ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to contrast Kant and Adam Smith's radically different notions of understanding and reason, and illustrates how they lead to differing conceptions of personhood and self-agency. It is known that Kant was both deeply impressed by and influenced by Smith. Smith's self-division and impartial spectator are major advancements on Hume's moral theory. It brings to Hume's foundation an empiricist conception of conscience that matures through education and personal experience, though it does not meet Kant's transcendental standards. There is an inherent difficulty in comparing Kant and Smith's theories of imagination. Kant spends a great deal of time writing about it structurally while spending much less time offering concrete examples of the imagination at work in particular cases. A contrast between Kant's and Smith's writings on reason would also revolve around the tension between universality and particularity. There is no partial morality for Kant.
