Smith On Justice And Mercy

As the founder of modern economics and an advocator of market economy, Adam Smith played quite an important role in shaping modern world. Meanwhile, as one of the greatest thinkers in history, he left us rich and generous legacy in many other fields besides economics. However, his achievement on other subjects was shadowed by his contribution on economics. Though recently, more and more smithian scholars have paid great attention to his moral philosophy, his political philosophy is still being overlooked. The neglect of his political philosophy, to some extent, has hindered us from comprehensively understanding Smith's works.In this research, I start with Smith's differentiation of two conceptions'justice'and'benevolence', and then I focus on Smith's political philosophy which is based on the conception of'justice'. For Smith, justice is not only the bottom line of morality that sustains the social order, or a basic prerequisite for prosperity of a community, but also the fundament of government and law.Smith'differentiation of justice and benevolence is of great significance. The essential differences between the two conceptions justice and benevolence imply the fundamental distinction between ethics and political philosophy as well as the different accesses to a moral person and a good society. Smith's discuss on justice is mainly confined in a legal and political framework while his study on other private virtues is under an ethical paradigm. This indicates that Smiths intends to separate political philosophy from the traditional moral philosophy. In other words, Smith claims that political philosophy should establish its own paradigm at a different starting point. The demoralization of economics and politics is a milestone in modern history, which symbolizes the transformation of society from a traditional virtuous society to a modern commercial one. And Smith stood on that watershed. The questions he faced in 18th century are the questions we have to answer today.