Journal of the History of Philosophy

1. introduction

adam smith¹ is often taken to be an heir to the natural jurisprudence tradition, to which he explicitly refers in several places in his oeuvre.² He combines it with an account of the moral sentiments, in which he sees the origin of morality and justice.³ The moral sentiments, as explored in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, are the basis for justice, which, embodied in positive law, is the framework for commercial society, the economy of which Smith explores in the Wealth of Nations. in this sense, Smith is seen by many scholars as a being a moral philosopher in the first place, and an economist in the second place.⁴ The challenge that remains, and [End Page 703] which Smith addresses by a number of rhetorical strategies,⁵ is to bring existing institutions closer to the ideal of justice as derived from the moral sentiments.

The aim of this paper is to challenge this picture and to show that Smith’s position on justice and the law is more complex. Moral philosophy, moral psychology, economics and history are much more intertwined in Smith’s thought than this picture assumes. In particular, they are intertwined in his historical account. His narrative about the historical development of justice is much more “economical” than it may seem at first glance, and power relations and economic interests play a fundamental role in it. While it may look, at first glance, as if these only concerned the realization of justice in positive law, this paper argues that a closer analysis shows that they also affect the very human sentiments that form the basis of Smith’s account of morality and justice. For Smith, the historical development of just laws depends both on the moral sentiments and on what he calls the “natural progress of opulence,”⁶ which creates more equal conditions among the members of a society. This casts doubt on the whole endeavor of providing a firm foundation for justice in human moral sentiments—doubts that Smith seems to have recoiled from, and which might contribute to answering the long-debated question of why he never finished his writings on jurisprudence. Exploring these issues sheds light on the relation between the “natural” and the “unnatural” course of history that Smith describes, and raises questions about the character of his oeuvre as a whole: it shows that one cannot separate the moral philosopher in Smith from the economist and historian. This discussion is also relevant, however, for addressing the systematic question about the relation between justice, law, and history in more general terms. Accounts similar to what is often taken to be Smith’s account are still widespread in discussions about justice, maybe because we live in a world that has been influenced by Smith and likeminded thinkers. Seeing the tensions in Smith’s view offers an opportunity for reflecting on the character of these approaches to justice as well.

The second section sketches what I call the “simple model,” according to which justice is based on the moral sentiments, and positive law is, or should be, based on justice. I then look in more detail in section 3 at the kind of challenges to the historical realization of justice that Smith describes, arguing that in his account, for justice to be realized in law, the moral sentiments need to be supported by the “natural” development of the economic realm that creates more equal conditions under which impartial laws can be enacted. In the fourth section I argue that not only the realization of justice in law, but also the moral sentiments themselves have a historical trajectory that depends on economic and political factors. Although Smith does not explicitly discuss this issue and the way in which it might change the character of his whole system, he provides numerous examples that show that rather than being a fixed, transhistorical anchor that provides a secure grounding for justice, the moral sentiments in turn depend on historical circumstances, including economic developments. In the fifth, concluding section I reflect on [End Page 704] how these tensions can be understood as...