1001Philosophers

Adam Smith vs David Hume

Smith and Hume are the two greatest figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and were close friends as well as philosophical interlocutors. Their work on moral philosophy, economics, and history shaped Anglo-American thought decisively.

At a glance

Adam SmithDavid Hume
Dates1723 – 17901711 – 1776
NationalityScottishScottish
EraModernModern
Movements Scottish Enlightenment, Enlightenment Empiricism, Scottish Enlightenment
Profile Adam Smith → David Hume →

Where they agree

Both held that moral philosophy must be empirical and naturalistic, both gave central place to the moral sentiments — particularly sympathy — in their accounts of moral judgment, and both treated philosophy and the human sciences as continuous projects. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments builds directly on Hume's Treatise.

Where they disagree

Hume's account of moral judgment grounds it in sympathy with the pleasure or pain produced by an action's effects. Smith's account grounds it in sympathy with the impartial spectator's response to the agent's motives, an apparatus that allows for more nuanced and reflective moral evaluation. Smith's Wealth of Nations also extended the empiricist analysis of human behavior into the systematic analysis of commercial society in a way Hume's writings on economics gestured at but did not develop.

Representative quotes

Adam Smith

  • “All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

    Chapter IV, p. 448.

  • “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him.”

    Section I, Chap. I.

  • “Defence is of much more importance than opulence.”

    Chapter II

David Hume

  • “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”

    Part 3, Section 3

  • “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.”

    Variant (perhaps a paraphrase of this passage): It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

  • “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

    Section X: Of Miracles; Part I. 87

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