Abstract

Remy Debes

The Value of Persons in Smith’s Moral Philosophy

Several recent scholars including Stephen Darwall, Samuel Fleischacker, and Charles Griswold have drawn attention to a kind of descriptive moral egalitarianism in Adam Smith’s philosophy. But these scholars have also hinted at something more contentious – that Smith held something like a doctrine of equal human dignity,.  This essay argues that Smith did hold such a doctrine, but that Smith’s doctrine of dignity diverges radically from dominant contemporary theories, which base dignity either on historically later conceptions of rational agency (esp. Kantian autonomy) or historically earlier conceptions of spiritual identity (esp. imago Dei).  I argue that in Smith’s moral theory persons have worth most fundamentally in virtue of what is distinctively affective in human nature.