Abstract

Ryan Hanley

Smith’s Skepticism

Is Smith a skeptic?  Are his epistemological commitments equivalent to Hume’s?  Some scholars, like Charles Griswold, insist Smith is best regarded as “nondogmatic skeptic” whose epistemology “unquestionably” represents an extension of Hume’s, while others, like D.D. Raphael, counter that “Smith is not a skeptic,” but “a theist.”  My paper reconsiders the evidence for each claim.  In so doing it argues that Smith’s epistemology is indeed indebted to Hume’s – but for reasons quite different from those often insisted upon.  Smith’s chief debt to Hume lies not in his embrace of Hume’s skeptical conceptions of the limits of reason, but in his embrace of Humean natural belief as necessary for practical navigation of the world.