Adam Smith's Common Sense Onto-Epistemology in the Context of Cartesian Scepticism and Humean Agnosticism

Abstract

In dealing with the problems of knowledge as traditionally approached in his time, e.g. as the relation between theoretical and empirical knowledge or primary and secondary qualities, Adam Smith was looking for a particular way of solving these, embracing neither Descartes' nor Hume's position. Taking the nature as a whole or society as a whole, he concentrated on the internal correlations and interactions rather than on separate static qualities. An example of such a correlation which, among other things, is analyzed in this paper, is Adam Smith's conception of labour as an intermediary between the subject and the object which includes perception and imagination.