The empiricist theories of David Hume and Adam Smith

Abstract

Like Hobbes, the Scottish philosophers David Hume (1711–1776) and Adam Smith (1723–1790) were looking for natural causes of the phenomena which we describe as moral: Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Nature (1739–40), and Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Hume gave to his book A Treatise on Human Nature the subtitle ‘An attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects’. In this context, ‘experimental’ means ‘based on experience and observation’. By ‘moral subjects’, Hume means the human sciences in general, of which ethics is one branch. According to Hume, we must also restrict ourselves to what we can observe in the human sciences. He considers a knowledge of supersensible ultimate principles to be impossible, however.

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