Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (review)

396 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY What is depressing about both the papers in this collection is the anxiety of the authors to return to a "respectable" ancestry for some seminal transformations in early-modern scientific thought. It is salutary to remind ourselves that suggestions of neo-Platonic influence on science once seemed as outrageous to those nurtured in a positivist tradition as those of Hermetic influences appear to our two authors. We must not surrender our duty to examine carefully and critically all such suggestions. It is possible to exaggerate the importance of the rediscovered Hermetic writings for the revival of natural-magical doctrines and to overlook late-medieval developments. But a timid overanxiety to expunge the taint of "Hermeticism" from early-modern scientific innovators is hardly likely to further our historical understanding of a very complex scene. P. M. RATTANSI University College, London Donald Winch. Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Pp. xi + ao4. $~.95, cloth; $6.95, paper. This is an excellent, historical account of Adam Smith's participation in the political life of his dines. What kind of a Whig was he? What was his attitude toward the American and French Revolutions? But it is also a careful analysis of his political philosophy and of his interest in the history of social changes, especially of the passing of agrarian society and classes, while the mercantile classes and interests were making progress and creating "modern civility." Unfortunately, this review of the book must be restricted to the philosophical and historical aspects of Adam Smith's politics. I begin by citing a few paragraphs in which the author summarizes the major facts and problems of these aspects: No less than Hume, Smith is engaged in "experimental" inquiry into the science of politics, making use of ordinary (i.e. not conjectural) historical material to provide evidence of regularity, or constant contingency in a world of apparent diversity and change. Liberty, dependence, power, and influencetake various forms, but there are also regular underlyingcontrapuntalrelationships between them which are not relative to the given state of society. They provide a foundation for the exercise of "scientific"judgement and advocacy by the philosopher. [Pp. 64-65] The transition from Hutcheson's System to Smith's Lectures involves a marked change of style from one that is predominantly normative to one that is more "experimental" and coolly historical--a transition which accords well with the normal picture of the shift towards "social science." Employing Smith's terminology, it is possible to describe the change as one in which Smith sides with "Nature" whereas Hutcheson relies on "reason and philosophy," provided that we bear in mind that Smith makes full use of the ambivalence of the word, "Nature" to cover both what can be explained and what can be morally justified. [P. 65] Hume was, Smith said, "the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of" the way in which "commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency on their superior." [P. 72] Smith's moderation, like that of Hume, is the result of an analysis derived from a philosophical position rather than a mere attitude of conservatism.... The role of moderate is a BOOK REVIEWS 397 political as well as philosophical one, and it is particularly important during "times of public discontent, faction, and disorder." The American dispute was such a period, and Smith's advice on that and other occasions can, I think, be construed as seeking to encourage the legislator at the expense of the politic.ian.[P. 17i] Smith's preoccupation with propriety in The Theoryof Moral Sentimentscould well be regarded as a philosophical examination of the social foundations of modern civility.... Smith does not share the passionate concern for the decline of active citizenship, that can be found, for example, in Ferguson. [P. 175] It was a fundamental tenet of Hume's politics that "in contrivingany system of government and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution,every man...