In my opinion, Adam Smith certainly deserves a spot on the syllabus in this class. Given the time period this class focuses on (1600 and 1700s), Smith is one of the most influential philosophers today from that time period. His work in moral theory, but particularly economic theory have stood the test of time and are still studied in class rooms all over the world today. With regard to who Smith should replace, that is a very difficult question because the syllabus is full of many prominent philosophers with their own incredible contributions. Despite this, the philosopher I believe Smith should replace on the syllabus is David Hume and his work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I have several reasons for this, the first one being that Hume and Smith have a relatively large amount of overlap in their writings (see my Compare and Contrast section). Another reason was several other philosophers on the syllabus wrote about the concepts of “ideas” and how they relate to our senses and a good amount of our time spent on Hume was also based on this. In addition, while Hume’s denial of causal inferences was interesting and enjoyable to read, I still have my doubts about the level of utility behind his claims. While on the other hand, Smith’s concepts of morality being gained through experience and sympathy rather than reason (from Theory of Moral Sentiments) has quite a bit of utility, especially in regards to emotional and social interactions.
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