ABSTRACT
Smith had a succinct theory of philosophy, which underpinned the two great works he left us, and two which he had in progress in 1785, but which he did not live to complete. His theory held that philosophy is rational inquiry, prompted originally by the sentiment of wonder (Smith 1980, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (EPS), ‘Astronomy’ III.3), then expressed through the ‘systematical arrangement of different observations connected by a few common principles’, and giving rise to aesthetic pleasure in contemplation of that arrangement (Smith 1976b, Wealth of Nations (WN) V.i.f.25). He believed it fell naturally into three great branches, and was so developed originally by the ancient Greek Stoics: Zeno of Citium (334-262) and Chrysippus (c. 280-206). The first was logic or the ‘science of the principles of good and bad reasoning’ (WN V.i.f.26), arising from metaphysics, which ‘considered the general nature of Universals’ (Smith 1980 EPS, ‘Ancient Logics and Metaphysics’ 1). The second branch was physics or natural philosophy, designated in general terms in the ‘History of Astronomy’ as the ‘science of the connecting principles of nature’ (‘Astronomy’ II.12), and thereafter more sceptically as ‘that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature’ (III.3). Making an important methodological point in the same text about the development of natural philosophy, Smith stated it was ‘one of those arts which address themselves to the imagination’ (II.12). ‘By far the most important of all the branches of philosophy’, if properly conducted, so Smith argued, was the third one, moral philosophy. ‘Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind’, was the object of its investigations (WN V.i.f.30).
