The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith's Moral Thought

The Problem of Natural Religionin Smith’s Moral Thought

Colin Heydt

INTRODUCTION

In 1876, Leslie Stephen identified what he took to be the main theme ofeighteenth-century Britain’s moral philosophy: the relation of morals toreligion.1 For Stephen, Pierre Bayle sharpened the theme by raising thepossibility—through the guise of the virtuous atheist—that there might beno necessary relation between morality and religion. Was Bayle’s positiondefensible? For the majority of eighteenth-century thinkers, the answer was“no.”

Adam Smith is one of the philosophers whose views on the relation ofmorality to religion have been very actively debated. It is accepted thatSmith had unorthodox personal religious beliefs. The crux of the debate,however, is whether or not the God of natural religion is essential, in oneor more ways, to Smith’s moral theory.

A number of recent interpretations defend the description of AdamSmith as “a strong supporter of natural theology.”2 This paper argues

Many thanks to Knud Haakonssen, Dale Jamieson, Chris Hamlin, Gordon Graham,James Harris, Aaron Garrett, Christian Maurer, Ryan Hanley, Susan James, David Lieb-erman, Jonathan Israel, Michael Gill, and the anonymous referees for helpful feedbackand conversation. I’m especially grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanitiesand the Institute for Advanced Study for support during the time this paper was written.1 Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (London:Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876).2 James E. Alvey, “The ‘New View’ of Adam Smith and the Development of His Viewsover Time,” in New Perspectives on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed.Geoff Cockfield, Ann Firth, and John Laurent (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007),66–83. Other advocates of the view that Smith’s moral philosophy incorporates provi-dentialist thought include Jacob Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Phila-

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JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ JANUARY 2017

against that claim, using both novel evidence and familiar evidence appliedin novel ways. I demonstrate here that Smith took positions at odds with acommitment to natural religion’s importance for morality. In particular, Ishow that it is hard to square Smith’s alleged support of natural religionwith his account of conscience, his natural-rights theory, and his omissionof piety from his catalogue of virtues. To put the argument form most sim-ply: if natural religion, then (typically) x; not x; therefore, not natural reli-gion.

Up to this point, the debate on Smith’s views concerning religion haslargely been fighting over the same terrain: how to interpret Smith’s use ofphrases such as “invisible hand” and “commands and laws of the Deity.”Does he write these with simple declarative intent and does his use of themindicate something essential about his moral theory? Or is this language acase of an original, though prudent, philosopher honoring the conventionsof the age and giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s? I propose to move outsideSmith’s texts themselves and pay more attention to the standard or defaultuses of religious ideas in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. In particular,I focus on identifying what we should expect a moral theorist of this era tosay if he were committed to the importance of natural religion for morality,and what Smith’s omission or rejection of these standard claims tells us.

Smith argues for a number of unconventional philosophical claims.These claims generally offer better evidence for Smith’s stance on the rela-tion of morality and religion than some (already qualified) period-standardphrases. Greater fluency with the conventional ethical positions of the cen-tury serves us well in adjudicating among interpretations of Smith’s goalsand of the implications of his statements. (Greater awareness of conven-tional claims also enables one to state the providentialist interpretation of

delphia: American Philosophical Society, 1972); Richard Kleer, “Final Causes in AdamSmith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 33 (1995):275–300; Ryan Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2011); Paul Oslington, “Introduction: Theological Readings ofSmith” in Adam Smith as Theologian, ed. Paul Oslington (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis,2011), 1–16; James R. Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2002); Lisa Hill “The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith,” Euro-pean Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8, no. 1 (2001): 1–29; J. B.Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998), see chap. 18; Gordon Graham, “Adam Smith and Religion,” in Adam Smith: HisLife, Thought, and Legacy, ed. Ryan Patrick Hanley (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, forthcoming), 305–20; A. M. C. Waterman, “Economics as Theology: AdamSmith’s Wealth of Nations,” Southern Economic Journal 68, no. 4 (2002): 907–21; andJames Harris, “Answering Bayle’s Question: Religious Belief in the Moral Philosophy ofthe Scottish Enlightenment,” in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, vol. 1, ed.Daniel Garber and Steven Nadler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 229–53.

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Heydt ✦ The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith’s Moral Thought

Smith more precisely than is often done, though that interpretation ulti-mately seems wrong to me.)

How we resolve this debate matters a great deal for our understandingof Smith and of the nature of his moral theory. It determines our sense ofwhat he is trying to do as a moral philosopher, with whom he allies himself,and against whom he is arguing. Is he, for instance, part of the mainstream,providential naturalist/Christian stoic Scottish Enlightenment? How closeis his philosophical connection to Hume? My broader aims are first, toclarify the kinds of evidence we should be examining in order to understandthe relations between early modern moral philosophy and religion; and sec-ond, to emphasize the value of familiarity with the century’s institutionallydominant, Protestant natural-law practical ethics.

BACKGROUND

The expectation that natural religion was essential for morality is well illus-trated by the philosophy curriculum at Glasgow, where Smith was both astudent (1737–40) and professor of moral philosophy (1752–63). Thethree years of philosophy instruction at Scottish universities typically wentfrom logic and metaphysics (which Smith taught in his short stint as profes-sor of logic and metaphysics), to the second year’s study of pneumatologyand moral philosophy, which included natural theology, morals, naturaljurisprudence, and politics, to the final year’s study of natural philosophyand mathematics.3 Natural theology, in other words, was an integral part—indeed, the introductory part—of the study of moral philosophy.

Smith studied natural theology with his teacher, “the never to be for-gotten” Francis Hutcheson, and we have natural theology compendiapublished by Hutcheson (1730–46) and by Smith’s other distinguished pre-decessor at Glasgow, Gershom Carmichael (regent 1694–1726, professorof moral philosophy, 1727–29).4 In those compendia, which themselvesreplaced earlier Reformed Scholastic compendia by Gerard de Vries andJean Leclerc, we find an anodyne accounting of the three subjects of natural

3 For discussion of the curriculum, see Nicholas Phillipson, Adam Smith: An EnlightenedLife (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), chap. 2; Paul Wood, The AberdeenEnlightenment: The Arts Curriculum in the Eighteenth Century (Aberdeen: AberdeenUniversity Press, 1993); and M. A. Stewart, “The Curriculum in Britain, Ireland, and theColonies,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, vol. 1, ed. KnudHaakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 97–120.4 Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 309.

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religion as they can be known through reason and experience alone, inde-pendently of revelation: God’s existence, God’s essence, and the operationsof God (i.e., providence).5 For God’s existence, proof comes both from apriori argument (e.g., various cosmological arguments) and argument fromdesign, with the latter drawing from physics (e.g., appropriations of New-ton) and natural history. God’s essence was distinguished into communica-ble and incommunicable properties, that is, properties (e.g., wisdom) thatwe find to some degree in created beings and properties (e.g., metaphysicalindependence) that only God possesses. Finally, the operations of Godknown through natural reason included creation and preservation, and themajor question raised by providence was how to understand and assignresponsibility for evil (i.e., provide a theodicy).

Though the necessity of natural religion for Smith’s moral theory hasmet recently with skepticism,6 the most broadly adopted interpretation seesSmith as accepting the importance of God for morality and as aligning him-self, in some fashion, with (Butlerian and Hutchesonian) providential natu-ralism and the moderate wing of the Kirk, headed by people such as theearl of Islay (future duke of Argyll), Francis Hutcheson, George Turnbull,and William Wishart, among others. Stephen says that Smith “is a thoroughrepresentative of that optimistic Deism which we have seen illustrated byShaftesbury and Hutcheson . . . Smith follows Hutcheson and departs fromHume in making the doctrine of final causes an essential part of his system. . . Smith constantly regards human nature as a mechanism skillfully con-trived to carry out the divine purposes.”7 The editors of the Glasgow edi-tions of Smith’s texts, Raphael and Macfie, write that while Smith mayhave abandoned orthodox Christianity, “[c]ertainly Smith never aban-doned natural religion.”8 Present-day so-called new-view theorists push thesame basic interpretation.

5 See Gershom Carmichael, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (Edinburgh, 1729); FrancisHutcheson, “A Synopsis of Metaphysics” (1744), in Logic, Metaphysics, and the NaturalSociability of Mankind, ed. James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 2006); cf. James Moore, “Hutcheson on Logic, Metaphysics, and Sociability” inHutcheson, Logic, Metaphysics.6 See, e.g., Phillipson, Adam Smith; Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The NaturalJurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981); and Gavin Kennedy, “Adam Smith on Religion,” in The Oxford Handbook ofAdam Smith, ed. Christopher J. Berry, Maria Pia Paganelli, and Craig Smith (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2013), 464–84.7 Stephen, History of English Thought, 71.8 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments [TMS], ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 [1790, 6th ed.]), 400; emphasis in original.

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There are five common roles for God in early modern moral philoso-phy: 1) explanatory, 2) justificatory, 3) moral psychological, 4) as a moralperson, and 5) as source of the content of morality (e.g., through givingdivine positive law). Of these roles, the fifth is of little to no importance forSmith. The most recent providentialist readings of Smith focus instead onthe explanatory and justificatory necessity of God to morality. God is vitalfor explaining why we have the moral faculties we do and for groundingmoral authority. In the next two sections, I discuss the cases made and offerobjections. Then I discuss some considerations relevant for the topic ofGod’s importance for morality, including Smith’s defense of a natural-rightstheory (and his rejection of natural law), Smith’s moral psychology and itsrelation to belief in God, and Smith’s account of the virtues.

EXPLANATORY

Appeals to design were omnipresent in early modern natural history andnatural philosophy. “The eyes are surely designed for seeing,” says Hutche-son, using standard language, “the teeth for chewing, buildings to live in,and ships for sailing.”9 While objects may be configured in innumerableways that make them ugly or useless, there are very few configurations thatmake them beautiful or useful. As Hutcheson asserted in his lectures onnatural religion, anyone who thinks that bodies stirred around “at ran-dom” could consistently produce beautiful or useful things is himself“devoid of intelligence and reason.”10

The strongest argument that Smith adopts this tradition of thought inhis moral philosophy comes from Richard Kleer.11 He emphasizes that in“Smith’s moral theory proper,” which includes Smith’s explanation ofmoral judgment, “teleology has no substantial role to play,” but that invo-cation of design or final causes is essential in another part of moral thought;namely, that which explains the “fortuitous connection between moral

9 Hutcheson, “On the Natural Sociability of Mankind” (1730), in Logic, Metaphysics,195.10 Hutcheson, “A Synopsis of Metaphysics,” 153. Cf. Carmichael, Supplements andObservations upon The Two Books of Samuel Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man andCitizen . . . (1724), in Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment:The Writings of Gershom Carmichael, ed. James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (India-napolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 241.11 For similar claims on his economic thought, see Waterman, “Economics as Theology.”

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judgments and human happiness.”12 On this account, it seems more justifi-able to say that the happiness supposedly resulting from moral and socialpractices is the end for which our dispositions of moral judgment andaction are a means, rather than that this happiness is an accidental result ofhaving the dispositions we do. To put it another way that echoes Hutchesonand the natural history tradition: Smith suggests that our dispositions andcircumstances are combined in ways that regularly produce happiness andthat this cannot be due to brute chance.

Some examples from Smith’s texts make this reading plausible. We findin TMS Part IV that while what “constitutes the real happiness of humanlife” is readily available to the beggar as well as to the king, we are never-theless prone to imagine—prompted by our love of “elegant contrivances”for promoting ease and pleasure—that the lives of the rich are especiallyhappy and enviable. “And it is well,” says Smith, “that nature imposesupon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in con-tinual motion the industry of mankind.”13 This tendency to admire the situ-ation of the rich leads to diligent labor in the not-rich.

Another related example. Smith, famously, invokes “an invisible hand”to describe self-interested conduct that promotes the “public interest.”14 So,the “natural selfishness and rapacity of the rich,” as expressed in theirefforts to consume much more than they need, ends up unintentionally dis-tributing resources in a way that advances “the interest of society, andafford[s] means to the multiplication of the species.”15 Reading these pas-sages as expressions of Smith’s providentialism gets further support whenwe attend to Harrison’s discussion of the history of uses of the phrase“invisible hand.” As Harrison shows, it was a commonly employed descrip-tion of God’s providence (both special and general), utilized in sermons andtheological works of various genres.16

One could easily add to these examples, as Kleer and others do. Smithidentifies a disposition (“instinct”) to desire something, be averse to some-thing, take pleasure in something. He goes on to show, at times counterin-tuitively or surprisingly, how these dispositions produce a number of

12 Kleer, “Final Causes,” 281, 295.13 Smith TMS 4.1.10.14 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [WN] (India-napolis: Liberty Fund, 1982 [1776]), 4.2.9, 2:456.15 Smith TMS 4.1.10.16 Peter Harrison, “Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible Hand, Journal of theHistory of Ideas 72, no. 1 (2011): 29–49. See also Paul Oslington, “Divine Action, Provi-dence and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand,” in Adam Smith as Theologian, ed. Oslington(Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2011), 61–74, and Peter Harrison, “Adam Smith, NaturalTheology, and the Natural Sciences,” in Oslington, Adam Smith as Theologian, 77–91.

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beneficial but unintended effects. He invokes nature or the ends of adesigner as accounting for these fortuitous connections between basic fea-tures of human nature and human happiness.17

So, for Kleer and others, without appeal to design, we would be leftwondering why the actions deemed moral would be the “very ones whichmost conduce to human happiness.” Design “prevents Smith from havingto ascribe to sheer accident the presence in the human constitution of thecomplete set of those sentiments which act to bring about human happi-ness.”18 As Alvey expresses the view, “[t]eleological statements are notdetachable, rather they complete [Smith’s] argument.”19

To reply to the providentialist explanatory case just sketched: first, arewe really, according to Smith, so happy that it seems difficult to explain byappeal to chance? Do we see anything in Smith like Hutcheson’s exclama-tion “[h]ow beautiful, clever, and kind [the world] is!” or Hutcheson’sattempt to show that evil, pain, and death are, following the tradition ofKing (De origine mali [1702]) and others, necessary for proving moralworth?20 Perhaps, but Kleer slips easily into talking about dispositions that“most conduce” to happiness—and Smith does not contend that our exist-ing dispositions offer the best chance at happiness or that, alternatively, evilshould be understood as a divine test for our moral capacities. We shouldexpect that, at a minimum, he would have been acquainted with Hume’sskepticism about the supposed outweighing of suffering by happiness—askepticism Hume expresses both in the Dialogues concerning Natural Reli-gion (which was largely complete in manuscript by the late 1750s) and inhis early fragment on evil (late 1730s). I am hesitant to read a clear theodicyinto Smith’s work.21

Second, Kleer, Otteson, Alvey, and others think there is an epistemicimperative for moral theory to explain the origins of our foundational tend-encies of desire and pleasure. But why must Smith offer an explanation?What, for instance, is to prevent us from reading Smith as engaged in aNewtonian avoidance of hypotheses as to the “reason for these properties

17 Cf. Waterman, “Economics as Theology.”18 Kleer, “Final Causes,” 296.19 Alvey, “ ‘New View,’ ” 71. Cf. Hill, “Smith’s Hidden Theology” and Otteson, AdamSmith’s Marketplace of Life, 246.20 Hutcheson, “A Synopsis of Metaphysics.” For discussion, see Thomas Ahnert, TheMoral Culture of Enlightenment: Religion and Virtue in Scottish Enlightenment Thought,1690–1805 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), chap. 2.21 For a somewhat more optimistic view on finding a Smithian theodicy, see BrendanLong, “Adam Smith’s Theodicy,” in Oslington, Adam Smith as Theologian, 98–105.

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of” our basic moral dispositions? Perhaps it “is enough that” sympathy“exists and acts according to the laws” Smith has “set forth” and, alongwith other moral dispositions (e.g., our enjoyment of fittingness of meansto ends), is “sufficient to explain” our moral judgments.22 Perhaps, that is,it occupies a place akin to gravity in Newtonian physics: Hypotheses nonfingit.

Third, why did philosophers and ministers typically invoke design?Because they were making an argument for God’s existence. Smith, alterna-tively, never offers an argument from design to a designer (though he refer-ences such an argument at one point, which might naturally be taken asan endorsement).23 What he does do is provide a naturalistic history—apsychological genealogy—of the belief in a designer.

This psychological tendency to perceive nature as designed by adesigner is brought out in his essays on the histories of astronomy andancient physics and in sections of TMS.24 Smith is giving a naturalisticaccount of how the idea of a designer arises and is bringing doubt into thecontemporary discussions of design through the guise—made popular byBayle, Hume, and others—of ancient ideas about the divinity.25 DoesSmith’s psychological genealogy of the idea of a designer preclude him fromthinking that there is, in fact, a designer? No. But it certainly raises suspi-cions, particularly given Smith’s familiarity with and appreciation forHume’s arguments in the Natural History of Religion (a work that DugaldStewart claims is a paradigmatic instance of the “conjectural history” hefinds throughout Smith’s writings).26

Finally, for design to have explanatory value for us, we need to knowsomething about God’s ends. Our innate sentiments can be understood asmeans employed to achieve the end of happiness only if we think God aimsat our happiness. Turnbull, among others, says this.27 There is evidence that

22 Isaac Newton, “General Scholium,” in The Principia, ed. I. Bernard Cohen and AnneWhitman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 [1713, 2nd ed.]).23 See Smith TMS 2.2.3.5.24 See Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980[1795]). Cf. Kennedy, “Adam Smith on Religion”; Haakonssen, The Science of a Legis-lator.25 See Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator, and Patrick Frierson, “Adam Smith andthe Possibility of Sympathy with Nature,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2006):442–80.26 Dugald Stewart, “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith” (1793), in Essayson Philosophical Subjects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 [1795]).27 George Turnbull, “A Discourse upon the Nature and Origine of Moral and CivilLaws,” in J. G. Heineccius, A Methodical System of Universal Law: Or, the Laws ofNature and Nations, with Supplements and a Discourse by George Turnbull, ed. ThomasAhnert and Peter Schroder (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008 [1741]), 556–58.

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Smith does not think we can know with much certainty what God’s endsare or, if there are multiple ends, how they relate to one another. There are,for instance, points at which Smith says that the two great ends of “Nature”are self-preservation and the propagation of the species.28 There are alsosuggestions that equity or justice might be one of God’s principal ends.

And even where he does suggest that the happiness of his creaturescould be God’s goal in creation, that suggestion is rife with qualification.Smith says that benevolence “may, perhaps, be the sole principle of actionin the Deity” and that there are “several, not improbable, arguments whichtend to persuade us that it is so.”29 In the other passage sometimes cited,Smith says that the happiness of mankind “seems to have been the originalpurpose intended by the Author of nature, when he brought them into exis-tence.”30 He goes on in that paragraph to use “seems” or “in some sense”in every subsequent sentence dealing with God’s purposes—a tic that runscounter to eighteenth-century work in natural religion. These two passagesare representative of Smith’s speculations about God’s “plan of Provi-dence” and of his equivocal language. He both enables a proponent of nat-ural religion to feel his position affirmed by the text, while never actuallysaying that the position is true (a rhetorical strategy one often finds inHume).

These highly qualified characterizations of God’s intentions contrastwith passages in conventional texts of eighteenth-century natural theologyand ethics. In those conventional texts, there were two ways of showingGod’s will for us: either one could argue empirically from observation ofthe world (e.g., from the natural sanctions associated with types of action)in order to determine what God wills for us (e.g., Richard Cumberland,Joseph Butler), or, one could argue from God’s attributes—e.g., God’sgoodness—to the conclusion that it is “evident” God could have “noother end in creating Mankind than their Happiness.”31 The latter case pro-duced certainty about God’s ends, while the former produced strongprobability—in neither does one find the hesitant and conditional expres-sions common to Smith.

28 Smith TMS 2.1.5.10.29 Smith TMS 7.2.3.18; emphasis added.30 Smith TMS 3.5.7; emphasis added.31 John Gay, “Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtueor Morality,” in William King, Essay on the Origin of Evil (London: R. Knaplock, J. andJ. Knapton, and W. Innis, 1731), xxxviii–xxxix. See also William Paley, The Principles ofMoral and Political Philosophy (London, 1785), bk. 2, chap. 5, 39–42; George Berkeley,Passive Obedience, Or the Christian Doctrine of not Resisting the Supreme Power,Proved and Vindicated upon the Principles of the Law of Nature (Dublin, 1712), 6, 18.

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Thus in TMS, Smith shows how our basic sentiments lead to socialorder and general happiness. And if our happiness were God’s sole end inhis design of human nature, then the invocation of design would add someexplanatory value, because God’s ends, rather than the brute facts of ournature, would be the ultimate stopping point of explanation. And, indeed,it is “not improbable” that we could know what end God intends our facul-ties to promote and that those faculties are means to that end. It “seems”that this could be the case. Perhaps.

Having said all this, I acknowledge Smith’s use of some providentiallanguage (indeed, it would be surprising to discover that the many provi-dentialist interpreters of Smith lacked reasons for thinking as they do). Theliteral meanings of the texts put the burden of proof on those who wouldread the texts differently, as, e.g., prudential evasion or homage to conven-tion or light irony (I favor the first two, and think the third is also possible).Further, our interpretation of Smith must consider not only his literal utter-ances (especially conventional ones), but his underlying doctrines and argu-ment structures. After all, terms like “invisible hand” are important mostlyinsofar as they express doctrines and further arguments. There are doctrineswe would expect Smith to endorse if he were committed to the importanceof natural religion for morality; he does not endorse them.

JUSTIFICATORY

In making a determination about the role of a providential God in themoral thought of an eighteenth-century philosopher like Smith, a key issueis the locus and justification of moral authority—authority that was (andis) often taken to distinguish morality from other areas of value. We oughtto be moral; it is not simply a good thing to do.

There are two popular ways in this period in which the authority ofmorality is derived from God. Voluntarists emphasize that morality is lawin a very literal sense, with God as the lawgiver whose will is the immediatelocus of authority by being, at a minimum, the source of the obligatorinessof moral precepts. Smith, like most other eighteenth-century Scots, rejectsvoluntarism. It was more popular in England (e.g., among Lockeans inCambridge).

If divine authority is responsible for the authority of Smithian morality,then the account must be—as providentialist interpreters of Smith rightlyinsist—something like Butler’s or Hutcheson’s or Turnbull’s: we are to livein accordance with our nature; that is, “the frame and constitution of man

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. . . are a natural law to man.”32 This nature is a law to us; it has (in anidealized form) normative authority because it expresses the authoritativeintention of our creator. Were I to ask “Why should I do what my con-science/moral sense demands?” the answer would normally refer to God insome way or other. When we see, therefore, that our nature—through itsaffections, desires, determinations of conscience—proposes that we pre-serve ourselves, that we live sociably with others, that we maintain an inter-nal constitution or hierarchy, we can understand these as the laws of oursovereign promulgated through his design of our nature and situation. Thisapproach is more indirect than that of the voluntarists; “law” is employedmore loosely, “will” as the basis of authority is de-emphasized, and, asDarwall and others note, it opens the conceptual possibility of autonomyas the basis of moral authority. Yet for all that, God still underlies moralityfor these thinkers.33

One illustration of this way of thinking comes from Smith’s professo-rial counterpart at Edinburgh, James Balfour, who says (in a mode obvi-ously influenced by Butler):

The authority of conscience is justly esteemed a strong principle ofmorality. But, if we consider man as an independent being, it willbe hard to conceive that any principle of the human mind shouldclaim an authority over the mind itself, and bring it under the forceof an obligation . . . But, when we attend to the idea of the divineauthority, we find an evident counterpart to natural conscience,something which explains its meaning, and secures to it an indis-putable authority over our conduct.34

Balfour’s comment typifies both the difficulty for eighteenth-century philos-ophers in locating the origin of moral authority in the moral agent herself—viable conceptions of self-obligation and autonomy were still developing—and the tendency to derive the moral authority of human nature fromGod’s authority.

There are some good reasons to think that the authority of Smithianmorality depends on God. Most importantly, Smith claims—in termsappropriated from Butler (whom Smith admired)—that our moral faculties

32 Turnbull, “A Discourse,” 556–57.33 See Stephen Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal “Ought”: 1640–1740(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), esp. chap. 9.34 Balfour, A Delineation of the Nature and Obligation of Morality (Edinburgh, 1753),27.

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“were plainly intended to be the governing principles of human nature”and the general rules “which they prescribe are to be regarded as the com-mands and laws of the Deity, promulgated by those vice-regents [e.g., con-science] which he has thus set up within us.” These general rules or laws ofconscience “are prescribed most surely by a lawful superior, and areattended too with the sanction of rewards and punishments.”35 There seemsto be little to say against a providential reading of Smith in the face of suchdeclarations of the reliance of morality on God, particularly since Smithdoes not seem to say enough about the nature of agency and practical rea-son to have Butler’s views on self-authorizing conscience attributed tohim.36 Indeed, these kinds of passages lead Otteson to claim (in terms thatecho Turnbull’s and Balfour’s words) that the “impartial spectator [the“personal conscience of each individual”] represents the fruition of the sys-tem of morality that God wanted us to develop; the impartial spectator isthus the manifestation of God’s will in us, the partial manifestation, even,of God himself in us.” Thus, in grounding moral normativity, Smith offers,according to Otteson, both the hypothetical imperative of “if you want tobe happy, here is what you should do” (i.e., follow moral rules) and “thecategorical imperative to obey God’s will” (a will expressed by the generalrules and determinations of conscience/the impartial spectator). Ottesongoes on to suggest that this “feature of Smith’s theory would distinguish itfrom that of Hume, among other of Smith’s contemporaries.”37 With thisaccount, then, we have reasons to think of Smith as aligned with the bulkof Scottish moralists—Hutcheson, Turnbull, Kames, etc.—in acceptingsome form of providentialism in morality.

Yet, utterances like these acknowledged, we need to resist the tempta-tion to read Smith as a Butlerian or Hutchesonian moralist vis-a-vis thegrounds of moral authority.

First and foremost, we should note how remarkable Smith’s discussionof moral judgment and of conscience is. He goes much, much farther thanalmost all of his contemporaries in naturalizing conscience—both its ori-gins and its moral authority. While readings of Smithian conscience thatemphasize its naturalism have, of course, been given before, the problemsthat a naturalized conscience presents for a providential reading of Smith’smoral philosophy have not been sufficiently noted.38

35 Smith TMS 3.5.6.36 Darwall, “Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith,” Philosophy andPublic Affairs 28, no. 2 (1999): 139–64. See note 33.37 Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life, 256.38 For exceptions, see Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator, and Phillipson, AdamSmith.

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On Smith’s account, conscience becomes a creation of history, individ-ual life experience, and natural tendencies in spectatorship. It is not thetraditional source of definitive, timeless, universal principles that adjudicatemoral conflicts. Smith does not highlight the divine origins of conscience;he stresses its contingency and historicity. What constitutes impartial spec-tatorship in one place and time is often different from what constitutes it atanother place and time.

In particular, Smith gives an account of how we move from our initialpartiality to a more impartial view of our own conduct and character,driven by one of our most basic motives: the desire to achieve agreementwith others. One of the most notable features of this account is its socialcharacter. The child is shocked and discomfited when he first interacts withhis peers at school and realizes that they are much more indifferent to hisneeds and desires than were his parents. He begins imagining how his con-duct and character must look from their point of view. He realizes that, inorder “to avoid their hatred or contempt” and to please them, he mustregulate himself and his passions, bringing them to a level that others canmore easily approve of.39 In so doing, he initiates his participation in whatHaakonssen nicely describes as the “process of mutual adjustment throughsympathetic search for a common standpoint,” that is, a standpoint ofmutual agreement.40

Eventually, the conflicts inherent in social life put pressure on ourmoral imagination to create a more idealized, more impartial spectator towhom we may refer when we need to adjudicate among actual judges andtheir disparate attitudes. This impartial spectator constitutes the foundationof our conscience. The justification of the authority of that conscience, inturn, does not derive from God, but takes the form of some kind of “reflec-tive endorsement” and would ultimately argue that these tendencies ofmoral judgment are good or healthy for human beings to have.41

This is a strikingly historicized and psychologized account of the ori-gins of conscience. It is unconventional and evinces a very high degree ofexplanatory independence from religion (emphasizing the weakness of theconnection of explanation and natural religion discussed in the last sec-tion). This account makes conscience’s connection to God much moreindirect—winding through a social economy—than it was in the thought of

39 Smith TMS 3.3.22.40 Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996), 131.41 See Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1996), 60–61.

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most of Smith’s contemporaries. It also provides a plausible naturalisticalternative to theories that locate the origin and justification of consciencein God.

Kleer is correct that Smith also occasionally smuggles in additionalprinciples in order to account for specific judgments (e.g., “the pleasure ofcontemplating well-crafted devices”). But the most significant point is that,for Smith, conscience and moral sense are human artifacts produced unin-tentionally by the mixing of some natural tendencies and the social worldin which we find ourselves. Smith rejects both the voluntarist emphasis onlaw and the providentialist emphasis on distinctive moral faculties createdby God. Is his theory conceptually incompatible with God having designedit? No. But, once again, his similarities to Hume are much more noticeablethan his similarities to Hutcheson, Turnbull, and their followers, and thisgives us weighty reasons to be skeptical of the role of God in Smithianmorality.

Phillipson has observed: Smith’s “ethics had shown that what manythink of as the voice of conscience or the deity has its origins in the compli-cated processes of sympathetic interaction, thus gently reducing it to a formof false consciousness which Christians would inevitably find objection-able.”42 Exactly so. What Phillipson gets right here and some of the “newview” commentators get wrong is the import of Smith’s equivocal com-ments on a divine legislator—when we compare what Smith has said tocontemporary treatments of conscience, what we find is a radical natural-ization of conscience. This implies, in turn, that Smith brings into questionthe conventional justification of conscience’s authority by appeal to itsdivine origins.

NATURAL RIGHTS

If we think, in spite of the naturalized account of conscience, that Smithactually follows Butler and justifies the authority of conscience by appealto God’s authority and God’s design of our nature, then one should expectto see a parallel move in the justification of natural rights. That is, oneshould see him justify the authority of natural rights in a way similar tothe justification of the authority of conscience—by appeal to God. It wasconventional to invoke God in both instances. So, a defender of a Butlerianreading of Smith’s theory of conscience should be able to offer evidence for

42 Phillipson, Adam Smith, 281.

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her position from Smith’s justification of natural rights. That evidence isnot forthcoming, as we shall see, and it presents another, sizeable problemfor a providentialist account of Smith’s moral thought.

The standard account of natural rights justified them through theirrelations to natural-law duties—the obligatory “true ends and purposes ofhuman life.”43 Natural rights were “enabling rights,” justified by theirnecessity in enabling us to fulfill our natural duties.44 Gershom Carmichael,the eminent first professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, provides anexample of how this worked. For the office of human being, he expressesthe most basic precepts as: “God is to be worshipped,” “each man shouldpursue his own interest without harming others,” and “sociability shouldbe cultivated.”45 From these laws arise, respectively, the duties to God, toself, and to others. Any rights we possess as human beings are justified as anecessary means for the proper fulfillment of these ends appropriate tohuman beings (e.g., a right to life as making it possible to fulfill the com-mand to preserve oneself). In other words, law and duty come first in theorder of justification and rights follow.46

The subordination of rights to duties highlights the priority of duty inthis period. Duty theories, rather than right or virtue theories, dominatedScottish (and English) moral philosophy.47 In such accounts, morality isexpressed most centrally by concepts such as law, duty, and authoritativecommand, with notions of virtue and right being derivative (though omni-present). Importantly, duty theories were taken to be highly compatiblewith a law-giving God and a providentially organized universe, whichexplains, in part, the institutional support given to duty theories in thisperiod.

In putting forward a rights theory in his Lectures on Jurisprudence,Smith takes a very unusual position—indeed, his is one of the only unam-biguous rights theories in Scotland in this period (John Millar, Smith’s stu-dent, and John Bruce, Smith’s younger friend and admirer, are the only two

43 Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (London: A. Millar, 1755), 2.5.4.44 For a dissenting voice on what constitutes the standard account, see Brian Tierney,“Dominion of Self and Natural Rights Before Locke and After,” in Transformations inMedieval and Early-Modern Rights Discourse, ed. Virpi Makinen and Petter Korkman(Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 173–203.45 Carmichael, Supplements, 51.46 For one instance, among many, of this position, see John Witherspoon, Lectures onMoral Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1912 [1772, 1782, 1795]), 69.47 See Aaron Garrett and Colin Heydt, “Moral Philosophy: Practical and Speculative,” inThe Oxford History of Scottish Philosophy, vol. 1, The Scottish Enlightenment, ed.Aaron Garrett and James Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 77–130.

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other cases). It is a position that is starkly independent of a providentialconception of the human being. There is, in other words, no office ofhuman being—no role of human being with divinely given, obligatory pur-poses the fulfillment of which justifies our possession of natural rights.

Instead of invoking fundamental duties that depend on teleological cat-egories, Smith claims—in terms strikingly reminiscent of Grotius—that theorigins of these natural rights

need not be explained. That a man has received an injury whenhe is wounded or hurt any way is evident to reason, without anyexplanation; and the same may be said of the injury done onewhen his liberty is any way restrain’d; any one will at first perceivethat there is an injury done in this case. That on[e] is injured whenhe is defamed, and his good name hurt amongst men, needs not beproved by any great discussion.48

Elsewhere, Smith claims that “no body doubts” that “a person has a rightto have his body free from injury, and his liberty free from infringementunless there be a proper cause.”49

What count as injuries and rights are determined by our moral facul-ties. There is no moral “fact of the matter” independent of our moral judg-ments. A distinctive feature of our moral judgments is our propensity asspectators to sympathize with the resentment that the injured person feels(or should feel) in response to specific kinds of harm (e.g., to bodies, lives,reputations). Natural rights are entitlements all humans have not to be sub-ject to these universally resented harms. By this account, natural rights tolife, liberty, and reputation are grounded in universal and ineliminabletendencies of moral response, in which we recognize entitlements to resisttransgressions against the most basic conditions of our physical and socialexistences.50 And again, as with conscience, the justification of these tenden-cies would rest on their being good or healthy for human beings to have.

Smith’s account of natural rights suggests that he follows Hume inrejecting natural law and the identification of ends natural to humans. Hisrights-based theory, in which natural rights are not “enabling rights,” indi-cates that he agrees with the well-known skepticism about those ends that

48 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [LJ] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 [1762–1763/1766]), 13. Compare with Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis:Liberty Fund, 2005 [1625]), xl.49 Smith LJ, 401.50 Cf. Darwall, “Sympathetic Liberalism,” 162.

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Hume announces to Hutcheson: “I cannot agree to your Sense of Natural.Tis founded on final Causes; which is a Consideration, that appears to mepretty uncertain & unphilosophical. For pray, what is the End of Man? Ishe created for Happiness or for Virtue? For this Life or for the next? Forhimself or for his Maker?”51

Smith, unlike Hume, did not have the temperament of an iconoclast.He did not go about trumpeting his breaks with religious orthodoxy. Buthe worked very hard to establish a moral theory that did not rely—as thetheories of his contemporaries typically did—on God. No so-called new-view theorist has taken into account the challenge that Smith’s naturalrights approach to morality presents to a providentialist reading of Smith.If Smith were comfortable with providentialism and the idea of obligatoryends or purposes for human beings, it would have been much more naturalfor him to defend a duty theory rather than a rights theory. Moreover,his defense of a rights theory in LJ makes a Butlerian reading of Smithianconscience much less supportable, because if he invokes God and God’sprovidence in the case of conscience, we should also expect to find it in hisjustification of natural rights. Yet it is not there.

PSYCHOLOGY

While so-called providential naturalist or Christian Stoic philosophers suchas Hutcheson tended, following Shaftesbury, to de-emphasize God’s role inmorality, they all distinguished themselves from Bayle’s doctrine of virtuousatheism. One way in which they commonly did this was by emphasizingthe moral psychological value of belief in God and God’s providence—especially belief in just rewards and punishments for good and bad people,respectively.

These beliefs were taken to serve a variety of purposes. First, ThomasReid and others quote approvingly Shaftesbury’s statements in An Inquiryconcerning Virtue or Merit that virtue cannot be complete without pietyand that where piety “is wanting, there can neither be the same benignity,firmness or constancy; the same good composure of the Affections or uni-formity of Mind. And thus the perfection and height of Virtue, must beowing to the Belief of a God.”52

51 David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1932), 1:33.52 Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (India-napolis: Liberty Fund, 2001 [1711]), 2:44.

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Second, belief in God and God’s providence was typically tied to abelief in the afterlife. There was debate about the moral importance of suchbelief. While Locke and Carmichael took sanctions in the afterlife to beabsolutely fundamental to morality, Shaftesbury played an important rolein criticizing this as mercenary morality that overemphasized the place ofself-love in our moral psychology. It was agreed on all sides, however, thatsanctions in the afterlife could act as a check against the temptations ofwrongdoing and, at a minimum, as a ladder to virtue that could be thrownaway when one had acquired the right habits.

Where does Smith stand here? While he is very critical of enthusiasmand superstition in religion, Smith nevertheless suggests in a number ofplaces that human beings are prompted to belief in god(s) and a providen-tial order when faced with unfair outcomes in this world. We “naturallyappeal to heaven” in such cases, and look to God to “render to every oneaccording to the works which he has performed in this world. And thus weare led to the belief of a future state, not only by the weaknesses, by thehopes and fears of human nature, but by the noblest and best principleswhich belong to it, by the love of virtue, and by the abhorrence of vice andinjustice.”53

Smith suggests that the idea of God as a spectator and judge of ouractions “is a motive capable of restraining the most headstrong passions”and that it thereby reinforces our sense of duty.54 Moreover, as suggestedearlier, it also adds force to the general rules of morality to think of themas “the commands and laws of the Deity, who will finally reward the obedi-ent, and punish the transgressors of their duty.”55 In summary, Smith sug-gests that religion “affords . . . strong motives to the practice of virtue, andguards us by . . . powerful restraints from the temptations of vice.”56 (Therecognition that some kinds of religious belief—not superstitious or enthu-siastic belief—can support desirable moral psychological tendencies, offers,obviously, no direct support for the truth of God’s providence.)

All of this would suggest, as Harris notes, that Smith does not appearto join Bayle or Hume in arguing the radical early modern claim that reli-gious belief is, at best, inessential for morality and, at worst, underminesit.57 If one wished to make the case that Smith took a Humean or Bayleanline on this question, perhaps the strongest support would come from his

53 Smith TMS 3.5.9, 169; cf. TMS 3.2.33, 132.54 Smith TMS 3.5.12, 170.55 Smith TMS 3.5.3, 163.56 Smith TMS 3.6.1, 171.57 Harris, “Answering Bayle’s Question.”

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historical sensibility—one that he more clearly shares with Bayle and Humerather than with Hutcheson. Smith’s readiness to engage in moral and legalhistories (his propensity to see morality and law as largely created ratherthan discovered) and the ease with which Smith discusses the moral lives ofnon-monotheistic cultures at least suggests that belief in God and provi-dence may not be that psychologically important—let alone necessary—forsustaining moral life. One might also note, in support of Smith’s skepticismabout the moral value of the psychological value of God, his (infamous)eulogy of Hume.58

Overall, the evidence we have suggests that Smith would likely bebetween Hume and the providential naturalists (though perhaps a bit closerto Hutcheson and Reid than to Hume) on the psychological value of beliefin God, God’s providence, and the afterlife for morality.

SMITH ON THE VIRTUES: GOD AS A MORAL PERSONAND THE PROBLEM OF PIETY

If Smith relied on natural religion for his moral thought, then this shouldexpress itself in one very clear way: the inclusion of piety as a virtue.

In 1788, Reid expresses the conventional opinion that piety necessarilyfollows from correct opinions about God derived from natural religion:“To every man who believes the existence, the perfections, and the provi-dence of God, the veneration and submission we owe to him is self-evident.Right sentiments of the Deity and of his works . . . make the duty we oweto him obvious to every intelligent being.”59 So, if you accept natural reli-gion, in even its most pared-down permutations, then you must believe weowe duties of knowledge and worship to God. The habit of performingthose duties is the virtue of piety. By leaving piety out of a catalogue ofvirtues, one indicates that the arguments of natural religion fail and thatwhat we can know about God and the afterlife is insufficient to produceworship and moral obligation. Even Hutcheson and Reid and those likethem, who thought that some kind of morality was possible without beliefsabout God, understood God to be an object of moral duty. That is, onecould minimize God’s importance as a necessary condition of morality (e.g.,as the source of genuine obligation) and still think that, if the basics ofnatural religion are true, we owe things to God. It is the lowest standard

58 Smith, Correspondence, 221.59 Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man (University Park: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 2010 [1788]), 377.

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for the inclusion of God in morality, and it is also hard to see how, if onedoes not meet that standard, there would be any other viable roles for Godin morality.

Two years after Reid’s comment appeared, Smith put out the sixth edi-tion of TMS. There has been debate over what the changes in the sixthedition mean for our interpretation of Smith’s views on religion and itsrelation to morals. While Smith removes a passage on the Atonement, headds other passages on the moral benefits of belief in God. The largestaddition to the sixth edition is “Part VI: Of the Character of Virtue,” whichSmith identifies in a letter as “a practical system of virtue.”60 One veryimportant matter that has not been debated, or even noticed, is that Smithomits piety from the list of virtues included in this practical system of virtue.For those who want to identify Smith as a Hutchesonian providential natu-ralist, this is a big problem.

Understanding the magnitude of this problem requires knowing whatconventional accounts of the virtues looked like. When Smith calls thisaccount of the virtues a “practical system of virtue,” he is not inventing thisway of talking out of whole cloth. Indeed, “practical ethics” was a distinctarea of moral philosophy (one that Smith would have taught) that playedan essential role in university education.61

Practical ethics detailed the content of morals, the core of which was asystematic presentation of our duties, rights, and virtues. It had its originsin Protestant natural-law theory as expounded by Samuel Pufendorf andothers, and dominated instruction in moral philosophy in British universi-ties, academies, and American colleges throughout the century. It providedthe most important shared background for philosophical views concerninghow we ought to act and what dispositions we should cultivate.

The basic organizing device in British practical ethics was the office orstation of life, the most important of which were human being, member ofa family, and member of a state. All offices had ends or purposes that officeholders were obliged to further. So, for instance, fulfilling our office as ahuman being meant, as we saw earlier, knowing and worshipping God,preserving and cultivating ourselves, and being sociable towards others.

60 Smith, Correspondence, 320. For two prominent examples of works analyzing Smithon the virtues, see Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue, and Charles Gris-wold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1999).61 Cf. Haakonssen, “Introduction,” to Thomas Reid, Practical Ethics (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1990); Heydt, “Practical Ethics,” in The Oxford Handbookof British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. James Harris (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2013), 369–89.

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The moral demands of these offices could be easily expressed in terms ofduties (i.e., to God, self, others) or virtues (piety [God], courage, temper-ance, prudence [self], justice, and benevolence [others]). Throughout thecentury, most thinkers went back and forth between the language of virtueand of duty without feeling any incongruity, in part because virtues werefrequently construed as habits of fulfilling duties.

Fulfilling our duties to God of knowledge and worship begins in natu-ral theology, where we acquire appropriate beliefs about God: God is theoriginal, independent being, omnipotent, wise, good, the creator and gover-nor of the world. This understanding of God, in turn, should prompt wor-ship of him, both public and private.

Smith omits piety and the duties to God from his “practical systemof virtue.” Moreover, Smith is certainly aware of the conventional viewsconcerning “the duties of devotion, the public and private worship of theDeity.”62 Indeed, it would be impossible for him to have been a student ofnatural law or a remotely competent professor of moral philosophy withoutthis knowledge. A challenge for providentialist readings of Smith is to makesense of this omission. Smith is providing in Part VI a catalogue of ourvirtues qua human: why is piety not part of that catalogue? Why does hediscuss the “character of virtue” only in relation to the individual herselfand to “other people”? Where is virtue in relation to God?

To appreciate the force of this challenge requires recognizing howconventional—indeed, almost universal—the inclusion of piety was. Whileit was common for philosophers to omit humility or self-denial (e.g.,“monkish virtues”) from a list of virtues, piety was always included.63 Thefollowing regents or professors of moral philosophy in Scotland are known(or considered highly likely) to have presented a practical ethics thatincluded duties to God and piety: (in Edinburgh) William Law, WilliamScott, John Pringle, William Cleghorn (who beat out Hume for the job),James Balfour, Adam Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart; (in Glasgow) Carmi-chael, Hutcheson, Thomas Craigie, Reid, and Archibald Arthur; (in Aber-deen at Marischal) Turnbull, David Verner, David Fordyce, AlexanderGerard, and James Beattie; (in Aberdeen at King’s) James Dunbar andThomas Gordon; and (in St. Andrews) John Cook.64 Other importantthinkers who defend piety and duties to God include Lord Kames, Hugh

62 Smith TMS 3.2.34.63 Cf. Heydt, “Practical Ethics.”64 For evidence on the Aberdeen professors, see Wood, The Aberdeen Enlightenment, esp.39ff. For further evidence on the moral philosophy curriculum in the universities of thisperiod, see Stewart, “The Curriculum in Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies.”

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Blair, and John Witherspoon. In England it is much the same—even Englishdeists, such as Gildon and Tindal, included duties to God.

On the other side, here are the eighteenth-century Scottish philoso-phers who offer a practical ethics and who omit piety and duties to God:David Hume and Adam Smith.

So, on the one side we have Hume and Smith. On the other is everyprofessor of moral philosophy in Scotland over the course of the eighteenthcentury (i.e., every professor for whom we have evidence), includingHutcheson, Turnbull, Reid, and Ferguson. Hume makes his case againstreligion clearer and he is certainly more strident, but Smith’s knowing anddeliberate omission of piety strongly suggests that he agrees with Humerather than with the providential naturalists concerning the relations ofmorality to natural religion.65

CONCLUSION

My aims for this paper have included both 1) re-contextualizing the evi-dence that has been invoked in debate about Smith’s providentialism and2) emphasizing the need to consider Smith’s account of conscience, hisnatural-rights theory, and his omission of piety if we are to evaluate seri-ously the relation of Smithian morality to religion. I have tried to make afair and complete case of the opposing view. At the end of the day, thereis significant evidence—up to this point largely ignored by providentialistinterpretations—in support of the view that Smith’s moral philosophy isthoroughly naturalistic. At a minimum, the analysis offered here has put theburden of proof back on those who want to offer providentialist readings ofSmith’s ethics.

In addition, and beyond the specific question of Smith’s views, thispaper outlines what topics need to be considered when evaluating aneighteenth-century philosopher’s account concerning the relation of moral-ity and religion—what Stephen identified as the most important theme inthe period’s moral philosophy. The paper also, I hope, demonstrates thevalue in familiarity with the conventional practical ethics of the period.

University of South Florida.

65 Cf. Phillipson, Adam Smith, 281.

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The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith's Moral Thought

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