Adam
Smith, the Professor from Kirkcaldy Part I
The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, Moral Society and the Impartial Spectator
Author: Pablo Paniagua
Editor: Victoria Finn
“Smith sought to do for moral philosophy what
Isaac Newton had done for natural philosophy: to imagine and represent those
invisible connecting principles that determine the course of nature. Newton's
natural philosophical realm encompassed all in nature that envelopes humankind.
Smith's moral philosophical realm was humankind.”
Jerry
Evensky
“Government authority emerges to establish
order in society, but government is neither the original source of order nor
the locus of control that establishes order in the ideal state. Order begins
and ends with the individual citizen. In the beginning, a rude order is
established by retribution based on a self-defined sense of justice. In the
end, in the limit, a refined order is established by common acceptance of
social norms, civic ethics, among citizens with self-command, the
self-government, to enforce those norms about them-selves. Between this
beginning and this end, in the course of humankind’s evolution from the rude
state towards the ideal, the internal and external systems of governance-norms
and positive laws respectively-share one another as systems of justice evolve.”
Jerry
Evensky
“Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity,
friendship, generosity, public spirit;
these passions mixed in various
degrees, and distributed through society, have been from the beginning of the
world and still are the source of all actions and enterprise which have ever
been observed among”.
Adam Smith
Adam
Smith, an enlightened life in the right place: Scotland:
Probably today in the Western World and
also in several ex-Communist countries, everyone has heard about Adam Smith.
The Scottish professor of Moral Philosophy is probably among the most cited,
known and mentioned Economists in the world. However Adam Smith is also
probably one of the least read and one of the most misrepresented,
misunderstood and controversial figures in economic history. The misconceptions
and controversy surrounding him are due to several poor one-sided
interpretations of his work, attributed mostly to a narrow analysis of his
political economic publication “An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (WN). In order to better understand
Adam Smith’s economic-social holistic framework and his final scope as an
author, one must first understand his lesser known first book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” (TMS). In this essay I will try to
address Smith’s comprehensive view of society, the evolution of consciousness
and human behavior through my interpretation of the TMS, mostly using the work
of more recent scholars who have contributed to better understanding Smith’s
Moral Theory; their novel analyses have situated Adam Smith in a higher and
more humanitarian position, far beyond what had been imaginable three decades
ago.
Adam Smith (June 5, 1723 – July 17,
1790), was born in the former small port named Kirkcaldy, in Fife, in northern Edinburgh.
Surprisingly he did not study at the University of Edinburgh; his family
instead decided to send him to Glasgow University. At the time Scotland was one
of the most economical, enlightened and vigorous countries in the Western
World; it had one of the highest literacy rates among Europeans countries and
boasted 4 of the best universities in the world: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St.
Andrews and Aberdeen. Meanwhile England had only 2 top universities: Oxford and
Cambridge.
Smith’s Scotland was, fortunately for him,
the place to be intellectually enlightened. The Acts of Union finalized in 1707
united England and Scotland under a single monarchy and parliament, creating an
economic and trading integration between them. This union established a very
important trade and commerce network in Northern Europe in the beginning of the
XVIII Century. That permitted the Scottish and English to peacefully trade and
export manufactured products to the rest of Europe. By the 1740s Glasgow and
other Scottish ports were growing thanks to this trade union pact. Glasgow
became the biggest transit port in which imported raw materials from America
were packaged and manufactured then re-exported, principally to England and to
a lesser degree to some other continental European countries.
Scotland was a very nurturing and fruitful
place in the XVIII century. Glasgow was economically booming and intellectual
and religious freedoms were rapidly expanding, the middle class was
consistently growing in measure and wealth. Increased trade, cultural and
intellectual effervescence formed the fertile soil for the Scottish
Enlightenment to prosper; names like Francis Hutcheson (Irish) and David Hume
were soon to appear in the intellectual spectrum. Hutcheson was a professor of
Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University from 1730 to 1746, profoundly
influencing and mentoring Adam Smith. Professor Hutcheson felt the necessity of
creating a moral system which did not require relying on a deity or god as a
source of superior moral entity and human self-control. He wanted establish a
social moral framework that could be placed outside the religious orthodox
system. David Hume following Hutcheson and added the reasoning skepticism to
this moral system; finally Adam Smith followed and complemented what Hutcheson
and Hume had started.
After completing his degree in culturally
booming Glasgow, Adam Smith moved to study at Oxford for six years, where
(according to Smith) the educational quality was “deplorable”. Smith returned
to Edinburgh in 1748 to give private lectures on ‘rhetoric and belles-lettres’,
government and the history of science. He moved back to Glasgow as a professor
of Logic in 1751 then the following year he took Hutcheson’s old chair of Moral
Philosophy; during this appointment, he published his first book (the TMS) in
1759 at 36 years old. He resigned in 1764 when he had the opportunity to
accompany a young aristocrat, the Duke of Buccleuch, to France where he met
Voltaire, Quesnay and Turgot; he stayed in France until 1766. After this
adventure, Smith spent the rest of his life moving between Kirkcaldy and
Edinburgh. In 1776 he published the WN. At the end of his career, Smith was
appointed as a Commissioner of Customs for Scotland. In 1787 he succeeded his
friend Edmund Burke as Lord Rector of Glasgow University, where he diligently
served for the rest of his life.
During his lifetime, Smith was mostly
famous for the TMS rather than the WN. Unfortunately in the following
centuries, specifically ever since the XIX Century, the TMS gradually fell into intellectual
eclipse, creating solely a one-sided interpretation of his work. He was thereafter exclusively analyzed through the lens of his WN work
in Political Economy rather than in a more aggregate perspective. This
incomplete and predisposed analysis of Adam Smith was carried all the way
through the XIX and the XX centuries, unfortunately bringing negative results
in understanding his holistic system of necessary social institutions for a
prosperous society. Smith was side-by-side with Hutcheson and Hume as the
pioneers of human impartiality applied to Moral Ethics, but was surprisingly
ignored in both Philosophy and Ethics. In addition, one of the biggest mistakes
in understanding Smith’s philosophy was that most people interested in his work
were chiefly economists. They mainly studied, read or quoted only the WN, creating
a sort of philosophic dichotomy and disjunction of Smith’s dual works, generating
a misinterpretation of the WN as well as its role within the bigger system. If
the WN had been analyzed and read without acknowledging the first social moral
framework already developed in the TMS, then the interpretation of WN would
have been very limited and distorted, missing what Smith intended to convey
through both books. As Amartya Sen wrote in his introduction in a later TMS
version:
“The
typical understanding of the WN has been constrained to the detriment of
economics as a separate subject. The neglect applies, among other issues, to
the appreciation of the demands of rationality, the need for recognizing the
plurality of human motivations, the deep connection between social ethics and
economics, and the co-dependent rather than free-standing role of institutions
in general free markets in particular towards the functioning of the economy.”
Here Amartya Sen shed light on what Adam
Smith really intended with his lifetime work. Smith had aimed at a bigger
picture, trying also with a third publication on jurisprudence that he did not
finish. He attempted to develop a coherent holistic social system with 3 fundamental
spheres of human social interaction that reinforce each other and found a
wealthy and stable society. According to Smith, these important spheres were:
social traditions and moral rules, the organic institution of justice and
common law and the self-interested actions of trade in the free-market process.
If they could have understood his books as coherent parts of a larger, natural
social evolutionary system, then they would have emerged as completely
complementary; they show a very articulated system to understanding human
social life in its entirety. Understanding the TMS and its deep philosophical
relationship with the WN helps to better understand our human social
interactions and the deep relationship between our moral social frameworks and
the wealth of our nations. If Smith’s social system had been seen as a 3-legged
chair which each leg reinforces the others in order to stand, his works would
never have been considered disassociated with each other, nor considered Smith
a “laissez-faire”, individualistic, or narrow-minded advocator.
Even though to us this system appears quite
complementary, there is extensive literature regarding this apparent dichotomy
between his two books, extensively misrepresented in the so called “Adam Smith Problem”. This is the
whimsical belief that there is a substantial inconsistence between the moral
system presented in the TMS (linked predominantly with sympathy and
benevolence) and the opposing one exposed in the WN (related to plain
selfishness). This is a completely
flawed theory and neglects the fact that Smith mentions and analyzes different
heterogeneous sets of motivations and values in each book, including
benevolence, sympathy and self-love among the sentiments which conduct human
action.
It appears that the advocators of blind
selfishness and extreme individualism who gained momentum (especially in the
U.S. since the end of the “free-love” era in the 60s) believed to mostly be founded and inspired by
Adam Smith’s work. This is demonstrates a colossal lack of understanding of
Smith’s true philosophy and a meager investigation of his intentions.
Therefore, in order to understand Smith’s philosophy and real relevance of the
social moral framework of human life that created the foundations for a prosperous
and wealthy society, we should analyze his Moral Philosophy to put an end to this
copycat image of Smith once and for all.
Adam
Smith’s Moral Philosophy and its implications in the social system:
“The administration of the great system of the universe . . . the
care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the
business of God, and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department,
but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness
of his comprehension-the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his
friends, his country.”
Adam Smith
Smith was a pioneer in XVIII century Moral
Philosophy, particularly in incorporating a humane role of impartiality, the
evolution of consciousness and an essence of common universality in human
ethics. In the TMS, Smith laid the social moral framework for a pre and current
capitalist society; it provides the proper social moral lens in order to
properly read the WN with a more complex and rich ethic perspective. The WN
help us to understand the motivation that pushes human action within the
economic sphere. Both the TMS and WN provide a structure for human rationality,
the plurality and subjectiveness of human motivations; they both also establish
a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between economic
prosperity and social moral ethics that restrain our sentiments. Thanks to
Smith, these were then seen as connected systems rather than separate entities.
Adam Smith helped us to understand the social necessity of developing a moral
humanity to hold and sustain social institutions together in order for economic
market systems and justice to flourish.
As a result, the two books are deeply correlated and
inherently dependent on one another. It is a big mistake to consider them
mutually and morally disconnected or the presence of any form of moral
dichotomy between them. The mentioned “Adam
Smith Problem” indicates a sort of superficial inconsistency between his
works. This analysis conveys that in the TMS there is a marked global sense of
“social prosperity” through a common social good, especially highlighted
through sympathy towards other human beings and (as the analysis goes) presents
a huge discrepancy with the WN, which promotes “selfishness” and
individualistic behavior. The “Adam Smith Problem” is a huge misconception; he
never intended to leave behind the perspective of sympathy and benevolence. In
fact Smith considered the TMS as his finest achievement and worked on a 6th
edition of the TMS just before he died. In both books readers can see that
Smith mention various motivations and sentiments which explain different
spheres of human action. Self-love is just one of the motivations,
preponderantly the most important one, but Smith also extensively worked
treating and exposing other fundamental social motivations from a moral system
based on sympathy, which are fundamental for a prosperous society.
Indeed Smith refuted any form of
selfishness and he even associated it with rapacity and human neglect for your
fellow man. Mature self-love, according to Smith, is instead a vital part of
human virtues and is a completely different thing than selfishness. Selfishness
presupposes positioning oneself as the only concentration and preoccupation to
the point to be chosen over others, even if it hampers them. Mature self-love
on the other hand is care and attention to oneself while taking into account
your interests as well as others’ interests; it involves a higher degree of
human respect and social interaction. It’s a more socially harmonic term and
involves care for the rest of society and respect for the fundamental
traditions and rules of social morality.
Smith believed that the self-love principle
explained a consistent part of human interaction, although he specifically
stated that it was not the only one. Self-love is particularly consistent in
helping understand economic phenomena but Smith was well aware of further
motivations regarding other social spheres; for example he begins: “How selfish
so ever man maybe supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature,
which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary
to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing
it”. Indeed Smith understood, as
probably no one else at the time, that the whole foundation of a capitalist and
free-market society is based on cooperation and respect, which in turn is
deeply based on the fundamental structure of shared social ethics and human
morality.
According to Smith, self-love is a necessary
and basic condition for spurring the division of labor and human creativity;
however this sole motivation it is not sufficient enough to reassure long-term
human self-discipline, social stability or a nation’s prosperity. Trust, mutual
confidence, benevolence and reciprocal respect towards others create the base
for voluntary cooperation, enhancing exchanges, trade and production and
protection under a common law system of jurisprudence. Today Smith would surely
ask those laissez-fare individualist fundamentalists: how can you base a
society with the complexity of the current division of labor without
benevolence, confidence and human-morality? Smith would agree with them that
self-love pushes human nature to be involved in trade and production, but he
complemented and enriched this notion with humanitarian, respectful, social
morality that supports its foundation.
For Smith, the pursuit of self-interest
appears to broadly explain the main driving force of economic activity and
exchange. In his famous quote from the WN, Smith wrote: “It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not their
humanity but to their self-love.” Contrarily, what is not usually quoted is
something which Adam Smith mentioned earlier in the same chapter: “In civilized
society, man stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of
great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the
friendship of a few persons.“ Unfortunately people
misunderstand the famous quote and apply it to every single sphere of social
human interaction, therefore cataloging Smith as the father of selfishness. Adam
Smith in his most famous quote only addresses the necessity of self-love in
order to explain economic activity and the exchanges executed in a market
economy.
Smith clearly understood the necessity of a
healthy and well-functioning market economy based on individuals being free and
following their self-interests. It does not mean that he didn’t belief in any
other human social institution organically and spontaneously developed. In fact
in his work, he clearly presupposes that social traditions, rules of social
morality, as well as the common law are social institutions that evolve with
society through individuals’ interactions and are the foundations which reassure
prosperity. He warned us against how selfishness and the lack of civic ethics
would undermine the liberal open society. Then, a question arises: how can we
keep humanity away from rapacity and selfishness? Smith proposed the necessary
moral institutions that could hold society together and control human
selfishness. He helped us realize that the best way to address and channel
individual human action based on self-interest is through a system of social
ethics arising from spontaneous order, without any rational or planned design
but rather from the evolution and formation of rules and traditions conforming
to that moral social system.
Controlling selfishness and rapacity,
according to Smith, should not have to come from government control or state
police; it must come from human self-control. Self-governing humans will be the
pillar of a free civic ethic society, but how can we assess our sentiments and
actions in order to possess a rightful measure of self-control? The answer that
Smith provides relies on social sympathy and social approbation. Smith intended
that sympathy in some way enables people to use their imagination and a higher
degree of abstraction to put ourselves in the place of others. However, in
another higher degree of abstraction and impartiality, Smith said we would
detach our sentiments from that reflection by imagining a form of an abstract
and impartial human being (an abstraction of ourselves) that would judge our
actions and then feel sympathy or disapproval.
Social sympathy is the only way in which we
can measure how proper or improper our sentiments are and also of our eventual actions, analogously
our sympathy is the measure in which we assess other people’s sentiments. If my
feelings are aligned with others’ sentiments, we would be in a sympathetic
relationship in regards to my actions and there would be a general social
approbation of my actions. We, as social human beings, desire harmonious
sentiments among us because according to Smith, social man naturally seeks
social approbation and harmony in their sentiments.
Humans adjust their actions and feelings
towards the correct measure of sentiments that will bring the desired sympathy
from others, which is a natural human inclination. This desire of sympathy is
seen as a common harmony among sentiments and actions that will eventually set
the common social moral sentiments; as a result, it creates civil society’s
boundaries and foundations of a spontaneous and evolutionary regulation of
human sentiments and social traditions. Hence when a person has a set of
sentiments, he will imagine an abstract human form which possesses impartiality
towards our moral sentiments; this helps him to measure and understand the
discrepancies between the human abstraction or impartial spectator. He then
seeks to converge the moral sentiments in order to reach a level compatible
with the impartial spectator allowing him to act and thereafter receive social
sympathy and approval for his behavior.
Evensky noticed that Smith clearly
understood that a Libertarian open society needs a shared set of moral
sentiments because these are the last remaining forms of control and justice.
State police is not a free societies’ ultimate control. According to Evensky,
the ultimate control should be a society’s shared moral sentiments: “A liberal
society can only be constructive and sustainable to the degree that the hearts
of the citizens embody a properly measured sentiment of justice and regulate
themselves by that measure”.
Adam Smith clearly saw
the necessity of a harmonious and stable moral society to create a healthy
framework of human values supporting a market economy. As Amartya Sen stated in
his introduction to the TMS, “Smith was both a proponent of plural social
institutional structures and champion of social values that transcended the
profit motive in principle as well as in actual reach”. Indeed Smith understood that both the market
system and economy are not only based on the narrow idea of selfishness but
rather enormously depend on motives beyond just simple self-love; there is
prudence, benevolence and other sentiments which sustain self-constraint for a
better social outcome. One of Adam Smith’s most important contributions was his
insight into the existence of a deep symbiotic relationship between social
ethics, philosophy and economics; if it appropriately worked, it would ensure
the social framework for a nation’s prosperity and wealth.
To be continued next week...
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