The Relationship Between Natural and Social Philosophy in the Work of Newton, Rousseau, and Smith

Abstract

Newton’s justification of the theory of absolute space presupposed that the material world is composed of equal particles, whose essential properties would belong to each and every particle even as a single particle in empty space. In philosophical generalization, this assumption of Newton’s maintains that a material system is composed of equal elements, whose essential properties are independent of their existence in a system. In the chapter above it was shown that the same presupposition also lies at the root of the prima philosophia and the philosophia naturalis and civilis of Hobbes as well as of the social philosophy of Rousseau and Smith. Whereas Hobbes himself had explicitly drawn a connection between natural and social philosophy, Newton did not deal directly with social philosophy and metaphysics; Smith and Rousseau, on the other hand, concentrated precisely on social philosophy and did not concern themselves explicitly with natural philosophy and metaphysics.