“Indeed, there is arguably no higher example of a philosophical friendship in the entire Western tradition. It takes some effort, in fact, to think of who the closest rivals would be.”
Dennis Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought.
The Infidel and the Professor is a wonderful and ultimately quite charming book. The explanations of the writings of both Hume and Smith are very well done; brief enough that someone who has read the works in question does not find them tedious, but extensive enough that they serve as excellent summaries of the works for those who have not read them. The character studies are similarly impeccably drawn; after reading this, you’ll never forget le bon David or Smith with his “preoccupied air and a habit of mumbling and smiling to himself.”
But, it is the friendship between the two that frames the story.
The relative lack of attention paid to philosophical friendships, while understandable, is unfortunate. Friendship was understood to be a key component of philosophy and the philosophical life from the very beginning, as even a cursory reading of Plato or Aristotle should remind us. The latter famously claimed that friendship is the one good without which no one would choose to live even if he possessed all other goods, and Hume and Smith clearly concurred.
Rasmussen notes this at the outset of his book, and so I settled in expecting to be reading a book about two guys strolling merrily through life together, sharing good and bad times together, writing revealing personal letters to one another.
That didn’t happen. It turns out that while there is zero doubt that Smith and Hume were indeed great friends, they spent remarkably little time together. What survives of their correspondence is not extensive, and even if we had it all, it does not seem like it would be all that interesting.
Instead, what we witness in this book is a philosophical friendship. Rasmussen carefully demonstrates how the works of these two giants are intertwined. Both of Smith’s Great Books (The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations) are in many ways part of a long running conversation with Hume’s works. One easily imagines the two of them pleasantly arguing late into the night by a roaring fire about such things as how we internalize a moral code.
The idea of the philosophical conversation is the true animating force in this book. Hume describes himself as an “Ambassador from the Dominions of Learning to those of Conversation.” He also notes, “Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company.”
Therein lies the tragedy. Rasmussen documents beyond any doubt that Hume and Smith should be read together, enabling us to join in the amazing conversation.
But, in the modern world, Smith is sequestered over in the Economics department, Hume is locked up in the philosophy department, and neither one of them is ever let out to roam among the population at large.
Oh sure every now and then you hear about “The great Adam Smith, proponent of laissez-faire economics,” which always seems to sound like some sort of libertarian nirvana. But, it takes about 15 seconds looking at the Table of Contents of The Wealth of Nations to realize that Smith did not actually write the book his fans accuse him of writing.
Specialization has nearly killed philosophical conversation. The Cartoon Version of Smith exists not just because The Wealth of Nations is long and rambling. (Hume’s review is dead-on: “the Reading of it necessarily requires so much Attention, and the Public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular: But it has Depth and Solidity and Acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious Facts, that it must at last take the public Attention.”)
The larger problem is that Smith’s two Great Books no longer have the same author: The Wealth of Nations was written by that rabid free market exponent Adam Smith, while The Theory of Moral Sentiments was written by that obscure philosopher Adam Smith. And, so nobody reads him: economists don’t actually read Smith because, well, there isn’t enough math in it. Philosophers don’t read Smith because he really belongs over in the economics department so obviously he could not have written a philosophy book worthy of being included in a class on Enlightenment philosophy.
The idea that maybe, just maybe, those two books were written by the same guy and could usefully be read together in the same undergraduate, let alone graduate, class is inconceivable. Nobody could write important books in both Economics and Philosophy.
And, moreover, the idea that an economist and a philosopher could have fruitful intellectual discussions is crazy. On what subjects could the two of them possibly converse? Would it even be possible to imagine a semester long conversation in a class which read both Hume and Smith? It would be a fantastic course. Undergraduates would love it. But which department would house such a course?
The ultimate charm of Rasmussen’s book is the quiet way in which he documents a time before specialization destroyed the possibility of an intellectual kinship unburdened by disciplinary turf wars.
Contrast Smith’s case with Marx’s. Marx is read in both Philosophy and Economics Departments (well, some Economics Departments, at least). Philosophers no doubt emphasize different aspects of Marx’s thought than economists do, but still.
I have been puzzling about this. The curious thing about Marx is that even though he is labeled “economist,” there are very few Economics departments left which would ever have a class on Marx. I wanted to say that he is much more likely to be encountered in Humanities courses, but then I realized that mostly what is done is “Marxist readings” of a different text, not actually “reading Marx.”
I didn’t know Marx himself was read in Philosophy Departments, though. Which courses would read Marx?