Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

217

SMITH, ADAM

such as authenticity, purity, and openness
carry something of the meaning of sin-
cerity. To be insincere is to speak or act
with a lack of openness because the world
of inner states is hidden from the conver-
sation partner or the external observer.
An inauthentic person similarly exhibits
a kind of deceitfulness, either toward
others (internal states are deliberately
hidden and incongruent external states
are exhibited), or within oneself by per-
mitting self-deception (an inconsistency
among internal states which is masked
either deliberately or unconsciously).
Sincerity is considered a virtue, but in
much contemporary usage it is a fairly
“thin” or “flat” virtue without much robust
content. One could fail in terms of many
more important virtues but still be
accorded the virtue of sincerity (with the
implication that in most other ways the
person fails and is misguided). But not
just any congruence between inner and
outer states can be called sincere. Thus, it
would be odd to speak of someone as
“sincerely cruel.” This suggests an addi-
tional factor of some type of purity which
is a grounding for sincerity or to which
sincerity as a virtue is tethered. This con-
dition of purity (in some relevant sense)
seems to be invoked when, instead of
individual actions, a person is character-
ized as sincere. Sincerity has waxed and
waned as an aesthetic virtue in Western
literature. In the eighteenth century it
began to be prized as an aesthetic quality
so that poetry, for example, was judged to

be better if it possessed sincerity in the

sense that it matched inner states of the

poet, or arose from appropriate authentic

inner states. Later, due in part to the noto-

riously difficult business of ascertaining

authorial intention, sincerity became

much less important aesthetically.

SKEPTICISM. There is a sense in which

no philosophy, let alone philosophy of reli-

gion, is possible without some skepticism.

When Augustine professed to believe in

the God of Christianity he was, in essence,

being skeptical about the gods of Imperial

Rome. As Augustine and Descartes noted,

there are degrees of skepticism. Modest

forms of skepticism make sense in certain

contexts, but it is more problematic when

skepticism is projected universally. For

example, if someone who claims to be a

skeptic charges that no person knows any-

thing, it appears that the “skeptic” is not

really skeptical, but is making a radical

claim that reaches almost breath-taking

proportions. Can one know that no one

has ever known anything? To answer this

in the negative would seem to require a

Herculean task of examining every possi-

ble knower. And then if the person did

claim to know that no one knows any-

thing, the person would seem to refute her

own position for (if she is right) then she

knows something (and thus she is wrong).

SMITH, ADAM (1723–1790). Scottish

economist and philosopher, Smith