Il lavoro nella ‘società commerciale’ secondo David Hume e Adam Smith

Abstract

David Hume and Adam Smith shared the same philosophical project: the construction of a ‘science of human nature ‘. Then with their writings – Hume in his economic and political ‘Essays’ and Smith in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ – they offer many systematic explanations of the changes observed in the ‘commercial society’ in Scotland in second part of the Eighteenth Century. Their observations show very large consequences of the changes with the ‘partition’ or ‘division’ in the human work. The paper develops a comparison between the theoretic options of Hume and Smith. Hume insists on the importance of the moral space in the free choice of the work for one’s life; and Smith develops in detail the manifold consequences of the ‘division of labour’, particularly economic, moral and political.