Scottish Enlightenment [ Political & Moral philosophy ]
… contemporaries were far from accepting the apparent emphasis on self-love at the heart of Smith’s explanation of morality and sociability. Several of his readers, from Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid to Dugald Stewart, complained that … amounted to little more than a theory of good breeding or politeness, rather than an investigation into authentic morality (Hont 29-30). Others among the Scottish moderates, as Thomas Ahnert has demonstrated, insisted on the … and its expansion toward North America, replacing the allegedly too subjective (even if inter-subjective) founding of morality by Hume and Smith with the concept of common sense. Revising his book several times, Smith felt obliged to …
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