ABSTRACT
At first glance, the philosopher David Hume and the economist Adam Smith seem to have little in common: the former a noted skeptic who, in the words of Bertrand Russell, destroyed empiricism by rendering it consistent (Russell 1961: 634); the latter the godfather of modern economics, the apostle of free trade and of the legitimacy of economic self-interest. However, these orthodoxies are seriously misleading. There is in fact a close connection between the two: Hume’s philosophy propounds an evolutionary account of justice and social progress on which Smith builds; and Hume’s account of the relation between justice and virtue shows how to resolve the apparent disjunction in Smith’s thought between moral sympathy and economic self-interest. Nevertheless there are differences: Hume’s theory has a markedly Epicurean character, emphasizing the artificiality of justice and its roots in social utility; Smith, in contrast, develops a broadly Stoic conception grounded in the natural regard for self-preservation.
