, philosophers, theologians, not just one more geographical area outside Europe, or
better Christianity, but something totally different and difficult to locate within shared categories.
The more limited discussion about “savages” that took place among philosophers in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (Landucci 1972) was a development of the former controversy. Savages were those
populations of the New World that lived without Political Institutions and Property. Accordingly they were
all peoples in America except Mexicans and Peruvians. The open questions were whether they also lived
without Religion and Morality, and in case: i) what was the savages’ religion? ii) what kind of morality was
the savages’ morality?
Two important landmarks in the discussion were Montaigne’s sceptical-relativist view according to which
the savage and the civilized man were basically on the same level, both conditioned by different
circumstances and different customs, and Rousseau’s dialectical view of savage state and civilization,
according to which the savage enjoys the missed blessing of primeval ‘innocence’ (different from goodness,
not to mention ‘nobility’ that show up in late nineteenth-century polemical reconstructions of Rousseau’s
original stance. Rousseau will provide one important starting-point for Adam Smith’s elaboration. Let me
recall that in the Letter to the Edinburgh Review he translates three long passages from Rousseau precisely
on savages.
One of Adam Smith’s lasting contributions has been the working out of “conjectural histories” of the origins
and development of various institutions, whose method and approach were described by Dugald Stewart
as follows:
when different theoretical histories are proposed by different writers, of the progress of the human mind in any one
line of exertion, these theories are not always to be understood as standing in opposition to each other. If the
progress delineated in all of them be plausible, it is possible at least, that they may have all been realized… but
whether they have been realized or not is of little consequence. In most cases it is of more importance to ascertain
the progress that is most simple, than the progress that is most agreeable to fact (Stewart 1795, II.56).
The four-stages theory is the core of the abovementioned approach. Its basic idea is that changing
conditions in the production of subsistence are the decisive factor making for different responses by
human beings. That is, human nature is assumed to be constant, customs are assumed to be variable, but
not randomly, and not just depending on socio-cultural conditioning. Instead, different institutions are
developed according to what is made possible by material life conditions (e.g., hunters cannot live in
groups greater than a few dozen individuals and need to be nomadic because they depend on game for
subsistence). Different attitudes are developed according to what conditions of life allow for developing
(e.g., savages cannot develop as much sympathy as the Europeans because they live in greater isolation).
Human nature in this approach is understood in a way somewhat different from both Scholastic
approaches and sceptical approaches where it is either invariable, fully known, and a basis for normativity,
or on the contrary unknown, variable randomly, and a direct basis for normativity (everybody is justified in
following the dictates of variable human nature). It is assumed instead to be constant and universal but not
fully known and accessible just in the way of general principles we are able to put forth as reasonable
enough hypotheses. Hume himself, far from being Adam Smith’s source of inspiration, is mistaken in so far
as no science of human nature can be worked out in a plausible way.
There is a tension is the four- stages theory. The evolution of modes of subsistence and law, institutions
and morality is in a sense an inevitable path. Besides, this evolution has made important net gains
available: a) better material conditions for the worst off; b) development of a few virtues; c) the possibility
of such institutions as allow for law, order and personal freedom. Yet, the savage state is also an alternative
to the civilized states, in so far as it displays greater development of other virtues, those centered on selfcommand, and a degree of political liberty that is impossible under the conditions of the commercial
society.
Language
One of Adam Smith’s conjectural histories was that of the origins of language. In Adam Smith’s view it has
arisen out of principles of human nature, but neither any individual language nor language as such are to be
identified with an “essential quality” of human nature itself. Thus, language is neither “natural” nor
“artificial” in any crude sense of the words. It e arises instead gradually out of a natural tendency of the
human imagination to associate things with words. In Considerations concerning the First Formation of
Languages he put forth the conjecture that first savages started associating certain sounds with certain
objects as a way of making their mutual wants intelligible to each other, and thus we may say that language
is based on association of things and sounds, or that the essence of language is a kind of one-to-one
correspondence between sound and object. According to such a conjecture, proper names came first; then
they began “to bestow the same name by which they had been accustomed to express the similar object
they were first acquainted with” (Smith 1761, 1), by similarity and then antonomasia; and the general rule
would establish itself insensibly, and by slow degrees, in consequence of that love of analogy and similarity
of sound, which is the foundation of by far the greater part of the rules of grammar (Smith 1761, 16).
Languages evolved gradually, as a result of unintended small changes, and their evolution led both to
growing complexity in some aspects, and to simplification in others. In the beginning, not unlike what
happened with the shift from ideographic to phonetic systems of writing,
men seem to have attempted to express every particular event, which they had occasion to take notice of, by a
particular word, which expressed at once the whole of hat event. But as the number of words must, in this case, have
become really infinite […] men found themselves partly compelled by necessity, and partly conducted by nature, to
divide every event into what may be called its metaphysical elements […] The expression of every particular event,
became in this manner more intricate and complex, but the whole system of the language became more coherent,
more connected, more easily retained and comprehended (Smith 1761, 30).
The same happened with language as with mechanical engines. All machines are generally, when first
invented, extremely complex in their principles, and there is often a particular principle of motion for every
particular movement which is intended they should perform […] the machine becomes gradually more and
more simple, and produces its effects with fewer wheels, and fewer principles of motion (Smith 1761, 41).
Barter and money
Adam Smith worked out an account of the origins of money by a similar exercise in conjectural history.
According to such an account, money is assumed to have taken shape, by way of unintended results, out of
a transformation of the practice of barter. At the root of such a practice and its ensuing transformations
there are a few basic tendencies of human nature, namely:
a) a desire to persuade that is what originates exchange as such;
b) a natural tendency to associate signs with phenomena, the same tendency that lies at the root of
language;
c) a natural tendency to simplify;
d) one characteristic of human nature, prudence, that prompts hoarding, or creation of a reserve of some
useful commodity that may be exchanged with others when needed; but this tendency, when combined
with others, yields effects different from those originally meant by prudent men while hoarding.
Let us the description of the origin of barter and the division of labour in the LJ:
A savage who supports himself by hunting, having made some more arrows than he had occasion for, gives them in a
present to some of his companions, who in return give him some of the venison they have catched; and he at last
finding that by making arrows and giving them to his neighbour, as he happens to make them better than ordinary, he
can get more venison than by his own hunting, he lays it aside unless it be for his diversion, and becomes an arrow–
maker (Smith LJ [A] vi. 46-47).
This happens just occasionally among savages, while in civilized nations, it becomes the rule. But this is an
effect of the isolation in which the savage lives, due to the mode of subsistence that makes so that no more
than a few dozen individuals may live together. This is not the effect of any difference in “genius” among
the savage and the man in civilized nations. Instead the propensity out of which the practice of barter arises
may be safely enough assumed to be uniformly widespread among human beings. The “propensity to truck
and barter” is a result of the action of basic principles of the human nature such as “that principle to
persuade which so much prevails in human nature” (Smith, LJ [B] 221), or the “naturall inclination every
one has to persuade” because of which “every one is practising oratory on other thro the whole of his life. –
You are uneasy whenever one differs from you, and endeavour to persuade him to be of your mind”
(Smith, LJ [A] vi.56). He adds that
Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be
given; or whether, as it seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech,
it belongs not to the present subject to enquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals,
which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts (Smith 1776 II.ii.2).
Money is a simplified expression, indeed a summary, of those processes through which men, unlike
animals, who “cannot, as it were, bring them into the common stock and exchange their productions”
(Smith, LJ [B] 221) are able to help each other. Human beings are endowed with “that principle to
persuade which so much prevails in human nature” (Ibid.). Note that this is a uniform principle of human
nature. What is changing is instead the degree of development of “characters” among human beings. These
are similar at birth, but may come to differ from each other because of different occupations. Thus,
among savages there is there is always the greatest uniformity of characters (Smith, LJ (B) 221)
The disposition to barter” arises out of the propensity to persuade each other; it does not originate from
“different genius and talents”. It is doubtful instead “ if there is any such difference at all; at least it is far
less than we are aware of. Genius is more the effect of the division of labour than the latter of it” (Smith, LJ
(B) 220).
Among mankind, life is spent in the exercise of the power of persuasion, and accordingly “a ready method
of bargaining with each other must undoubtedly be obtained” (Smith, LJ (B) 222). Thus, apparently simple
acts such as those of barter or purchase, are the simplified outcome of a complex process: “The offering of
a shilling, which appears to us to have so plain and simple a meaning, is in reality offering an argument to
persuade one to do so and so as it is for his interest” (Smith, LJ (A) vi.56). And money is supposed then to
have developed along the same lines followed by the development of machines, languages, and theories,
that is, from complexity to simplicity.
Laws and government
In Smith's reconstruction of the genesis of political institutions that makes their forms dependent on the
evolution of the ways of subsistence. In the age of hunters the only possible form of social life is the small
village, for “it is impossible for a very great number to live together. As game is their only support they
would soon exhaust all that was within their reach” (Smith LJ (A) iv.36).
At most, “severall sets or tribes of this sort would agree to settle their villages as near as they could
conveniently, that they might be at hand to give on<e> another assistance and protection against the
common enemy” (Ib., 37). “This is the case in Africa, Asia, and America; every nation consists of an
association of different tribes or villages” (Ib.).
In the beginning there would be but little government, and this will be of a democratic nature: “a few temporary
exertions of the authority of the community will be sufficient for the few occasions of dispute which can occur.
Property, the grand fund of all dispute, is not then known. The individualls may sometimes quarrel where there is no
interest of either in question, as school boys will, and perhaps kill one another; but this will but rarely happen, and
when it does may be made up with the friends of the injured person […] by the interposition of the community” (Ib.,
19).
There would be “some men in each village who would preside in the affairs of it”. The choice of such men
would arise in a natural way from their superior strength as warriors. In a similar way, as soon as a
federation of villages would have spontaneously arisen, “so there would be some one who would have a
superior influence over the other chiefs and become in this manner a chief of chiefs, or king of kings” (Ib.,
37).
Later forms of government would arise spontaneously as soon as the changing way of subsistence would
make it possible for greater number to live together, as there will be more property than the game chased
in one day to protect, and systems of law, regular courts, and a system of taxation would arise out of the
original practices of settling disputes “by the interposition of the community” ruled by sympathetic
principles.
Explanation of phenomena of nature
The principles of the human mind account in a plausible way for the primitive´s beliefs, that is, polytheism.
This arises from naïve anthropomorphism that tends to sooth wonder caused by unexpected events by
feigning behind those events “invisible entities” or “invisible beings” acting in a way analogous to the one in
which human beings act.
Man, the only designing power with which they were acquainted, never acts but either to stop, or to alter the course,
which natural events would take, if left to themselves. Those other intelligent beings, whom they imagined, but knew
not, were naturally supposed to act in the same manner; not to employ themselves in supporting the ordinary course
of things, which went on of its own accord, but to stop, to thwart, and to disturb it (Smith, 1795, 48)
Now, some of the irregularities of nature are perfectly beautiful and agreeable. These, therefore, “from the
same impotence of mind, would be beheld with love and complacency, and even with transports gratitude;
for whatever is the cause of pleasure naturally excites our gratitude. A child caresses the fruit that is
agreeable to him, as it beats the stone that hurts him” (Smith, 1795, 48-9). But also as an effect of such
anthropomorphism, polytheistic belief was complemented with a view of the moral qualities of such
imaginary invisible entities as would be more consistent with our moral sentiments. Smith writes that
human beings
are naturally led to ascribe to those mysterious beings […] all their own sentiments and passions [...] They could not
fail, therefore, to ascribe to those beings, for the excellence of whose nature they still conceived the highest
admiration, those sentiments and qualities which are the great ornaments of humanity [...] These natural hopes and
fears, and suspicions, were propagated by sympathy, and confirmed by education; and the gods were universally
represented and believed to be the rewarders of humanity and mercy, and the avengers of perfidy and injustice
(Smith, 1759, III.i.v.4)
Polytheism is still morally rather crude, affording just a rudimentary idea of a divine moral authority, and
intellectually naive, consisting in imagining invisible entities behind unexpected phenomena, first among
them the invisible hand of Jupiter. Smith is even more critical of monotheism than of polytheism. The latter
is epistemologically unwarranted and morally rudimentary but the former is both epistemologically
unwarranted and morally inconsistent or repugnant. It is because of unwarranted belief of having grasped
the real connecting chains of nature that the Stoics and their fellow-monotheist can identify virtue with
apathy or with aesthetic identification with the eye of the Creator of the world, thus accepting evil in the
world instead of fighting it.
Morality
Morality, or better, different moralities have always been there in the history of human kind. They have no
deeper or more objective foundation than language, laws, ad money, but result from natural developments
from basic characteristic of human nature, that is, "all the rules “ of “Morality, when traced to their
foundation, turn out to be some principles of Common Sence which every one assents to" (Smith, LRBL,
i.133). They consist in sets or systems of rules, either rudimentary or quite unified and connected (on
occasions, for ex. with the ancient Stoics and the modern rationalist systems, even too much simplified and
connected) systems of rules. That is,
In every age and country of the world men must have attended to the characters, designs, and actions of one another,
and many reputable rules and maxims for the conduct of human life, must have been laid down and approved of by
common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise men, or those who fancied themselves such, would
naturally endeavour to increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to express their own
sense of what was either proper or improper conduct, sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what
are called the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophtegms, or wise sayings, like the Proverb
of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod (Smith 1776, V.i.f.25).
In TMS, part V ch. II, “Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon Moral Sentiments” Adam Smith put
forth as general distinction between the morality of civilized nations and that of savages. Note that it is not
an assertion of unconstrained relativism of the Montaigne kind but rather an assertion of a prevailing of
one out of two tendencies that are there, arising from unchanging human nature. Among civilized nations it
is “humanity” which prevails:
the virtues which are founded upon humanity are more cultivated than those which are founded upon self-denial and
the command of the passions (Smith 1759, V.2.8).
With savages it is the other way round. Self command is the the sovereign virtue. The savages’s “passions,
how furious and violent soever, are never permitted to disturb the serenity of his countenance or the
composure of his conduct and behaviour. The savages in North America, we are told, assume upon all
occasions the greatest indifference, and would think themselves degraded if they should ever appear in any
respect to be overcome, either by love, or grief, or resentment” (Smith 1759, V.2.20). The reason lies in
external circumstances and custom arising from them. No difference in human nature is assumed.
Every savage undergoes a sort of Spartan discipline, and by the necessity of his situation is inured to every sort of
hardship. He is in continual danger: he is often exposed to the greatest extremities of hunger, and frequently dies of
pure want. His circumstances not only habituate him to every sort of distress, but teach him to give way to none of
the passions which that distress is apt to excite (Smith 1759 V.2.20).
The circumstances in which he lives are not such as to be able to exercise any sympathy for those who are
around him, for, before we can “feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves. If
our own misery pinches us very severely, we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbour” (Smith
1759 V.2.20). Thus, “whatever be the nature of his distress, expects no sympathy from those about him,
and disdains, upon that account, to expose himself, by allowing the least weakness to escape him” (Smith
1759 V.2.20). So that, when “a savage is made prisoner of war, and receives, as is usual, the sentence of
death from his conquerors, he hears it without expressing any emotion, and afterwards submits to the
most dreadful torments, without ever bemoaning himself, or discovering any other passion but contempt
of his enemies” (Smith 1759 V.2.20).
Even the “weakness of love, which is so much indulged in ages of humanity and politeness, is regarded
among savages as the most unpardonable effeminacy” (Smith 1759 V.2.20).
Such a prevalence of self command among savages, far from representing a debased condition of
humankind (but also, far from being an ideal state to be admired with unmixed feelings) represents one
end in a spectrum of possible options suggested by philosophy. The philosophy of the Stoics, admirable as it
is for its consistency and implausible as it is for its unavoidable paradoxes, is in a sense the moral
philosophy of the savages.
Every savage is said to prepare himself from his earliest youth for this dreadful end. He composes, for this purpose,
what they call the song of death, a song which he is to sing when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies, and is
expiring under the tortures which they inflict upon him. It consists of insults upon his tormentors, and expresses the
highest contempt of death and pain (Smith 1759 V.2.20).
Something similar is what the Stoic philosophy may afford:
As an American savage prepares his death-song [..] so a Grecian patriot or hero could not avoid frequently employing
his thoughts in considering what he ought both to suffer and to do in banishment, in captivity, when reduced to
slavery, when put to the torture, when brought to the scaffold. But the philosophers of all the different sects very
justly represented virtue; that is, wise, just, firm, and temperate conduct; not only as the most probable, but as the
certain and infallible road to happiness even in this life […] They endeavoured, therefore, to show that happiness was
either altogether, or at least in a great measure, independent of fortune; the Stoics, that it was so altogether
[…]though it should fail of success (Smith 1759, VII.2.32)
Adam Smith is far from a wholehearted admirer of the Stoic moral philosophy. On the contrary he proves
that it ends with a drastic paradox: the most impartial criteria for moral judgement with total lack of
motivation for moral action (Cremaschi 2010a).
But there is another and no less devastating paradox in the morality of humanity prevailing among polished
nations. “In general, the style of manners which takes place in any nation, may commonly upon the whole
be said to be that which is most suitable to its situation” (SMITH 1759 V.2.23).The exercise of sympathy
encouraged by life in communities on the one hand encourages development of a number of virtues, on
the other it brings about a kind of corruption that – and this is the worst – originates precisely from
sympathy, for this “heroic and unconquerable firmness, which the custom and education of his country
demand of every savage, is not required of those who are brought up to live in civilized societies” (Smith
1759 V.2.20). “Hardiness is the character most suitable to the circumstances of a savage; sensibility to
those of one who lives in a very civilized society. Even here, therefore, we cannot complain that the moral
sentiments of men are very grossly perverted” (Smith 1759 V.2.23). In a civilized society life is made safer
for everybody, property is protected and this has the positive effect of encouraging industry and leaving
everybody free to attend his own business. This results in a general growth of wealth so not, as illustrated
by a notorious paradox, the meanest manual labourer is better provided than the Kingdom of savages.
Besides, commerce carries “probity and punctuality” (Smith LJ, (B) 326). Yet, the minds of men are
contracted and rendered incapable of elevation, education is neglected, and any martial spirit is
extinguished (Smith LJ, (B) 328-33; cf. Cremaschi 2010b). Thus, neither the state of the savage nor that of
the civilized man may be declared morally better:
The hardiness demanded of savages diminishes their humanity; and, perhaps, the delicate sensibility required in
civilized nations sometimes destroys the masculine firmness of the character (Smith 1759 V.2.20).
The path going from more complexity to more simplicity was followed by the evolution of languages, of
machines and by the evolution of theories, as described in the History of Astronomy. But such evolution
does not unfailingly go toward the best in all respect. In fact, machines become simpler and more effective,
but languages lose on the one hand what they gain on the other, theories give us the impression of having
lifted the veil by which nature hides her secrets, but such an impression is not warranted (see Cremaschi
1981; 1984, ch.1; 1989), a regular system of laws and a limited government allow for peace, the growth of
opulence and the development of the arts and sciences, but bring with them lack of civic virtue and mental
mutilation of an important part of the population. The evolution of morality apparently followed an
ambivalent path: from the virtues of self command and lack of openness to the virtues of humanity and
sincerity; the former are admirable but somehow self-defeating, the latter are less admirable but more apt
to life in a civilized state, and yet they carry loss of manhood.
III. Philosophers as savages
The savage mind and the philosophical mind
At the origin of philosophical inquiries the essay puts three passions of the mind: wonder, surprise, and
admiration. Wonder is caused by what is new and singular, surprise by what is unexpected, admiration by
what is great and beautiful. As wonder and surprise are unpleasant sentiments, their elimination brings the
mind back into a state of ease, similar to that brought about by the sentiment of admiration. Pleasant
states are provoked in the mind also by discovery of resemblances between different things, as well as by
occurrence of an expected succession of appearances or by the discovery of analogy and resemblance
between appearances that at first used to appear to us as irregular and unconnected, surprise by what is
unexpected, admiration by what is great and beautiful. As wonder and surprise are unpleasant sentiments,
their elimination brings the mind back into a state of ease, similar to that brought about by the sentiment
of admiration. Pleasant states are provoked in the mind also by discovery of resemblances between
different things, as well as by occurrence of an expected succession of phenomena. All activities of the
mind, philosophical inquiries included, aim at avoiding unpleasant while producing pleasant states (Smith
1795, II.6-7). Every kind of classification and clustering, by which the human mind arranges the
phenomena, is based on a search for resemblances; both languages and philosophical categories, such as
those of substance or species, originated through a classification based on resemblance (Smith 1795, II.7).
"Philosophical" inquiries are originated by two different kinds of wonder: when we are unable to detect in
a phenomenon any resemblance with already familiar ones, or when a customary sequence is interrupted.
In the first case, individual objects may cause wonder, "by their uncommon qualities and singular
appearance" so that we are unable to decide to what category of things we should ascribe them.
Faced with an unusual object, the "philosopher" has to answer the question "to what does it resemble?". If
he does meet with success in finding a great number of objects that perfectly resemble it, wonder is, at
least partially, eliminated. If he does not, he must reform his classifications by broadening previously
formed classes or by creating new ones, so that he will be able at last to fit the object into some class
(Smith 1795, IV.8).
The second kind of wonder-producing situations is a more complex and interesting one, giving origin to
"theories" in a proper sense, instead of mere adjustments in systems of classification. In this case, objects
cause a feeling of wonder by contradicting the succession of phenomena that our imagination expects to
meet. A repeated experience of the succession of phenomena confers to the imagination the habit of
shifting from the conception of the former to the conception of the latter (Smith 1795, II.8; cf. Smith 1776
i.f.25-26).
The imagination "anticipates" a phenomenon, not unlike the senses of smell or of hearing, which
"anticipate" the presence of a tangible external object, or appetite (for example, sexual
appetite), which "anticipates" the means of its satisfaction. As the imagination moves more rapidly than
external objects, it is continually 'running' before them, and therefore anticipates, before it happens, every
event which falls out according to this ordinary course of things (Smith 1795, II.9; cf. IV.19).
If objects appear in the order in which the imagination is accustomed to expecting them, they "appear all
closely connected with one another (...) There is no break, no stop, no gap, no interval" (Smith 1795, II.9) .
If, on the contrary, an unexpected object appears instead of the expected one, the imagination feels
surprise and, then, wonder; it wonders how a given object could be in a particular location, and it feels
something like a gap" between two phenomena. Yet, the imagination is able to "fill the gap" by the fiction
of an invisible chain of events connecting both phenomena. With that chain the imagination makes the
shift from the former to the latter event easy and smooth. The more familiar the ideas employed as a
bridge, the easier the shift. For this reason, theories are built by transfer of already familiar principles to a
new domain.
Theories are "imaginary machines" built behind the scenes of the world-theatre as those who have been
admitted behind the scenes are no more surprised by the wonders of the opera-house, so mankind is no
more surprised when faced with phenomena like eclipses, as soon as it has discovered what lies behind
(Smith 1795, 1-4). Yet, there are cases for which no such explanation has been reached. In those cases
"even the vague hypotheses of Des Cartes, and the yet more indetermined notions of Aristotle" (Smith
1795a IV.19) are able to give the phenomena some coherence.
Post-scepticism, or a third way between relativism and ethnocentrism?
After Popkin’s work on the history of modern philosophy, and an important development by Schneewind
concerning the more limited field of modern ethics, the role of modern scepticism or neo-Phyrronianism in
modern philosophy has been clarified to an extent that was a few decades ago unconceivable. Hume, as it
is neatly stated by Norton (1993), was precisely one of those post-sceptical writers as far as he practised an
isolating strategy (see Burnyeat 1967) aimed at creating a protective belt against sceptical doubt: doubt is
justified but it is irrelevant in some domain, namely everyday life; the reason for that: it is true that belief is
all we have, but this implies that we do have something. In more detail, Hume’s strategy vis-à-vis scepticism
is isolation, distinguishing either between dogmatic scepticism and true scepticism, the one that can doubt
of its own doubts, or between subjects going beyond our cognitive faculties and subjects where at least
moral reasoning is plausible.
I would add that, while Hume was a post-sceptic, Smith was rather a post-sceptic. In general, that is, not
only on epistemology but also on government, commerce, and most of all religion, Smith is not so much
Hume’s follower – this has been one of the oversimplification in the post 1976 literature – as a critical
fellow-traveller. His theory of human nature is not so much a copy of Hume’s 1739 would be science of
human nature as a set of hypotheses or principles on original qualities of human nature that, yet, never
claim to the status of true and exhaustive descriptions of the original qualities of human nature itself . This
never-ended or ‘open’ status of Smith’s theory of human nature has to do with his own criticism of
Cartesianism. We never meet human nature in a void, we never see Adam in the Garden of Eden, and the
age of hunters is not a natural state, but just an “early and rude” one. This amounts to saying that human
nature is revealed as much in commercial society as in the stage of hunters, that those which are revealed
are just different aspects and there is no way to decide what is original and what occasional.
The philosopher as savage with a self-consciousness
Let us read Hume’s following frankly racist consideration:
I am apt to suspect the negroes [...] to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of
any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. NO ingenious
manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences (Hume 1741: 86 fn).
Why did Adam Smith manage constantly to avoid lapsing into such distasteful remarks? One answer might
be that he was more prudent, more critical than his older friend because he was in general less prone to
trust common sense such as it is, and had in mind instead a strategy according to which on the one hand
common sense is the only ground for our beliefs we are left with, but on the other common sense is not unamendable because there are a number of constraints which common sense has to undergo and these
provide a way of self-correcting common sense itself.
Adam Smith managed, after all, to stick to a view of the savage-civilized relationship that is neither naively
relativist nor ethnocentric . The reasons are probably that (a) he assumes human nature to be unchanging;
(b) but he does not claim he is able to know it in full; (c) and thus he is protected from the risk of identifying
it with the one we are familiar with; (d) he assimilates mental constructions by both savages and
philosophers to nothing more than creations of the imagination granting the civilized creations nothing
more than a greater amount of either complexity or connectedness or mental economy, but with the
proviso that on balance there may always be some loss to be contrasted with what is gained.
Two critical tasks are left for philosophers: i) showing how making one standard absolute is self-defeating
(and accordingly Stoics, proto-utilitarians and the like are wrong); ii) dismantling sophistry, that is doctrines
that want to immunize some kind of natural sentiments on behalf of selfishness, or bigotry, or vainglory.
This implies that the philosopher is in a position to warn us against the delusions of ethnocentrism but also
against the delusion of the imagination that may naively depict the life of a savage as “agreeable to the
imagination” (Smith 1756).
IV. General conclusions
1. On the state of nature. Adam Smith is neither a believer is the historical existence of a state of nature nor in
its goodness, or even less “nobility”, following the belief retrospectively ascribed to Rousseau by late
nineteenth-century British racist ethnography. Smith believes that the early and rude state of the age of
hunters is a phenomenon that may be found in America, and that it is not too far from what a mental
experiment would teach us about the life of a savage; the latter “genius” is not too different from that of a
“civilized” man; his different “character” depends on being faced with different circumstances. Thus the
state of nature does not provide a basis for normativity or a standard for judging the civilized state.
2. On relativism. Adam Smith is not a skeptic; he is consistently a skeptical Newtonian, republican, virtue
theorist, Theist. Accordingly, the thrust of the argument in his own reduction of modern natural
philosophy, ethical theory, monotheist theology to “inventions of the imagination” (not unlike the
inventions by savages who imagine “invisible beings” acting behind uncommon phenomena), does not go in
the same direction as Montaigne and other sceptics. His overall stance is a kind of limited anti-realism
according to which we have no access to causal connections, ethical standards, God, the natural order of
society, but this is not enough for proving that any opinion is as good as any other.
3. On human nature. Adam Smith’s views may be consistently understood only when read as those of a postsceptical thinker, who concedes almost everything the sceptic contends for on human knowledge, human
rationality, and the deceptive character of human goods; he is a post-sceptical thinker also in his own
theory of human nature; that is, he is always working with a set of hypothetical “principles” of human
nature, which he does believe to be constant and universal enough, as far as savages do have roughly the
same “genius”, albeit not the same “character” as Europeans; on the other hand, we do not know the
“original qualities” of human nature and we are still working with reasonably corroborated general
principles;
4. On sympathy. Sympathy is not a moral virtue, and it is not the basis for one ethical standard. Sympathy is a
basic mechanism in social interaction powered by characteristics of human nature that we may assume to
be constant and universal. Sympathy is the source of both the moral refinement of civilized man but also of
his constantly pending corruption. The savage lacks sympathy not because he is a member of an inferior
race but because the circumstances in which he lives do not encourage its development. Also the Stoic
lacks sympathy for an opposite reason and the philosopher as such living a life of “retirement and
contemplation” is no viable social actor, a task for which persons “in the middling stations of life” and “in
the liberal professions” are the best candidates.
5. On civilization and corruption. Commercial society is a result of a process originating from a process
beginning with the rude and early state and following a somewhat pre-established path marked by
changing ways if subsistence plus the effects of sympathy powered by overcoming of the savage’s isolation.
This is not the conclusion of a triumphal march, as far as the order of commercial society is highly unstable,
its compulsory final stop is the stationary state, oppressive inequality rules. Yet it has carried benefits, in so
far as the condition of the poorest is better than that of the best off in previous societies and in so far as life
in a wider social context enacts sympathetic feelings, which provide the basis for the virtues of humanity.
But those benefits are not only precarious but also ambivalent as far as what is gained in terms of virtues of
humanity is lost in terms of virtues of self-command, and corruption of sympathetic sentiments is a
constant possibility arising precisely out of sympathy.
Political liberty is the grand ideal of the republican tradition, cherished by Rousseau. Adam Smith pays
attention to Rousseau’s concerns and has it clear in mind how far the development of civil freedom in
commercial society has gone with a waiver to political freedom. He has less faith in the possibility of
recovering any amount of the republican spirit than his follower Adam Ferguson (1767: 88-9) has, and yet
he is all the time (in 1776 and in 1790) aware of the fragility of the achievements reached in commercial
society and of the serious losses that have gone with such achievements. This is what I have named Adam
Smith’s “disenchanted republicanism”, a term that conveys much better than “liberalism” does, his own
view of the partial, unstable, and to a point tragic character of civilization.
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