Adam Smith and David Hume: Two Friends

The question of moral action was just as important for Adam Smith as it was for David Hume. Their special friendship between the two great thinkers is explored by Frits L. van Holthoon, who highlights both the similarities between their moral philosophies and the profound difference in their attitudes to human affairs. The quite different meanings and ways of thinking on central concepts such as sympathy, empathy, utility and impartial spectator are discussed. It is pointed out that Smith was not looking for broad systems in his considerations, but rather for organizing concepts, and consequently the impartial spectator appears in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the concepts of the division of labour and the invisible hand in The Wealth of Nations. It is examined whether the impartial spectator can really be regarded as a key concept of Adam Smith’s moral theory or whether it might not be more appropriate to speak of ‘sympathy’. In the end, generalizations that stylize Hume as a nineteenth-century Tory historian and Smith as an advocate of free trade are refuted. Nor should the Wealth of Nations be seen as his purely economic work.