On the Role of Pure and Rational Religion in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith’s system of natural liberty aimed at the happiness and virtue of humankind. Yet the Scottish philosopher also recognised that the system’s internal dynamics could render it unsustainable unless the state intervened to preserve sociability and justice through the education of both the working and the middle and upper classes. This article argues that the educational programme envisaged in The Wealth of Nations entailed the triumph of a pure and rational religion, understood as the conviction that the Supreme Being valued and rewarded virtue alone, thereby reinforcing the sense of duty, together with an awareness of belonging to an impartially conceived, divinely ordered system, fostering humility.