Adam Smith was a systematic thinker. Furthermore, he was a thinker of systems; that is, his philosophy included a sophisticated theory of systems. Like many of his contemporaries, he tried to distinguish good from bad systems and to present his own system according to the good standards he defended. In a nutshell, this is the main argument of Eric Schliesser’s new book, Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker.

A simple look at the table of contents shows the wide-ranging materials covered by Schliesser’s book, and since it is impossible to cover all of them in a review, I’ll focus on his methodological commitments. By doing so, I can highlight some of Schliesser’s contributions as well as the shortcomings of his otherwise insightful analyses. From Smith’s conception of human nature as passion-driven (ch. 2) to his depiction of a cheerful philosophical life (ch. 15), Schliesser’s analysis follows a progressive order, from bottom to top: the passions (chs. 2 and 3), moral sentiments (ch. 4), judgment (ch. 5), society (ch. 6), etc. The overall result is an extensive, and impressive, exposition of Smith’s system. Two additional points are worth noticing: he correctly depicts the passions as the bedrock of Smith’s system and cleverly relies on “systematicity”; that is, he “interpret[s] Smith’s writings in light of each other” (p. 19). This is the happiest of Schliesser’s methodological choices: following this internal progressive concatenation, the main fabric of the book is then weaved from this criss-cross interpretation, with different texts illuminating each other, in a way that the whole is firmly built. Smith’s work is particularly fit for this kind of approach, and we see the first good results emerge with the analysis of one of the least-understood (when not completely ignored) aspects of Smith’s philosophy: the role of sensory “preconceptions” or “anticipations”—Schliesser calls them “proto-passions” (chs. 2 and 3). Based on “External Senses,”^{Footnote 1} Schliesser consistently explores some non-empiricist aspects of Smith epistemology (pp. 54–62), offering an interesting interpretative tool in the “schematic description of the life cycle” of the different kinds of passions (pp. 53–56, 77, 79). Overall, Schliesser delivers a consistent picture of Smith’s system. It is one worth reading in full.

A second methodological choice involves context: “I rely on a wide range of earlier readers of Smith to highlight and examine his works” (p. 19). For instance, in the works of Sophie de Grouchy, one of the first French translators of TMS, Schliesser finds some interesting insights concerning Smith’s theory of justice (pp. 87–88, 91–92, 176), his notion of consciousness (p. 94), and the active role of reason (p. 72). This is an important addition to the list of early commentary on Smith.

The third choice: “I put Smith in conversation with other philosophers, including a few who may not have been known to him firsthand” (p. 19). In general terms, this is one of the most basic methods available to the historian of ideas: the reconstruction of how one philosopher was influenced by others, or how a certain notion or reasoning employed by author A is criticized or reconstructed by author B. Since “Smith was incredibly well read” (p. 19), the list is extensive and varies according to theme, method, and background of the researcher. Isaac Newton, George Berkeley, Bernard Mandeville, David Hume (to name a few whom Schliesser cites) are standard in Smith scholarship. Baruch Spinoza is not, and for a good reason: “there is no firm evidence that Smith read Spinoza” (p. 9n7). Yet despite that admission, throughout the book, Schliesser goes on to suggest that Smith’s ideas had much in common with Spinoza’s. For instance, in his analysis of the “proto-passions,” Schliesser alludes to Spinoza as he points out that Smith’s position was not uncommon among early modern philosophers and could be found in Anthony Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, an author Smith undoubtedly read (p. 61). The line here is a straight one: Smith was a student of Francis Hutcheson, whose first book, An Inquiry into the Original Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, brought, as indicated by the subtitle of the first edition (1725), the following: “in which the Principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are Explained and Defended against the Author of the Fable of the Bees.” Since Smith presents his own “system” as able to solve the problems that Hutcheson’s moral sense theory cannot (TMS VII.iii.3.1, 326), this possible lineage of thought becomes relevant.

The fourth methodological choice is as follows: “Smith is a very careful, often talmudically precise and terse writer, whose prose is, in addition, eminently quotable. Even so, I deploy distinctions and terms from recent philosophy when these can help illuminate Smith’s system” (p. 19).

He then goes on to offer a defense for anachronism:

I don’t deny that an anachronistic approach can yield important insights and, eventually, even a deeper understanding of an author’s ideas. However, to assume that an anachronistic approach is superior to historical contextualization when it comes to historical understanding is an altogether different matter. Concepts are, indeed, contested terrain, but is there any reason to consider the early twenty-first-century philosophical landscape to be less problematic than the mid-eighteenth-century one? To be fair, Schliesser is not stating that an anachronistic approach is necessarily better, but that it is “sometimes” better, and it is difficult to generalize his proceedings on this topic. For instance, his analysis of the famous “Letter to Strahan” (ch. 15) is built upon a reconstruction of Smith’s own concept of cheerfulness, relying exclusively on Smith’s and David Hume’s works. On the other hand, his analysis of Smith’s account of abstraction (pp. 39–47) is guided by Vernon Smith’s concept of “environmental rationality” in ways that are problematic (pp. 62–68; particularly, it leads Schliesser to impute odd metaphysical assumptions to “Languages” [pp. 41–42]). An alternative, historically sensitive analysis of this topic should insist on Smith’s attachment to a science then known as “General Grammar.” It was the modern heir of ancient Rhetoric, a science dedicated to understanding and exposing the logical links between languages’ general terms responsible for abstraction and reasoning.^{Footnote 2} In Smith’s own words:

In this letter, dated 7 February 1763, Smith recommends Gabriel Girard’s Les vrais principes de la Langue Françoise (1742), and points out that the “Grammatical Articles too in the French Encyclopedie have given me a good deal of entertainment”^{Footnote 3} (ibid.). A comparison of some of these articles (“Grammar,” “Abstraction,” “Word” [Mot], “Language” [Langue], etc.) with Smith’s works could easily show that his notion of abstraction, contra Schliesser (pp. 41–42), had absolutely nothing “unusual” (p. 41) about it; on the contrary, it was the standard one among eighteenth-century grammarians. As strange as it may sound to contemporary ears, Adam Smith’s works should also be read from a grammarian’s point of view.