Scottish Enlightenment [ Political & Moral philosophy ]
… of sociability was far more than a technical debate in moral philosophy, or a binary controversy about the primacy of selfishness or sociability in human nature. As much excellent recent work has demonstrated, sociability for the Scots … in Hume’s thought, and in that of his close friend Adam Smith , was rather on the processes by which partial and self-regarding humans acquired the moral and psychological resources required to live sociably. This was a theme already … this process. 9 Sociability and politeness, in this sense, were outcomes of an evolutionary moral history driven by selfishness and pride. Smith, for his part, did not deny that human nature was a compound of both selfish and sociable …
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