New Essays on Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy

10. Hume’s Death and Smith’s Philosophy 

Chad Flanders 195 Hume’s Death and Smith’s Philosophy Chad Flanders INTRODUCTION When Smith’s “Letter to Strahan” was published, it predictably drew fire for its blatant comparison of Hume to Socrates. Hume, Smith said, “approached the ideal of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit”. The letter to Strahan bears the weight of the comparison to Plato’s masterwork, the Phaedo: it is a finely wrought piece. Unsurprisingly, Smith’s letter has been mostly analyzed in terms of its praise for Hume, its literary content, and historical context, but not so much for its philosophy.1 Indeed, it is hard to see much philosophical content in it, apart from, perhaps, a recommendation of Hume’s philosophy to be inferred from its praise for Hume the man.2 The letter seems, at best, a fitting tribute to a dear friend of Smith’s, but has little real intellectual or philosophical content. But the idea that the letter is not worth studying as a philosophical document in its own right does not stand up to a close scrutiny. In his letter to Strahan, Smith was not merely paying tribute to his deceased friend, but engaging in a meditation on the worth of public opinion and the possibility of a legitimate sense of vanity about one’s own accomplishments.3 What has been less discussed, however, is the role Hume’s death played in the development of Smith’s own philosophy. In this essay, I broach the possibility that Hume’s death did not leave Smith’s philosophy unchanged and that ironically, as a result of the public reaction to Hume’s death (and also the public reaction to Smith’s letter in praise of Hume), Smith was led to put an even greater distance between his own philosophy and that of Hume’s. In his later revisions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), Smith emphasizes more and more the separation of the viewpoint of the impartial spectator from ordinary public opinion, and also becomes more convinced of the necessity of believing in a life after this one, both positions that put him somewhat at odds with his mentor and friend Hume. My claim in this essay, then, is that we can read with profit the later 1 The one exception to this, to my knowledge, is Eric Schliesser’s excellent “Obituary of a Vain Philosopher”. (Bibliographic information for all references can be found in the Select Bibliography at the end of this essay.) 2 E.g., “This [Smith’s letter], it must be acknowledged, is a very artful, though indirect method of recommending Mr. Hume’s philosophy to the favour of the public” (James Fieser, Early Responses to Hume, 399). 3 See Schliesser, “Obituary”. 196 new essays on adam smith’s moral philosophy revisions of TMS in light of Smith’s reaction to Hume’s death. The essay proceeds to this conclusion in three parts. In the first, I speculate on the nature of writing one’s biography and argue that Smith’s letter completes the biographical project that Hume began in his autobiographical work, My Own Life (MOL). In the secondandthirdparts,IspeculateonhowthedeathofHumemighthaveaffected Smith’s philosophy in unHumean ways, in regards to both the determination of moral rightness and the existence of an afterlife. Smith’s philosophy has its interest precisely because it unfolds as a crucial juncture in the process of secularization and modernization. It is fundamentally shaped by the ideas of Hume, but seems to recognize the limitations of Hume’s enlightenment project when it comes to ethics and religion. Insofar as we are still wrestling with that project, Smith’s philosophy repays careful study, for it reveals both its virtues4 and its possible shortfalls. I. SMITH’S “LETTER TO STRAHAN” I begin with the context of Smith’s letter to Strahan, not merely a private letter, but a deliberately public document, composed with the consent and approval of David Hume. So we must first, upon learning of the nature of the letter, ask, what was Smith’s motivation in writing it? Given that it is no mere report of the facts of Hume’s death but something that was to be published (and was published) as part of Hume’s My Own Life, what was Smith trying to achieve? There are several possibilities, not each of them exclusive of one another, as I will show. One possibility is that Smith simply saw himself as completing Hume’s autobiography...