Smith at 300: Negative Justice and Political Wisdom

Abstract

Smith at 300: Contribution by Maria Carrasco"Adam Smith is known as a liberal thinker. The political system that he promotes and describes as one of “perfect justice, perfect liberty, and perfect equality” (WN IV.ix.17, 669), is characterized by the primacy of the rights of non-interference and the protection of a private sphere where every individual directs its life according to its own decisions. The moral justification for the primacy of negative justice is in the second book of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he unambiguously states: “Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor” (TMS II.i.1.9, 82). For the same reason, the first time I read that book, the following paragraph struck me as an inexplicable contradiction, an incomprehensible lapse in Adam Smith’s thoroughly revised text."