Research Questions, Aims and Expected Results

This chapter outlines the aim of this work, the questions that motivated it, the structure of the book and the expected results. In particular, the aim of the book is to problematise what it means to be ‘human’ in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy from a historical and theoretical perspective. To do this, I explore in what sense Smith’s moral conception of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and the others. This kind of harmony will be examined in the light of a reconstruction of the main aspects constituting Smith’s conceptions of human nature, mind and the self, as part of a broader investigation of Smith’s conceptions of nature, history, morality and natural education. Specifically, I reconstruct Smith’s conception of human nature, mind and the self by reconsidering the notion of immediacy as an important aspect of understanding Adam Smith’s moral philosophy of the human being.