69. Adam Smith Part 8; John Locke and the Triumph of Reason

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Completing our Adam Smith arc with the end of the ideology of Calvinism.  Its replacement with the idea that God is good and the happiness of mankind is God’s purpose, allowed Hume and Smith to encode the principles of Christian love into a Newtonian framework.  Safely encased in a Newtonian system, Smith’s ideas could survive the rise of atheism.  This is the intellectual end point of leaving medieval morality behind.

Reason was the tool that created Calvinism, that demanded predestination.  The elevation of reason as the universal tool overthrows Calvinism in time, a user of reason must also be a moral agent.  John Locke became the effective communicator of the freedom and liberty that must result from a society of moral agents.

These are some pretty difficult ideas and we review them with Camie at the end.