This article seeks to examine the ‘birth of the social’ in the 18th century through an examination and comparison of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The underlying claim is that the emergence of a specifically social theory entailed a separation from political theory, as the uncovering of the limits of the ‘science of the statesman or legislator’. Emphasis is placed on the different ‘epistemological moves’, relative to the two texts, that rendered such a separation possible. In the case of Montesquieu, the terms of the social and political are separated, even opposed, but also articulated in their difference. By contrast, in Adam Smith the uncovering of a social bond tends towards a displacement of the ‘political’. The article concludes by suggesting why, in both cases, the discovery of the social remained curiously still-born.

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