12/2/2023 0 Comments Adam smith invisible hand handoutMy conclusions are the following: i) Adam Smith claimed that any natural theology is impossible ii) There is, in fact, some kind of order in the world, and it proves useful to a point in allowing for humankind’s survival, but it doesn’t meet any minimal moral criterion iii) the world is not teleologically ordered we may indeed, for mental economy's sake, imagine such order, but the world abounds in misery and depravity iv) consequences of human wickedness and insanity do, happily enough, deviate from intended outcomes we may feign invisible mechanisms at work behind, but to mistake them for a hidden mechanism is as childish as the primitive’s belief in ‘invisible beings’. 8) and that attempts to prove a phantom conversion to ‘natural religion’ or ‘irreligion’ result from misreading (par.9). 6), and of pure and rational religion (par.7) I contend, then, that his vindication of toleration is consistent with ‘pure and rational religion’ (par. 2) then the contents of their first part, considering the proofs of God’s existence and his attributes (sects 3-4) the ‘principles of the mind’ lying at the root of polytheism (sect. I defend this third way by proving that what Smith’s lost lectures on natural religion said can be reconstructed with some plausibility and what they did not say with absolute certainty I argue that he developed a sharp criticism of natural theology, that he argued that at the root of religion there are a number of principles of the mind that make religious belief a ‘natural belief’ I do so by reconstructing, first, the context of the missing lectures (sect. Smith’s philosophy is a third way between Rationalism and Phyrronism, arguing that doctrines confirmed by reason in every field, from natural science to theology, are nothing more than combinations of ideas agreeable to the imagination if we try, on the basis of both Smithian texts and their context and co-text, to reconstruct his lectures on natural theology, all kind of evidence converge in indicating that he reduced proofs of God´s existence to ‘inventions of the imagination’ and argued that philosophical theism is not different in status from primitive belief in invisible beings, or that it is as unwarranted as any system is, and besides that it generates a moral conundrum he argued also that teleological explanations are no more and no less imaginary than those based on efficient causes, that the teleological order we may imagine in the world is not too bad from a ‘consequentialist’ point of view, and yet it is far below any moral standard I argued that this is by no means a proof of Smith’s ‘irreligion’ and also that no convincing proof of any turn from religion to irreligion on his part has been provided so far, and finally that the two viable options he left open were either dismal unbelief or Theism on a moral basis. I argue instead that there is a remarkable analogy between Smith’s and Kant’s theory of religion. According to the myth, Adam Smith endorsed several of the traditional proofs of God’s existence he believed that the order existing in the world is a morally good order implemented by Divine Providence he believed that evil in the world is part of an all-encompassing Divine Plan and that the ‘invisible hand’ is the hand of the Christian God who leads the rich to employ their wealth for the greater benefit of the greatest number. This is the draft accepted for publication, Please quote from the published version I intend to dismantle a piece of historiographic mythology created by self-styled ‘Revisionists’ (Hill, Alvey, Oslington, etc.).
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