Speaker
Description
Adam Smith is famously difficult to pin down when it comes to his views on religion. One reason for this is the absence of any student notes on that part of his moral philosophy lectures that covered natural religion. This paper attempts to re- construct an outline of what Smith may have covered in these lectures by examining the circumstantial evidence available to us. The paper examines the structure of similar moral philosophy courses by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Ferguson and combines this with findings from recent work on Smith’s Library and the Books and Borrowing Project surveying Scottish library records including Smith and the books he signed out for students. By combining this material we may identify a broad outline of the sort of material that Smith taught under the heading of natural religion.
| Organization | The University of Glasgow |
|---|
