No need for society: Adam Smith’s critique of pufendorf’s summa imbecillitas

The Scottish Enlighteners saw in Pufendorf the idea of a pre-government need-based sociability. This idea stemmed from a picture of the human condition as naturally destitute and powerless. Sociability therefore arose from the perception of the advantages given by cooperation and mutual assistance in overcoming this natural inability to provide for one’s own needs. Human beings became sociable through their self-love, understood as the interest in self-preservation. The idea of a principle of sociability independent of government was also crucial to Adam Smith’s conception of society. However, Smith sought to revise Pufendorf’s premises on human nature. Following Hutcheson, he considered them too close to Hobbes’ selfish system. As this article intends to show, for Smith sociability did not arise from need for the assistance of others, as it is often said, but from the desire for deserved esteem.