Adam Smith in Context: A Critical Reassesment of Some Central Components of His Thought

Adam Smith in Context A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought Leonidas Montes Adam Smith in...

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Adam Smith in Context A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought

Leonidas Montes

Adam Smith in Context

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Adam Smith in Context A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought

Leonidas Montes Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Santiago, Chile

© Leonidas Montes 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1256–4 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Montes, Leonidas, 1966– Adam Smith in context: a critical reassessment of some central components of his thought/Leonidas Montes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1256–4 (cloth) 1. Smith, Adam, 1723–1790. 2. Economists – Great Britain. I. Title. HB103.S6M57 2004 330.153––dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

2003059525

For my parents

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Contents Preface

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Abbreviations

xii

1 General Introduction 1.1 Methodological framework 1.2 Summary of the book

1 1 8

2 Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins and the Debate 2.1 Introduction 2.2 A brief historical background 2.3 The origins of the ‘Smith Problem’ and some early reactions 2.3.1 The German context and Das Adam Smith Problem 2.3.2 Some early reactions 2.4 A review and assessment of the current debate 2.5 Sympathy and moral approbation 2.6 Conclusions

15 15 16

3 Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis Discourse and Civic Humanism 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The tradition of virtus 3.3 Smith’s vir virtutis narrative and the standing army debate 3.4 The philosophical tradition behind the cardinal virtues 3.5 The Smithian virtues 3.5.1 Self-command 3.5.2 Prudence 3.5.3 Justice and beneficence 3.6 Conclusions

57 57 58

vii

20 20 32 39 45 55

61 69 75 76 86 91 95

viii Contents

4 Adam Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’: Its Meaning and Philosophical Implications 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Propriety and its context 4.3 Propriety in the TMS 4.3.1 Propriety as the grounds for sympathy 4.3.2 Propriety and moral obligation 4.3.3 The nature of self-command 4.4 Philosophical implications 4.5 A reinterpretation of the classical source of Smith’s ‘propriety’ 4.6 Conclusions 5 Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues Concerning General Economic Equilibrium Theory 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Was Newton a Newtonian? 5.3 Smithian Newtonianism 5.3.1 Some common views of Newton’s influence 5.3.2 Smith’s methodological stance and some misinterpretations 5.4 Walras versus Smith 5.4.1 The Walrasian methodology of economics 5.4.2 Smith’s controversial chapter 7 of book I 5.5 Some possible methodological connections with critical realism 5.6 Conclusions

97 97 98 101 101 105 110 114 122 128

130 130 132 144 144 146 152 152 156 159 162

6 Conclusions

165

Bibliography

168

Index

183

Preface My interest in Adam Smith is quite recent. As a young scholar, I can only acknowledge that what follows is no more than a footnote to the work of all those intellectuals who have worked on Adam Smith. Mentioning all the important past and present works on Smith would be a lengthy task, but most of them will be present, explicitly or implicitly, throughout the next chapters. Special mention is due to the editors of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, most notably Andrew S. Skinner, David D. Raphael and Alec L. Macfie, who set a high intellectual standard for those of us who have followed this challenging path. This book is a revised, expanded, updated and improved version of my DPhil dissertation at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge. The chapters that follow share a common methodological approach to different issues related to Adam Smith, as it is explained in the following general introduction. My intention has been more focused on context, and on reading the classical influences and some contemporaries of Adam Smith in order to establish plausible connections regarding their influence, while challenging some widely held interpretations. In brief, the main thrust of this book is to present a reconstruction of some philosophical and methodological issues related to Adam Smith. Its broader aim is to provide a better understanding of the Smithian foundations of Political Economy, and therefore special emphasis is placed on Smith’s ethical framework. In that sense I assume, in the tradition of Smith, Keynes and others, that political economy is part of moral philosophy, or at least that moral philosophy is necessary for economics. Regarding the presentation of the book, after the general introduction, four chapters and some brief conclusions follow, but each chapter can be read independently as a self-sustaining piece.

ix

Acknowledgements My greatest debt are to Tony Lawson, who combining ‘the best head joined to the best heart’ taught me how to face intellectual problems; Geoff Harcourt, an example of academic ‘praiseworthiness’, who inspired me in the history of economic thought, and taught me what academic life is all about and how one should live it; and, Sheila Dow, who after reading an earlier version of this book, warmly encouraged me to work on it during that ‘cardinal’ moment. I have also profited greatly from some conversations with Quentin Skinner, who has been very supportive and encouraging in reading and commenting on part of this book. His methodological approach to historical issues and his knowledge of the subject will remain a source of inspiration. I have also greatly benefited from stimulating dialogues with my friend Eric Nelson, who also read some chapters of this book. Eric Schliesser not only read the whole manuscript, but greatly contributed to improve this book with his farreaching comments and appropriate criticisms. I have also enjoyed endless discussions with Bob Rowthorn, whose versatile interests and sharp opinions are always thought-provoking. In addition, Ha-Joon Chang, my fellow Chilean Gabriel Palma, Warren Samuels, Keith Tribe, Jerry Evensky, Glenn Hueckel, Deborah Redman and Paul Ryan reminded me that economists can also think like the political economists of the old days. Conversations and friendly discussions with Emma Rothschild, Gay Meeks, Samuel Fleischacker, Knud Haakonssen, Margaret Schabas, have been quite illuminating. In particular I am much indebted to Istvan Hont for his intellectual frankness, his sharp criticism and his continuous and challenging encouragement. Some colleagues have contributed to the shaping of this book through comments, suggestions or criticisms. My warmest thanks to Roger Backhouse, Marcelo Boeri, Vivienne Brown, Avi Cohen, John Dunn, Phil Faulkner, Elias Khalil, Clive Lawson, David Levy, Peter Lipton, Deirdre McCloskey, Adil Mouhammed, Ann Newton, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Sandra Peart, Steve Pratten, Sir Martin Rees, Jochen Runde, Jonathan Scott, Andrew Skinner, Oscar Velásquez, Alejandro Vigo, Donald Winch, Amos Witzum, Jeffrey Young and Stefan Zabieglik. Chapter 2 is an expanded version of an article that appeared in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 25, no. 1, and Chapter 5 is a slightly modified version of a paper that was published by the Cambridge x

Acknowledgements xi

Journal of Economics, vol. 27, no. 5. Earlier versions of Chapters 3 and 4 were presented and discussed at the annual History of Economics Society Conferences in 2003 and 2002, respectively. I also appreciated the comments of the referees of the abovementioned journals, as well as the discussants and participants in these conferences. This book would not have been possible without the financial support I received from the Chilean government, King’s College, Cambridge and the Cambridge Political Economy Society. During the last year, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez has provided an ideal place for research, combining a wonderful setting with an open and friendly academic atmosphere. Finally I would like to acknowledge the continuous support and warm encouragement throughout the process of gestation of this book that I received from the editor Amanda Watkins. Also Mukesh V.S. did an excellent job, and I am indebted to Sheeba Madhavan, Yegammai Subramanian and Raji Nirmal for the editing and packaging of the title.

Abbreviations I have used the LibertyClassics editions (Liberty Fund) of Smith’s works, which are exact, although less expensive, photographic reproductions of the editions published by Oxford University Press as the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. I use its quotation conventions with the following abbreviations: TMS

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. WN An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Corr. Correspondence of Adam Smith, edited by E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. LJ Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. EPS Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. LRBL Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by J. C. Bryce, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. The works of some classical authors have been quoted, and unless stated otherwise, I have used editions from the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press. The following abbreviations have been adopted: Ar.EN Ar.Pol Cic.Div Cic.Fin Cic.Inv Cic.Off Cic.Or Cic.Tusc Pl.Lg Pl.Rep Plut.Lives Plut.St Sen.Ben Sen.EM X.Mem

Aristotle’s Ethica Nichomachea Aristotle’s Politica Cicero’s De Divinatione Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Cicero’s De Inventione Cicero’s De Officiis Cicero’s Orator Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations Plato’s Leges Plato’s Respublica Plutarch’s Biographus et Philosophus Plutarch’s De Stoicorum Repugnantiis Seneca’s De Beneficiis Seneca’s Epistulae Morales Xenophon’s Memorabilia xii

1 General Introduction

1.1 Methodological framework This book is the result of an intellectual journey, an expedition which has led me into an area that I would describe as the history of ideas, an interdisciplinary pursuit that includes history, philosophy, methodology and, in my particular case, economics. I consider the history of ideas to be an important way of understanding reality. It implies a particular approach to the nature of things in terms of its emphasis on context, and not only the text itself. In fact, there is a longstanding philosophical debate as to whether the historian of ideas should put greater emphasis on the text or the context. Some urge to ignore context altogether, but I personally believe that it is difficult to gain a serious understanding of a text without any consideration of the author’s circumstances. Adam Smith, the subject of this book, clearly epitomises our modern understanding of economics. One of the most important and intriguing figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, he became famous with the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which reflects and is based upon his moral philosophy lectures at Glasgow University. Subsequently, in 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, was published. If the former situated Smith as an important man of lettres, the latter won him an indisputable place in history. But the importance of the TMS has been overshadowed by the impact of the WN. Some have even wondered, what would have been of the TMS if Smith had not published his WN. But this concern has proved to be unwarranted. The TMS has been the object of an impressive growth in academic research during the last years. This phenomenon does not in any way mean that the study of the WN has been

1

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exhausted, but simply evidences the fact that the TMS is a rich and philosophically challenging work. In general, it is a sign that economics and ethics are intertwined. As a result, today economists are paying more attention to what Smith said in the TMS. Smith’s influence, like that of any great thinker, has been enormous, and diverse. Many current positions in economics not only adapt what Smith said, but are also rather quick and uncritical in attempting to make his words to fit into a particular framework of modern economic ideas. Such a project, though possibly revealing, must involve more than the selective quoting of phrases which seem to fit while disregarding the rest. At the very least, it must rest on an attempt to understand Smith’s complex conception as a whole. His legacy and the structure of his moral philosophy lectures as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, comprising ‘theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy or “expediency” ’ (EPS, pp. 274–5), reflect the range of his interests. The widespread failure of most modern economists to appreciate this has led, for example, to a biased conception of Adam Smith as the prophet of selfinterest and the forebear of neoclassical economics. Furthermore, on the one hand, modern interpreters have fostered the familiar picture of Smith as the ideologue of the economic foundations of capitalism. This represents the most popular example of the numerous attempts to use the father of our discipline as a means to an end. And on the other hand, the alternative interpretation of Smith as a precursor of Marx, presupposes the same rational reconstruction. The history of ideas demands a closer look at what actually influenced Smith’s thought, and the matter of how we have received his influence, requires a more cautious approach to what we think he would have thought today. Retrospection, literally the act of looking back, is an intellectual exercise that is in some senses similar to Smith’s sympathy. For Smith, sympathy is not simply fellow feeling, as it demands a process of assessing circumstances. Retrospection also requires an awareness of context. Just as the impartial spectator is fundamental to understanding Smith’s concept of sympathy, the significance of a text is also judged by an observer who uncovers the meaning it had for the agent at the time of its writing. That meaning, of course, is still relevant to us, but this impartial spectator ought to assess the circumstances, changing place and situation, in order to avoid being partial. A historian of economic thought, in my view, is also like Smith’s impartial spectator, and the process of interpreting a text demands a sort of sympathetic process à la Smith. Adam Smith has often been characterised as the father of liberalism. This opinion, regardless of whether it is plausible or not (and I believe it is), uses

General Introduction 3

a framework that was not completely familiar to Smith himself. He certainly had an idea of what it means to be a liberal, in the modern sense. He even refers literally to the ‘liberal system’ (WN IV.v.b.39, p. 538),1 and repeatedly stresses what he understands by perfect and natural liberty. But what became of Smith’s liberalism, and we understand today by liberalism, are different matters. It is not the question of the nature of liberalism, the elusive issue of what it actually is, that concerns us here, but the simple fact that our vantage point cannot completely reveal what Smith said, as such a framework immediately gives a sense and a meaning to his legacy. Our own standards cannot fully determine the meanings and intentions of an author. This reductionism might simplify the task of the interpreter, but risks misrepresenting the reality of an author and his or her legacy.2 The characterisation of Machiavelli as immoral or simply amoral, is a wonderful example to illustrate the importance of the mistake of only looking at the past through the eyes of the present, and also of the risk of focusing mainly on one text. Is it possible to understand a writer like Machiavelli without taking into account his life as a public servant, the political events of Florence and Europe, the corpus of his writings besides The Prince, the influence of the classics and what humanists were writing at that time? It is difficult, indeed, and overlooking questions of why and how Machiavelli said what he said, can lead to conclusions that miss the real essence of his legacy. In context, the figure of Machiavelli is far more complex and divergent from the common picture of the ‘teacher of evil’. Recovering the past is not only the exercise of interpreting it through the current social, cultural and political constructions of our own minds, it also implies a thorough understanding of another reality. Nor does it emerge from a literal understanding of the text only, as historical interpretation involves more than what is simply manifest. In brief, a careful reading of the legacy of an author in particular, and history of ideas in general, should emphasise not only what the author said, but why and how he said it, that is, text, context and language play a significant and interdependent role. The success of intellectual history, in 1

2

Of course, what ‘liberal’ meant to Smith throughout his works, is very different from what it means to us. It was mainly related to the Latin liberalis, not mean, munificent or generous. However, in addition to the references to the ‘liberal system’, while writing about Colbert in the chapter on the physiocrats, Smith refers to the ‘liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice’ (WN IV.ix.3, p. 663), and he also insists on ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty’ (WN IV.ix.51, p. 687). From this point onward, I will avoid the he or she distinction, using simply a general ‘he’ without any gender bias.

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my opinion, lies in the combination of the specific weight of each of these components. Emphasising only the text would run the risk of reading an author as though the text were written by a contemporary. Context and language matter. Focusing exclusively on the context might mean missing the real essence of what the text says and what the author’s intentions were in using particular words. Wittgenstein’s famous dictum in Philosophical Investigations that ‘words are also deeds’, has had a tremendous impact on philosophy and on the methodology of intellectual history. It is a stubborn truth, apparently simple, but at the same time deeply complex. Words do matter, and Chapters 3 and 4 of this book, especially, reveal this concern. But an emphasis on hermeneutic approaches only, would risk a process of decontextualisation in which the author might disappear, in the face of the overwhelming and inevitably subjective interpretative capacity of the reader. What is said involves why and how it was said. The critical question for the nature of what is said, implies an ontological approach to uncovering reality. But this attempt is inadequate without a serious understanding of the context, and the meaning of the text. What is said, why and how it is said, are fundamental to our historical understanding. This trilogy represents a major concern in the development of the chapters that follow. Jacques Derrida strongly questioned the role of textual interpretation, since, according to him, it would be an error to believe in such a thing as the meaning of a text; there are only different readings. The problems of textual interpretation were soon overcome for some followers of the hermeneutic revolution, or simply taken to an extreme for others, when Michael Foucault announced the death of the author (Foucault, 1979, pp. 141–60). This tradition, in my view, can mislead the objective of the history of ideas. The nature of a text does matter, and we, as modest readers, cannot just kill the author and become omnipotent readers. I am not claiming that all hermeneutical attempts are useless. In fact, for those of us involved in Smith scholarship, Vivienne Brown’s contributions are a good example of how original insights can emerge from a dialogical approach that places the emphasis on how to read.3 Methodologically, for the interpreter there is always some truth that waits to be uncovered. Different stories can be told about a text, but as Quentin Skinner has argued, the writing of history ‘cannot simply 3

Vivienne Brown (1991, 1994) proposes a dialogical approach to interpret and read Adam Smith. Recently Jan Peil (1999) has followed a more radical, and in my view, more unsuccesful, hermeneutical approach. Curiously this book does not even mention Brown’s pioneering work on how to interpret Smith.


consist of stories: a further feature of historical stories is that they are supposed to track the truth’ (2002, p. 78). To gain a better understanding of Smith, in my view, it is essential not only to consider his writings as a whole, but also to assess them within the context of his time, in particular within the fascinating context of the Scottish Enlightenment. This has been accomplished by many of the authorities who have illuminated our understanding of Smith and his epoch, but such an endeavour also necessitates a recovery of the influence of the classical sources, which were widely known by the Scottish philosophers. Although my main interest is in the relevance of Smith’s writings for today, my position is that if some implications can be drawn for the present and the future, they can only be uncovered on the basis of a thorough understanding of Smith’s context, and, in particular, of the classical influences that were so relevant during the eighteenth century. Having already briefly referred to the efforts of many economists to force Smith into a modern framework (and Chapter 5 of this book is a good example of this exercise), I must acknowledge that I too, in my assessment of Smith, have been influenced by a modern perspective and orientation in economic methodology. I refer to that of critical realism. Indeed, I even argue, in Chapter 5 of this book, that Smith’s project and critical realism share a similar orientation (see Section 5.5). Although it would be beyond the scope of this book to explain critical realism here, one particular message of this movement in economics is its concern with the nature of things, and the acceptance of the world as a open system, which entails plurality, but does not deny the existence of truth. Critical realism has provided me with a useful perspective and orientation from which to look at reality, and its ontological perspective, the insistence on the question about the nature of things, is the starting point of my inquiries on Adam Smith and his context. I must emphasise though, that if the ontological focus of critical realism – in other words, the concern with the nature of things – has influenced my journey, the chapters which follow are not ontologically explicit. However, all four chapters represent, paraphrasing Smith, ‘an inquiry into the nature and the causes’ of certain phenomena: a problem (Chapter 2 dealing with Das Adam Smith Problem), a concept (Chapter 3 investigating self-command and Chapter 4 examining Smith’s ‘propriety’) or an interpretation (Chapter 5 questioning the nature of the widely accepted view of Smith’s Newtonianism). It is the perspective and critical orientation behind this research that I attribute to critical realism. This indeed provides one central reason for using the word ‘critical’ in the subtitle of the book. It must be

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understood not only in its vernacular sense, but also in its grand Kantian sense of transcending through an investigation of the nature of things. All four chapters explore the nature of issues related to Smith in a ‘critical’ way. And all, I believe and hope, lead to original conclusions. But if my perspective is ontologically informed and ‘critical’, my method is ultimately historical. The historiographical orientation that emphasises the intentions of the author – what they were doing while they were writing – provides an essential, if also fascinating, framework for understanding historical issues (which are necessarily philosophical), thus allowing an interpretation of the meaning of the text. As I have already made explicit, Quentin Skinner’s seminal ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’4 placed the importance of the analysis on what an author may have intended or meant. His contributions to the methodology of intellectual history have produced amazing results, but among historians of economic thought, his approach has been rather neglected.5 Therefore, in the following chapters, I have attempted to recover a text as an intended act of communication, written at a particular time for the specific audience the author had in mind, giving special relevance to the influences that might have shaped the author in using some key concepts. According to Quentin Skinner, ‘if we wish to understand any such text, we must be able to give an account not merely of the meaning of what was said, but also of what the writer in question may have meant by saying what was said’ (2002, p. 79). Meanings and intentions are central components in the pursuit of historical truth. But this exercise not only demands an understanding of the nature of the text and its context, as ‘the study of what someone says can never be a sufficient guide to understanding what was meant … We need, that is, 4

5

This classic paper was originally published in History and Theory in 1969. Quentin Skinner’s recent Visions of Politics: Regarding Method (2002), includes a shorter and revised version of that article. The same volume includes adapted and developed versions of his most important contributions to the debate on the methodology of intellectual history. For a sample of the debate this approach has triggered in intellectual history, see Tully (1988). Of course Donald Winch is much indebted to this approach, and Knud Haakonsen’s serious emphasis on context shares some methodological similarities with Quentin Skinner’s project. Hont and Ignatieff’s collection of essays in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983), is an excellent example of this historical approach. One recent exception in the literature on the history of economic thought which explicitly mentions, and applies, Skinner’s methodology is Dow (2002). In addition, Blaug (2001) discusses, in a similar vein, the importance of context.


to grasp not merely what people are saying but also what they are doing in saying it … As well as grasping the meaning of what they said, we need at the same time to understand what they meant by saying it’ (2002, p. 82). Once again Wittgenstein’s dictum is present. Text and context interact while the author’s words imply a meaning and an intention reflected in the act of writing at a particular time. The question of where to draw the line between an approach that presupposes the importance of hermeneutics, dusting off what other authors have already said, is indeed, difficult. Subjectivism is certainly inevitable, but an ontological approach helps the inquiry by forcing the intellectual pursuit to keep sight of reality. In other words, at the very least the author does not disappear in the act of reading, nor does the existence of his ideas. The author’s intentions, reflected in the act of writing, remain in the text, but within his context. My ontological orientation assumes the importance of context, attempting to reach that subtle combination of text and context.6 It is a dialectical exercise that it is not incompatible with the ontological approach I have endorsed. Understanding the nature of a problem, a concept or an interpretation is also a historical pursuit. Therefore, I believe that both methodological positions – the ontological and the historical one that I aim to follow – complement and reinforce each other. During the last four years, scholars interested in Adam Smith have witnessed the appearance of different books and a large number of articles.7 It would take too long to mention all of the latter, but it is worth mentioning a sample of the former. In 1999, Jan Peil published his Adam Smith and Economic Science: A Methodological Reinterpretation, proposing a hermeneutical model to reinterpret Smith’s texts. That same year, Charles Griswold published his influential Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, an important work that addresses some issues that are 6

7

But there is another issue related to the relationship between text and context. Donald Winch, acknowledging ‘[t]he indispensability of context to the establishment of the meaning of texts’ stresses that he works from text to context, and not the other way around, as ‘[t]he danger of an ideological approach which moves from collective context to text is a tendency to stress correspondences while overlooking dissonances’ (Winch, 1983, p. 269). Winch is concerned about context determining text. It is not precedence which is at issue, but rather pre-eminence. But I believe there is a permanent dialectical relationship between text and context in which both interact, and neither text nor context, determines the other. The new Adam Smith Society Newsletter provides an updated summary of scholarship on Adam Smith. It also announces the publication of The Adam Smith Review.

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mostly ignored in the literature, pointing out some persuasive links with the classics. Also, Samuel Fleischacker published his excellent A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith, bringing our attention back to the relationship between these two thinkers, and pointing out its relevance for our own times. Two years later, Emma Rothschild published her Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment, a suggestive book that underlines the importance of context. That year Gloria Vivenza’s long awaited translation of her Adam Smith e la Cultura Classica also appeared in English, as Adam Smith and the Classics, with a new Postcript which basically confirms her earlier conclusions.8 In 2002, James Otteson brought out his Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life, providing a persuasive view of how to look at Smith and his relevance today. The same year, Knud Haakonssen edited and introduced the new Cambridge edition of the TMS and a new collection of essays in the Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, edited by the same author, is slated to come out shortly. All these books use different methodological approaches and show a diversity of vantage points, taking on different issues related to Adam Smith. All of them, however, reflect a single simple phenomenon: interest in Smith has not dwindled, on the contrary, it is thriving.9

1.2 Summary of the book At the beginning of this journey, my primary concern was to understand Smith’s concepts of self-interest and sympathy. Both concepts, in the hands of Smith, have a distinctive and original meaning for the modern reader, although Smith relies heavily upon the classical tradition, especially the Stoics (oikeíosis and sumpátheia, respectively). Today, the

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I am sure that Vivenza’s contribution, now available to the English-speaking community, will trigger a debate on this important aspect of Smith’s scholarship that has been unduly neglected. Chapters 3 and 4 of this book deal with some related issues. Joseph Cropsey’s classic Polity and Economy (1957) was reprinted in 2001, Hont and Ignatieff’s excellent collection of essays Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983), was digitally reprinted in 2001 and Haakonssen’s authoritative The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith, was also digitally reprinted in 1999. In addition, in 2000 Mizuta published an updated Adam Smith’s Library. A Catalogue, Haakonssen and Skinner published the Index to the Works of Adam Smith (2001), and Tribe and Mizuta recently published a Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith (2002).


familiar picture of Smith as the paradigmatic precursor of the doctrine of self-interest, is widely acknowledged to be a caricature of major proportions. But there is still room for understanding Smith’s concept of sympathy. I believe that sympathy for Smith is not simply, à la Hume, a means of communication, as has been argued by some commentators. For Smith, sympathy is more complex. It is not only strictly linked to the impartial spectator, especially the ‘supposed’ impartial spectator that represents our inner conscience, but also to the sense of propriety and the fundamental virtue of self-command. In my view, it is this triad (supposed impartial spectator,10 propriety and self-command) that constitutes another fundamental component of Smith’s sympathetic process. Thus one aim of the next three chapters of this book is to reconstruct sympathy as the foundation of Smith’s moral philosophy. In this setting, an obligatory detour for anyone interested in the relationship between self-interest and sympathy, and, a fortiori, the nexus between TMS and WN, is the famous Das Adam Smith Problem, the subject of Chapter 2. My impression from the start was that the literature on this issue is insufficient in some aspects. First, I found that the treatment of the sources that shaped the ‘Smith Problem’ was mostly perfunctory; second, the question as to why the Problem emerged in Germany had not been fully explored. In particular, being aware of the complex social, political, economic and intellectual circumstances that surrounded the shaping of the German Historical School, I thought that one simple and very plausible explanation for understanding the rather generalised anti-Smithian sentiment, was not only the German Historical School’s reaction to the prevalent universal and deductive political economy of the time, of which Smith was considered the father, but also the possibility of an anti-British feeling occasioned by their hegemonic role in the world trade and manufacture. This plausible explanation is reflected in an interesting German intellectual tradition which precedes and influences the German unification, and which shaped the formation of the German Historical School. This intellectual context is a fascinating chapter in the history of economic thought, that has been unduly neglected, in spite of its contemporary implications. In fact, the German Historical School’s critique of the then prevalent way of doing economics shares many features with certain current dissident positions. But the

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To avoid misinterpretations hereafter, ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ that conforms with this triad must be understood as the ‘man within’, especially throughout Chapter 4.

10 Adam Smith in Context

critique is also disconcerting, and at times unfair, especially when one reads some of the odd comments about Adam Smith. In addition to the perfunctory way in which the origins and causes of Das Adam Smith Problem have been treated, the immediate reactions to the Problem are a subject that has been almost completely ignored in the literature, despite the fact that these reactions continue to underpin current approaches to the ‘Smith Problem’. Finally, it was surprising to discover that within the current debate one could group three stages of almost sequential approaches to the Problem. The revival of Das Adam Smith Problem was triggered by the 1976 Oxford University Press Glasgow Edition of the TMS, in which the editors, David D. Raphael and Alec. A. Macfie, too readily dismissed the Problem as a ‘pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding’ (TMS intr., p. 20). Subsequently, some scholars began to question and to think further about the Problem. I believe that Haakonssen (1981) best exemplifies this phenomenon. In his influential The Science of a Legislator. The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith, Haakonssen referred to the problem as ‘that old hobby-horse’ (ibid., p. 197, note 19), but in his introduction to the new Cambridge University Press edition of Smith’s TMS, he concludes by saying that the problem ‘is still good for another round’ (Smith, 2002 [1759], p. xxiv). The idea that the Problem is worth looking at, seems plausible to me, as it simply encompasses the intricate relationship between ethics and economics. But my claim is not that there is a ‘Smith Problem’, as I agree with the traditional group of scholars for whom Smith’s works form part of a system, and therefore the TMS and WN should be read as part of that system. While familiarising myself with the current positions on the ‘Smith Problem’, I came across another problem, one related to the understanding of Smith’s concept of sympathy. The traditional Das Adam Smith Problem, as a simple change of mind, proved wrong after Cannan published the first set of Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence. But regarding the consistency issue between the TMS and WN, that is, the apparent divergence between sympathy and self-interest, it is generally accepted that sympathy is not a motive to action, as self-interest is. The argument is that ‘[s]ympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement’ (TMS intr., p. 21, emphasis in the original). It is correct that the social nature of Smith’s ethics evolves around the idea of moral approbation, but in my view, a proper understanding of Smith’s sympathetic process implies a broader understanding of sympathy. This argument has led me into endless discussions with colleagues, but I must stress that I am not claiming that the editors of the 1976 TMS are wrong in their


understanding of sympathy, but simply that there is a point worth looking at here. Recalling the triad composed of the supposed impartial spectator, propriety and self-command, which the next three chapters analyse, and placing it under the broader umbrella of sympathy, we must first understand the uniqueness of Smith’s concepts in order to properly understand what sympathy is. The troubling question, of course, is the sense in which we are to understand the capacity for sympathy as a ‘motive to action’. To answer this question with its opposite, namely, in what sense we are not to understand sympathy as a ‘motive to action’, is not satisfactory. But a proper understanding of Smith’s concept of propriety and self-command leads, in my view, to a feasible answer. Chapters 3 and 4 delve into this issue in order to complement the argument at which I briefly hint at in the last section of Chapter 2. The thrust of the sympathetic process that I try to uncover is that it grants moral autonomy to the agent. In Chapter 3, I examine the nature of self-command, in my opinion the most important Smithian virtue. But in so doing, I develop my argument within the intuition of a dialogue between commerce and virtue, that is, uncovering the civic humanism that still pervades Smith’s thought. In general, the literature has privileged the natural jurisprudential law tradition in interpreting Smith. But how Smith inherits the tradition of civic humanism is a matter that has been almost completely neglected and sometimes bluntly dismissed. I re-examine Smith’s position in the militia-standing army debate, concluding that if he endorsed the cause of the standing army, this was done within the framework of a clear civic humanist language in which words like manliness, coward and effeminate appear quite often. Next, I turn to the analysis of Smith’s four principal virtues, as it is my opinion that his late addition of part VI of the TMS, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtues’, represents a shift towards an ethic of virtues. I trace the tradition of the cardinal virtues in order to understand the classical forebears of the four Smithian virtues. Although Smith defines justice as a negative virtue, prudence as an inferior virtue and beneficence in its broad literal sense of doing good to others, the nature of selfcommand seems elusive. It has been traditionally argued that it is a Stoic virtue, exclusively related to the control of passions. This interpretation, however, is mistaken. The virtue of self-command is also pervasively linked to the vir virtutis tradition. It is an expression of the classical virtus that is recovered in the Rennaisance as virtù. In this sense it is linked to the cardinal virtue of fortitudo, courage, as manly prowess in battle. Smith gives abundant evidence for this interpretation. However, there is


one Socratic virtue that definitely corresponds to Smith’s broad definition of self-command: the Greek virtue of en-kráteia, literally the command of oneself, which was an important classical virtue with which Smith was undoubtedly well acquainted. This discovery has important consequences, as enkráteia is also traditionally related to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne, implying that self-command is not only a negative virtue, but also a positive one. Chapter 4, perhaps the most philosophical, examines Smith’s concept of ‘propriety’. I argue that, for Smith, ‘propriety’ has a distinctive philosophical meaning, especially when it is considered from the perspective of self-command and the supposed impartial spectator, as part of Smith’s fundamental moral triad (propriety, impartial spectator and selfcommand). Initially, I was surprised by the frequency of the word ‘propriety’ in the TMS, as it appears more often than sympathy. So my question became: what is the meaning of ‘propriety’ for Smith? He used the concept in many ways. First, he used it as the stage prior to attaining a concordance of sentiments, as the necessary step before reaching mutual sympathy, which is the canonical understanding of ‘propriety’. But he also used it as an expression of good manners, as the important eighteenth-century idea of ‘politeness’. Yet Smith also used ‘propriety’ in relation to moral motivation. More importantly, the sense of ‘propriety’ is closely linked to the virtue of self-command. If beneficence, prudence and justice are judged by their consequences, entailing either merit or demerit, it is the supposed impartial spectator that judges selfcommand, as it relates to ‘propriety’. The examples Smith gives associating propriety and self-command, demonstrate the fact that for him moral actions are not simply judged by their consequences, but more importantly, by the motives for which they were undertaken. This is extremely important, as it implies that Smith is not a proto-utilitarian, as has been suggested by some scholars. Moreover, I argue that Smith is anticipating some features of Kant’s ethics. To that end, I give textual evidence that confirms Smith’s emphasis on duties when referring to propriety. For Smith, ‘propriety’ relates to Cicero’s officia, and not to his decorum, as has been accepted by those few scholars who have attempted to trace Smith’s classical influences. This emphasis on duties situates Smith on a moral ground that enjoys greater proximity to Kant, than to any form of utilitarianism. Chapters 3 and 4 shed light upon the nature of self-command and propriety, as part of the moral triad I explore. A better understanding of self-command and propriety has consequences for Smith’s sympathy. A broader concept of sympathy, in turn presupposes a proper


understanding of this triad. Although much has been written about the supposed impartial spectator, the sense of propriety and the real nature of self-command are questions that have been relatively neglected. In this light, Smith’s sympathetic process acquires a new dimension, as granting moral autonomy to human beings necessarily implies that we ought to consider sympathy also as a motive to action, since the sense of propriety implies a sense of duty underpinned by self-command, the foundation of moral conduct. Finally, Chapter 5 provides a clear example of the risks involved in looking at Adam Smith through the eyes of modern economics. Mainstream economists sometimes quote one or two sentences of Smith, usually out of context, in order to give their findings greater prestige. Yet there is also a generalised view among economists that Smith is the forebear, if not the founder, of general economic equilibrium theory. The invisible hand is held to be the metaphor par excellence, that reflects the market mechanism, and Smith’s account of prices in chapter VII of the first book of the WN, would theoretically confirm the intuition behind his famous metaphor. In addition, it has been generally argued that Newton’s influence on Smith led him to believe in this harmonious order. Evidence of Smith’s admiration for Newton’s achievements would reinforce this argument. Although some authors have convincingly argued against the view of Smith as the father of general economic equilibrium theory (see especially Blaug, 1997; Winch, 1997), to my knowledge the nature of Newton’s influence on Smith is a subject that has only received cursory treatment. Newton’s philosophy of science is very complex, but it does not necessarily foster an axiomatic deductive approach to reality, to be emulated by economic theory. This, in my view, is simply a consequence of the spectacular nature of Newton’s discoveries. Newton’s image as the father of the Age of Reason was accompanied, I suggest, by a particular methodological position that became accepted from the French Enlightenment onward, that is, a positivistic interpretation of Newton’s methodology. But the real Newtonian method emphasises the method of resolution (analysis) as prior to the method of composition (synthesis). The Scottish Enlightenment clearly perceived this distinction. I argue that the overemphasis on reason and deduction is a consequence of focusing on Newton’s spectacular results and not a consequence of his actual method. This intuition has some important implications for our understanding of Newton’s methodology, and any kind of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’. Smith’s aim was to uncover the concealed connections, and for this


purpose neither mathematics nor pure deduction constituted the only method nor the most appropriate one. In fact, the architect of general economic equilibrium theory is Leòn Walras. But one feature of his philosophical thought that has been almost completely ignored, is that Walras considered himself to be an idealist. By showing that Smith was a realist, Walras would be in radical opposition to Smith’s view of the world in general, and to political economy in particular. Smith’s realism allows me to state some possible connections between his methodological approach and critical realism. Therefore the view of Smith as the father of general economic equilibrium theory is mistaken, ironically because his Newtonianism was probably closer to the actual nature of Newton’s methodology. In the last section of this book, Chapter 6, I briefly underline some conclusions.

2 Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins and the Debate

2.1 Introduction Scholars have long been interested in the apparent dichotomy between sympathy and self-interest in Smith. The question of the consistency between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – the famous Das Adam Smith Problem – is definitely still relevant for anyone attracted to Smith scholarship. Although there is some agreement that the two works are consistent and, furthermore, parts of an incomplete system, it seems that the Problem continues to attract interest, not only for its historical and philosophical appeal, but also perhaps for its implications for the current economics and ethics debate. This chapter is structured as follows. In the next section some basic historical facts about Adam Smith will be briefly revisited in order to establish the context of the formal debate on Das Adam Smith Problem. Section 2.3 will trace the shaping and early sources of the alleged Problem in Germany. I argue that, well before the formation of the German Historical School, the economic hegemony of Great Britain might have played an important role shaping the reception of Smith in Germany as the founder of the school of self-interest and laissez faire. Then, after uncovering the sources of Das Adam Smith Problem, the views of two very influential historians of the last half of the nineteenth century, that is, Henry Thomas Buckle (History of Civilisation in England, published originally in two volumes in 1857 and 1861) and Leslie Stephen (History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 1876),

15


together with some early reactions to the Problem, are briefly analysed as a necessary background for understanding later positions. Section 2.4 of this chapter provides a concise review and critical assessment of the current debate on Das Adam Smith Problem. I identify three stages in the ‘Smith Problem’ debate during the last quarter of the twentieth century: (i) as radically surmounted, (ii) as an issue that must not be overlooked and then (iii) simply as a problem for which there are either only partial solutions or definitely no solution. The editors of the 1976 Glasgow Edition of the TMS, David Raphael and Alec Macfie (Smith, 1984 [1759]), triggered the first stage by categorically dismissing Das Adam Smith Problem as ‘a pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding’ (TMS intr. p. 20). In the second stage, Richard Teichgraeber stated that the treatment of it had been ‘perfunctory’ (1981 p. 106) and Laurence Dickey considered that the Problem ‘is still very much alive today’ (1986, p. 609), setting in motion a succession of novel approaches that implicitly or explicitly suggested that Das Adam Smith Problem ought not be overlooked. Finally, in the third stage, Pack (1997) has defended the idea of ‘partial resolutions’, and recently Otteson (2000) has argued for the ‘real’ Adam Smith Problem, contending that some proposed explanations for solving it rest on insufficient grounds.1 In Section 2.5 of this chapter the concept of sympathy is briefly reassessed. I shall contend, pace the editors of the Glasgow Edition of the TMS, and specifically Raphael (1985), that by suggesting that ‘misunderstanding’ the meaning of sympathy was the cause of the ‘Smith Problem’, and by too readily dismissing sympathy as a motive for action, they have failed to understand Smith’s broader sympathetic process. To understand sympathy as being merely related to moral judgement narrows Smith’s concept of this principle as a capacity and disposition. The sympathetic process, in its broad sense, can and ought to be understood as fundamental to moral judgement and, more importantly, to morality itself, as a motivation for action that does not entail a simple means-to-ends perspective towards the concordance of sentiments, but also a sense of moral autonomy. Finally in Section 2.6, I present a brief conclusion for this chapter underlining the social nature of the Smithian sympathetic process.

2.2 A brief historical background Between 1752 and the beginning of 1764, Adam Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University. His lectures on this subject, as 1

Although recently Otteson (2002) has sketched a new solution to the Problem.

Das Adam Smith Problem 17

reported by his student and friend John Millar, basically comprised natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy (the last called expediency, see EPS, pp. 274–5). They constitute the basis not only for his TMS, but also for his influential WN. In fact, the eleventh British edition of the WN, published in 1803, with an introduction by William Playfair (1759–1823), already explicitly acknowledged that ‘[i]t was during his Professorship that he published the first edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments … and it was then also that he probably collected many of the materials, and laid the plan for the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ (2000 [1803], p. 9). This evidence would be ignored by the German proponents of the formal Das Adam Smith Problem. Smith’s intellectual prestige initially derived from his lectures at Glasgow and the favourable reception of the TMS. Early in 1764 he set off for France, invited to be personal tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch. Mainly owing to Hume’s influence, Smith had the chance to meet Helvetius, Holbach, D’Alambert, Turgot, Voltaire2 and Quesnay to whom, according to his early biographer Dugald Stewart, ‘Mr. Smith had once an intention (as he told me himself) to have inscribed to him his “Wealth of Nations”’ (EPS, p. 304). In the summer of 1764 Smith mentioned to Hume that he felt homesick and thus had ‘begun to write a book in order to pass away the time’ (Corr., p. 102), probably the germ of the WN. The death of the Duke’s brother forced them to return after almost three years abroad, and Smith retired, with the exception of a few visits to London and Edinburgh, to his birth town of Kirkcaldy, where he remained for the next 10 years until he published the WN.3 Finally, in 1776, the WN appeared and Hume congratulated Smith with his famous letter: ‘Euge! Belle! 2

3

The poet Samuel Rogers not only ventured to treat Voltaire as a superficial writer, triggering Smith’s anger (striking the table with his hand Smith said, ‘there has been but one Voltaire’ (Clayden, 1887, p. 111) ), but also reported that Smith ‘had been in Voltaire’s company five or six times’ (ibid., p. 95). Faujas de Saint Fond, in his A Journey through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, reports that ‘[t]he animation of his [Smith’s] features was striking, when he spoke of Voltaire, whom he had known and whom he greatly liked’ (Saint Fond, 1907, p. 245). There is also a letter to Smith from the niece, and later mistress of Voltaire, Marie Louise Denis, who sends him Voltaire’s respects (Corr., p. 110). On Smith’s acquaintance with Voltaire, see also Rae (1965 [1895], pp. 188–93) and Ross (1995, pp. 208 and 399). Smith’s intellectual seclusion animated Hume to write to him: ‘I shall not take any Excuse from your own State of Health, which I suppose only Subterfuges invented by Indolence and Love of Solitude. Indeed, my Dear Smith, if you continue to hearken to Complaints of this Nature, you will cut Yourself out entirely from human Society, to the great Loss of both Parties’ (Corr., p. 160).


Dear Mr. Smith: I am much pleased with your performance’, acknowledging after some comments ‘but these, and a hundred other points, are fit only to be discussed in conversation. I hope it will be soon; for I am in a very bad state of health, and cannot afford a long delay’ (Corr., pp. 186–7). Nearly five months later, Hume, probably Smith’s best friend and ‘by far the most illustrious philosopher’ (WN V.i.g.3, p. 790), died peacefully.4 In 1777 Smith, abandoning his condition of ‘that unprosperous race of men commonly called men of letters’ (WN I.x.c.37, p. 148), was appointed to the Board of Customs at Edinburgh, a profitable position that he retained until his death, at a cost: ‘my present situation is therefore fully as affluent as I could wish it to be. The only thing I regret in it is the interruptions to my literary pursuits, which the duties of my office necessarily occasion’ (Corr., p. 253).5 Early in 1785 Smith had agreed to publish a sixth edition of the TMS, about which he said, ‘I have a few alterations to make of no great consequence’ (Corr., p. 281), but almost three years later he made a more realistic assessment of the size of this task: ‘I have now taken leave of my Colleagues for four months and I am at present giving the most intense application. My subject is the theory of moral Sentiments to all parts of which I am making many additions and corrections’ (Corr., p. 310). After a year of ‘labouring very hard in preparing the proposed new edition’ (Corr., p. 319), Smith apologised to his editor: ‘I am very much ashamed of this delay; but the subject has grown upon me’ (Corr., p. 321). During Smith’s lifetime, the TMS went through six editions (1759, 1761, 1767, 1774, 1781 and 1790, which appeared a few weeks before his death), and the WN went through five (1776, 1778, 1784, 1786 and 1789). Although the two last lifetime editions of the WN did not suffer any major alterations,6 the sixth edition of the TMS contained substantial 4

5

6

Smith’s beautiful account of his friend’s death is expressed in a letter to his editor William Strahan (Corr., pp. 217–21), which was published soon after Hume’s death, provoking a reaction from religious quarters as a consequence of Hume’s skeptical views (Smith reports that that ‘very harmless Sheet of paper … brought upon me ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain’ (Corr., p. 251) ). Probably for that reason, against Hume’s will, Smith did not want to publish posthumously his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (cf. Corr., pp. 211–12). Anderson et al., (1985) investigate the 12 years Smith spent at the customs service concluding that he took it seriously, and not simply as a sinecure. They also show that there is no evidence to defend the thesis that Smith would have promoted any de-regulatory policies. Some ‘Additions and Corrections’ (approximately 24 000 words) to the WN were added to the third edition in 1784, but for the fourth and subsequent editions, Smith acknowledges in the Preface ‘no alterations of any kind’.


revisions and extensive additions. Indeed, Smith far exceeded his plan of a ‘few alterations’, as almost one third of the definitive TMS corresponds to his late work. But it is important to point out that there ‘is development but no fundamental alteration’ (TMS intr., p. 20) in the last edition, though this development is, in my opinion, significant.7 It is noteworthy that Smith dedicated the last years of his life to the TMS, ignoring further revision to his treatise on political economy. This is important, especially considering that within the academic discipline of economics the TMS has been overshadowed by the WN.8 Modern economists have lost sight of the importance of the TMS, inheriting a notion of self-interest devoid of its ethical framework. For example, Galbraith disregards the TMS as ‘a work now largely forgotten and largely antecedent to his interest in Political Economy’ (1989 [1987], p. 60), and Stigler, simply ignoring the TMS, narrowly conceives self-interest as ‘the crown jewel’ of the WN that has ‘became, and remains to this day, the foundation of the theory of the allocation of resources’ (1982, p. 147).

7

8

Dickey (1986) has underlined clear differences between the first and the sixth edition. Eckstein (2000 [1926]), in his excellent introduction to the 1926 German translation of the TMS, compared Smith’s six lifetime editions. In my view this development is significant, especially regarding his completely new addition of Part VI, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, as will be suggested in Chapter 4. Therefore I disagree with authors such as James Otteson who, in his very recent Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (2002), while acknowledging differences between the sixth and the other editions, believes that ‘the additions and revisions [to the sixth edition of the TMS] mainly concern less important details and cosmetic aspects of the presentation’ (ibid., p. 14). Not surprisingly, during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the TMS only ‘had four reprint editions without new introductions or notes’ (Mizuta, 2000, vol. I, p. xxvi), and the WN had more than 10. Moreover, in the twentieth century, up to the publication in 1976 of the Glasgow Edition of the TMS, there is not any edition published in Great Britain, but three in America in 1966, 1969 and 1971 (see Tribe and Mizuta, 2002, pp. 276–308). Ironically it seems that Smith was not quite confident about the WN’s reception. In a letter to his editor, William Strahan, two months before the appearance of the WN’s second edition, Smith was anxious to know ‘Does it sell well? Does it sell at all?’ (Corr., p. 229) and almost two years later, requesting three copies of his second edition, he jests ‘I suspect I am now almost your only customer for my own book’ (Corr., p. 249). In general, the issue of the WN’s early influence is still controversial. For example Richard Teichgraeber considers that ‘the notion that the Wealth of Nations had an immediate impact on its time certainly ought to be put at rest’ (1987, p. 364). See also Rothschild (1992; 2001, pp. 52–71) and Rashid (1998).


2.3 The origins of the ‘Smith Problem’ and some early reactions 2.3.1 The German context and Das Adam Smith Problem The famous Adam Smith Problem,9 put forward by the German Historical School, is still a subject of controversy. The Problem as such states that there is an irreconcilable difference or inconsistency between the TMS, with its sympathy-based concept of human nature, and the WN, founded on an egoistic theory of self-interest. It is true that self-interest is an important motive in both works, but it is at least intriguing that nowhere in the WN Smith refers to sympathy, neither does he emphasise the four Smithian virtues (prudence, justice, benevolence and selfcommand), so prominent in the last edition of his TMS. Yet if this and other puzzles add to the relevance of the Problem, its nature must be combined with an interpretation on why and how it actually emerged. Although the German context during the first half of the nineteenth century is extremely complex in its political and social dimensions, the shaping of the ‘Smith Problem’ can also be seen as the result of an intellectual context hostile to the British laissez faire doctrine that influenced not only some important predecessors of the German Historical School, but also its foremost representatives. Let me briefly elaborate this point. A year after the publication of the WN in English, and a few months after the publication of the first volume of Johann Friedrich Schiller’s German translation,10 the reviewer Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (1740–1821), who taught at Göttingen, wrote in the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen (10 March, 1777): On the whole Dr. Smith seems to trust too much to the harmony of individual interests as producing naturally by their free action general good. Many of his propositions cannot be accepted as principles of universal policy; they are adapted only to a particular stage of industry, wealth, and civilisation. (Quoted in Cohn 2000 [1873], p. 64, emphasis in the original) 9

10

For a brief historical account of Das Adam Smith Problem see (TMS intr., pp. 20–5) and Raphael (1985, pp. 87–90). Other basic sources are Oncken (1897, 2000 [1898]), Morrow (1969 [1923], 1927), Nieli (1986, pp. 612–16) and Otteson (2002, pp. 134–6). On the emergence of the Problem, see Tribe and Mizuta (2002, pp. 137–48) and for a very good account of the canons in the debate on the problem see Peters-Fransen (2001). Books I, II and III of the WN appeared translated into German the same year of the original publication. The second volume (Books IV and V) of Schiller’s translation appeared in 1778.


This early assessment of the WN reflects a view that was basically carried forward, with a few exceptions, for more than a hundred years. The Germans, a nation defined by its culture (Kulturnation) but not a state, had been seeking their own identity since well before the unification in 1871. For example, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s (1762– 1814) Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation, 1968 [1808]), an important influence on the final unification of Germany, represents a clear indication of the cultural tension between German nationalism and ‘foreignness’. This nationalistic spirit was, for example, clearly reflected in the fraternity of university students (Burschenschaften) that was founded in Jena in 1815. Furthermore, historical evidence suggests that this search for identity was combined with a strong German nationalism that was sometimes closer to chauvinism with racist overtones. In this nationalistic setting, Britain, in spite of its common history opposing Napoleon, was no exception. In addition, the achievement of a unified and centralised German Empire occurred within an economic environment in which Great Britain had attained clear dominance in world manufacturing and trade. In these circumstances, the industrialising process in Germany developed its own distinctive character (Milward and Saul, 1977, pp. 49–50). Indeed, this process was in general quite cautious compared to the more liberal British policies. Initially, Smith entered into Germany through the universities, and of course the University of Göttingen, in Hanover, which was established in the English king’s territories, was the place to study Smith and the breeding ground for the followers of his ideas. Considering that the cameralists, who taught Cameralwissenschaft – named in allusion to the Kammer, in which the administrative political power of the states deliberated economic and political issues –, held a nationalistic and protective viewpoint, it is not overly bold to assume that the dissemination of Smith’s liberal views was generally seen by traditional academics and politicians as a threat to the status quo. Yet, if Smith’s doctrines, aside from Göttingen, remained rather dormant in Germany just after the WN’s first German translation, Christian Garve’s popular translation, published in two parts in 1792 and 1794, definitely revived an interest in Smith.11 11

The announcement of Garve’s new translation suggested in passing that Schiller’s was deficient, and Garve’s introduction explicitly complains about its style. This, in addition to some comments by Sartorius, has led commentators to consider Schiller’s translation as worse than Garve’s. Recently Keith Tribe has questioned this generally accepted view, suggesting that it is more likely that the intellectual context of the 1790s influenced the success in sales of Garve’s new translation, which was soon reprinted and some pirate versions were sold (see Tribe and Mizuta, 2002, pp. 125–30).


August Ferdinand Lueder and Georg Sartorius12 both studied and taught at Göttingen, and were quite effective in spreading Smith’s views. Lueder was not only influenced by Smith, but also by the ideas of the French Revolution. Therefore it is not surprising that later authors like Bruno Hildebrand, as we will soon see, conflated the ideals of the French Revolution with Smith’s legacy. But Sartorius did not follow Smith’s liberal views on commerce, as he was aware of the limits and dangers of laissez faire, proposing the intervention of the state in different situations, a theme that pervaded a complex intellectual process that would reach some important exponents of the German Historical School. As already mentioned, the dissemination of Smith’s doctrines was insured in western Germany by the influential University of Göttingen; in the east, however, it was the task of Christian Jacob Kraus,13 a fervent admirer of Smith who had spent a year at Göttingen and studied and later taught at the University of Königsberg. He referred to the WN declaring that ‘certainly since the times of the New Testament no 12

13

Georg Sartorius (1765–1828), a Lecturer at Göttingen’s Faculty of Philosophy since 1792, was one of the most influential of those who advocated Smith’s political economy in Germany, especially through his Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft zum Gebrauche bey akademischen Vorlesungen, nach Adam Smith’s Grundsätzen ausgearbeitet (Handbook of Political Economy for the use in academic lectures, according to the basics of Adam Smith, 1796), though in 1806 he ‘returned to this work in a more critical frame of mind’ (Tribe and Mizuta, 2002, p. 131). August Ferdinand Lueder (1760–1819) analyses Smith’s WN, from a universal-historical perspective (Tribe, 1988, p. 168), in his bulky threevolume Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft. Nach Adam Smith bearbeitet (On National Industry and Political Economy. According to Adam Smith, 1800–04). Although Lueder studied at Göttingen, he only returned as a Professor of Philosophy in 1810, after 14 years at the Carolinum in Brunswick. Thoemmes Press has recently republished the former and the latter (1998), with an introduction by Hiroshi Mizuta. Nevertheless, as Tribe (1988, p. 148) persuasively suggests, the WN’s influence during the last decade of the eighteenth century cannot be overstated, despite there having been a change in economic discourse. However, in my view, if the transition to a Nationalökonomie in Germany was not determined by the reception of the WN, it was certainly influenced by it through a debate, amongst other things, on the nature of homo œconomicus and its implications for political economy. Christian Jacob Krauss (1753–1807), student and later colleague and friend of Immanuel Kant at Königsberg, was the most influential academic figure who introduced and lectured on Smith’s economic thought in Germany. Although he published little, his works in Political Economy were published posthumously as Die Staatswirtschaft von Christian Jacob Kraus. Nach dessen Tode herausgegeben von Hans von Auerswald (The Political Economy of Christian Jakob Kraus. Edited after his Death by Hans von Auerswald, 5 vols, 1808–11).


writing has had more beneficial results than this will have’ (quoted in Hasek, 2002 [1925], p. 87). Another important political influence in Prussia, which also reflects the point I am trying to uncover, was Baron Karl vom Stein, who became first minister in 1807. He stated in private notes, probably during his exile in Austria, that: If a nation enjoys a fortunate government, which directs it to independence of action, and assures it freedom and property; if its geographic position is advantageous and it possesses in rivers and seas an easy connection with other developed nations; and if, finally, it has already gained a general fund of technological and commercial knowledge, its government can without fear leave it to free choice of occupation and undertakings, for it will choose the most suitable and profitable. If, however, the greater part of the nation is in a state of rudeness and low development; if its position in the middle of a continent makes communication with its neighbors difficult; if freedom and property are the lot of only the privileged classes; then the government must guide, instruct, encourage, by laws, rewards, schools, advances of money and by travel. (Quoted in Hasek, 2002 [1925], p. 106) Yet the idea of shaping a Nationalökonomie in combination with a Staatswirthschaftslehre was part of a slow process of profound social, political and economic change in Germany during the nineteenth century (Tribe, 1988, pp. 175–6). Adam Smith played an important role in this process. For example, Adam Heinrich Müller (1779–1829), although acknowledging Smith as a most learned economist, saw him as a ‘onesided’ (einseitig) representative of English economic interests.14 Another earlier source of the tradition leading to the German Historical School’s hostility towards British political economy is again Fichte, who in his Der Geschlossene Handelstaat. Ein Philosophischer Entwurf als Anhang zur Rechtslehre (The Closed Commercial State. A Philosophical Outline as an Appendix to Law, 1800), argued against laissez faire policies. For this influential philosopher it was the duty of government not only to restrict and regulate foreign commerce, but also to prohibit it. When 14

Müller’s works include Die Elemente der Staatskunst (Elements of the Art of State, a set of lectures presented in Dresden during the winter of 1808–09), Theorie des Geldes (Theory of Money, 1816) and Von der Nothwendigkeit einer theologischen Grundlage der gesammten Staatswissenschaften und der Staatswirthschaft insbesondere (Of the Necessity of a Theological basis of the Entire Sciences of State, and Political Economy in Particular, 1819).


Friedrich List (1789–1846) published his Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (The National System of Political Economy, 1841) both arguments were synthesised in a serious critique of what was later called Smithianismus. But one important underlying cause that motivated the latter is explicitly stated: It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith … and all his successors. (List, 1904 [1841], p. 295) Not surprisingly, in this setting Smith became known as the founder of the materialistic ‘Manchester School’ that preached the gospel of individual interest and free competition, in clear opposition to the older cameralistic tradition that assumed that society and its members needed guidance. List considered that laissez faire would benefit Great Britain but not the then developing economies, for which he proposed protective tariffs and an infant industry promotion strategy. His argument is quite explicit: ‘[i]n order to attain freedom of trade to operate naturally, the less advanced nations must first be raised by artificial measures to that stage of cultivation to which the English nation has been artificially elevated’ (ibid., p. 107). Accusing Smith, ‘the founder of the prevailing economic school’ (ibid., p. 108), and his successors of Kosmopolitismus, might be in part a consequence of the fact that the German states lagged far behind the spectacular economic achievement of Great Britain. List, as an influential precursor of the German Historical School’s emphasis on the context of each country, argued that every man belongs to a nation, which has its own circumstances that cannot be ignored. But List’s famous and pervasive comment about development, which is also a heated subject of contemporary debate,15 has a long intellectual pedigree that is inherited from the twilight of Camerilism while it was giving rise to Nationalökonomie. 15

Recently Ha-Joon Chang has published a book entitled Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002), with an explicit reference to List’s abovementioned passage. Chang criticises the Washington consensus regarding the current approach to developing countries, showing that developed countries historically did not follow what they preach today. This German tradition has notable similarities to dependency theories à la Singer-Prebisch, a Latin american movement (so-called cepalinos) that was actually influenced by the German Historical School.


Although it has been generally accepted that Wilhelm Roscher’s (1817–94) Grundri zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft. Nach geschichtlicher Methode (Outline for Lectures on Political Economy. According to the Historical Method, 1843) at least marks the programmatic foundation of the German Historical School,16 its formation, as has been briefly suggested, was the result of a long intellectual process.17 In this, we cannot ignore the complex social, political and economic circumstances since the appearance of the WN. Years of war, riots, famine and radical social and political reforms witnessed and bred the formation of the German Historical School. To generalise briefly, the German Historical School proposed economics as a broader science that must take into account the interactions between ethical, political and historical issues in order to understand social phenomena. Political economy, understood as Nationalökonomie in combination with a Staatswirthschaftslehre, should not merely constitute an independent discipline focused on the production of wealth, based on self-interested individuals. Its scope is broader, entailing the notion of individuals as social beings, and taking into account the historical and political circumstances of a particular nation at a particular time. The methodological stance of the German Historical School is in opposition to that of a universalised scheme of deductive natural laws, as reflected 16

17

For Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich List was not only ‘a national hero’ (1994 [1954], p. 504) but also a ‘forerunner of the historical school of economics’ (ibid., p. 505). Geoff Hodgson argues that the inception of the school coincides with List’s publication of Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841) (2001, p. 58), but Karl Pribram considers that List ‘does not belong to it [the German Historical School]’ (1983, p. 213) and for Mark Perlman and Charles McCann ‘the actual foundation of the German Historical School can be traced to the publication in 1843 of Grundri … ’ (1998, p. 416). In my personal view there is much research to be done on the historical, political, social and economic circumstances, from Cameralism and Romanticism, that shaped the German Historical School. I am sure there are many German sources that I am unaware of, but Tribe (1988; 1995, pp. 1–65; 2000) presents very good accounts. For some background on the German Historical School, see Cohn (2000 [1873]; 2000 [1894]), Cossa (1880, pp. 192–201), Ingram (1888, pp. 200–15), Scott (1915, pp. 256–66), Gide and Rist (2000 [1915], pp. 266–89), Schumpeter (1994 [1954], pp. 501–10 and 809–24), Pribram (1983, pp. 209–15), Perlman and McCann (1998, pp. 409–16) and Hodgson (2001, pp. 56–64). Some proceedings from conferences in Koslowski (1995, 1997) are interesting, although the quality of the contributions varies. This last judgement also applies to Shionoya (2001). On the question whether there was actually ‘a’ German Historical School, see Pearson (1999) who gives a challenging, and insightful view. Recently, Caldwell (2001) has challenged Pearson’s position.


by the then predominant classical view of political economy. This later became the source of the famous Methodenstreit in which Menger (Untersuchungen über die Methoden der Sozialwissenschaften und der Politischen Ökonomie insbesondere, Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with special reference to Economics, 1883) did not simply reject historical economics, but argued that it could neither replace nor improve our knowledge in theoretical economics (Tribe, 1995, pp. 77–9). Roughly speaking, it can be argued that for the ‘Older School’ (mainly Roscher, Hildebrand and Knies)18 there was also a practical emphasis on how, in the so-called ‘early stages of industrialization’ (Trebilcock, 1981, p. 37), and in many cases in opposition to the laissez faire favoured by the British economic hegemony, to develop the appropriate commercial policies for successful industrialisation. The 1840s, just after the Zollverein and the railway expansion,19 can be seen as witnessing the industrialising ‘take-off’ of the German states, which was essentially carried out relying upon an agricultural revolution. Then, once Germany had attained, after unification, an increasing level of economic growth,

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Schumpeter (1994 [1954], p. 507) considered that the ‘Older Historical School’ does not constitute a school (see also ibid., p. 808). The implementation of the Zollverein, or Customs Unions, between most of the 39 German states in 1834, influenced by List, and the impressive railway construction that began in 1835, were determinant in the German protoindustrialising process. It all began in 1818, when all tariff barriers between the Prussian provinces were abolished and the final Zollverein opened up a common market of 25 million Germans under the leadership of the Prussian bureaucracy. Then, just after the Zollverein, the first steam-driven railway was opened in 1837, following a rapid railway building expansion. But it was only in 1860 that there was actually a ‘German’ market area (Trebilcock, 1981, p. 41), and the peak of construction and investment in transportation was reached in the 1870s (ibid., p. 38), giving rise to the prosperity of the German Empire. Although after unification, between 1871–73, there was a bonanza (Gründerzeit), ending in the financial collapse of 1873 (Gründerkrise), in general Germany witnessed steady and rapid economic growth up to the First World War. In fact, per capita income in Great Britain grew by 44% between 1870 and 1910 (from $904 to $1302, in 1970 US dollars), but in Germany it grew 65.5% (from $579 to $958, in 1970 US dollars. See Table 3.2, Crafts 1985, p. 54). Certainly it is very difficult to situate and explain the German economic takeoff, as has been convincingly argued by Tipton (1974), but Milward and Saul are right when they state: ‘[w]hereas in the early nineteenth century economists, statesmen and social reformers in the less developed countries in Europe sought for clues to the future of their own society by analysing that of Britain and France, by the end of the nineteenth century this interest had rightly become focused on Germany’ (1977, pp. 65–6).


the emphasis of the ‘Younger Historical School’ was more on how to solve the social problems brought about by industrialisation. It was not simply a coincidence that this group of German political economists, dominated by Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917),20 established the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Society for Social Policy) in 1872–73 to tackle social problems,21 claiming a ‘realistic’ approach to economic problems (Pribram, 1983, p. 216). In Germany, Smith’s reception – as the natural father of classical political economy – might appear rather peculiar to a modern scholar. Indeed, the familiar charge of being the prophet of self-interest and free competition was combined with some odd claims. He was seen as a philosopher of the French Revolution and at the same time as a theorist who tried to create: a Political Economy for the world and humanity (Welt und Menschheitsökonomie) by deducing general axioms from the specific circumstances of single nations and stages of development. (Hildebrand, 1848, p. 27) Although there is a longstanding tradition in Germany of Adam Smith as the anti-hero of Nationalökonomie, which might also relate to Göttingen’s peculiar situation in Hanover, as I have already hinted, it was certainly Bruno Hildebrand (1812–78) in his Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft (The National Economy of the Present and the Future, 1848),22 published the same year as Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, who successfully re-launched the attacks on Smith. Following Müller and List, Hildebrand also complained about 20

21

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He was the indisputable leader of the school during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and the one who once publicly declared, in his address as Rector of the University of Berlin, that ‘Smithians’ and ‘Marxists’ were unfit to occupy university chairs (Oncken, 2000 [1898], p. 103; Ascher, 1992 [1963], p. 284). Lionel Robbins referred to Schmoller’s overwhelming authority in appointing chairs in Germany (1998, pp. 47 and 245). Hutchison (1988) provides a brief but very insightful account on Schmoller; see also Nau (2000) and Peukert (2001), who in addition to recovering his importance, presents an extensive survey of the literature on Schmoller. This project was ironically labelled by a liberal journalist in 1871 as the Katherdersozialisten, a term usually translated as ‘socialists of the chair’ (see Sheehan, 1966, p. 59; Cohn, 2000 [1894], p. 134, Oncken, 2000 [1898], p. 103). For a recent history and analysis of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, see Hagemann (2001). Bruno Hildebrand projected a second volume about the future that, unfortunately, never appeared.


Smith’s ‘one-sidedness’ (einseitigkeit) and his ‘abstract cosmopolitanism’ (Abstrakter Kosmopolitismus), concluding that ‘the problem of the Adam Smith School is that it tries to monopolise manufacturing for England’ (ibid., p. 328).23 But his project was more ambitious, as he attempted to overcome the ‘rationalistic Enlightenment’ of which Adam Smith (like Rousseau, according to Hildebrand) was a representative, restoring political economy as a historical discipline. Hildebrand not only pointed out the materialism of the Smithsche Schule, with its emphasis on the atomistic nature of human beings, but also criticised self-interest and egoism as the central features of Smith’s economic system. According to Hildebrand, Smith and his followers would like to ‘transform political economy into a mere natural history of egoism’ (ibid., p. 275; also quoted in Gide and Rist, 2000 [1915], p. 394). And for Hildebrand, as a representative of the German Historical School, the ‘deification of private egoism’ (ibid., p. 275) had serious consequences for political economy as a social science which is essentially ethical. A little later, Karl Knies (1821–98), who considered Smith an ‘outstanding thinker’ (Knies, 1853, p. 21), criticised his ‘theoretical absolutism’ (ibid., 22) and attacked the classical notion of self-interest in his Die Politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode (The Political Economy From the Point of View of Historical Method, 1853).24 But he also cunningly suggested that ‘it does not seem like an accident that between the publication of his Theory of Moral Sentiments and his economic Inquiry occurred his stay in France’ (ibid., 180). He is the originator of the so-called ‘French connection theory’ (Nieli, 1986, p. 612), that Smith’s mental shift between the TMS and the WN was a consequence of his acquaintance with the French materialists. 23

24

Regarding the English economic hegemony, Hildebrand, like List, is aware that ‘a system of prohibitions was introduced by the government under which the English industry could grow’ (Hildebrand, 1848, p. 4). But he defended, under certain circumstances, free trade policies. Another interesting case to point out (as I have already mentioned Fichte) is the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) who in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1827–31) thought that ‘England’s material existence is based on trade and industry, and the English have taken on the major vocation of acting as missionaries of civilisation throughout the world’ (Hegel 1999 [1827–31], p. 222). In 1883 Karl Knies republished this book, with some minor additions, under the new title Die Politische Oekonomie vom Geschichtlichen Standpuncte (The Political Economy From the Historical Point of View). In the new preface he not only complains about the book’s poor reception, it having been ignored even by Roscher, to whom the book had been dedicated, but also spends some paragraphs explaining why this new title is better than the previous one.


If Karl Knies, as a representative of the ‘Older School’, set up the so-called Umschwungstheorie as the source of Das Adam Smith Problem, it was the task of the ‘Younger School’ not only to defend and develop this intuition, but also to undermine Smith’s reputation further.25 Lujo Brentano (1844–1931) in Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss dem heutigen Recht. Geschlichtliche und ökonomische Studien (The Relation of Labour to the Law of Today. Historical and Economic Studies, 1877) was the next German economist to tackle the Problem. Brentano again criticises Smith’s individualism, and explicitly argues that his acquaintance in France with Helvétius and his circle ‘can be seen in the revolution (Umschwung)26 that it exerted upon his basic ideas’, since in the WN ‘he adopts completely the views of Helvétius concerning the nature of men and selfishness as the only motivating force in human action’ (Brentano, 1877, p. 61). Only a year later, Witold von Skar˙zyn´ski (1850–1910), a Polish nobleman who failed in his academic career at Breslau University, published Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph und Schöpfer der Nationalökonomie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nationalökonomie (Adam Smith as a Moral Philosopher and Creator of National Economy. A Contribution to the History of National Economy, 1878). He was definitely Smith’s fiercest critic. In more than 450 pages on Smith, Skar˙zyn´ski attempted to prove that he was neither an original philosopher, nor the creator of political economy, but simply ‘a vain teacher and an honest man’ (Skar˙zyn´ski, 1878, p. xvii), concluding that the physiocrats ‘are the founders of political economy’ (ibid., p. 201). His thesis, calling Smith a ‘subject of idolatry (Abgötterei)’ (ibid., p. vii),27 was that neither the TMS nor the WN came from the mind of an original thinker. Both works were the result of external influences, that of Hume in the TMS and of Smith’s acquaintance in France with the Physiocrats, in the WN. Incidentally, Skar˙zyn´ski , following List and Hildebrand in their attacks upon England, complained ‘how far is the English economic policy from the practical application of that basic idea, that high wages are a blessing for a nation, since that country has been trying without pause, to be the merchant and manufacturer of the whole world’ (ibid., p. 126). He also referred, as

25

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In 1898 August Oncken justly complained about the ‘low estimation of Adam Smith, particularly in Germany’ (2000 [1898], p. 85). A better translation of umschwung could be drastic shift or radical change. In fact F. L. W. P. Vincke, Stein’s favourite advisor, and a fervent admirer of Smith, at one time applied to him the term ‘godlike’ (göttlich, cf. Hasek (2002 [1925]), p. 107). Skarz˙yn´ski may have had this anecdote in mind.


Müller did, to the ‘one-sidedness (einseitigkeit) of the Smithian School’ (ibid., p. 27). But regarding Das Adam Smith Problem, Skar˙zyn´ski put forward the idea that Smith’s acquaintance with Helvétius motivated him to adopt the principle of self-love (ibid., p. 189).28 This intuition was finally expressed as follows: Smith was an Idealist, as long as he lived in England under the influence of Hutcheson and Hume. After living in France for three years and coming into close contact with the Materialism that prevailed there, he returned to England a Materialist. This is the simple explanation of the contrast between his Theory (1759), written before his journey to France, and his Wealth of Nations (1776), written after his return. (Ibid., p. 183) The Umschwungstheorie, perceived by Knies (1853), then suggested by Brentano (1887) and finally expanded on by Skar˙zyn´ski (1878), did not accept the reliability of Stewart’s Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith in two respects. First, it contained John Millar’s report on Smith’s lectures, in which the part labelled expediency, which we know to be the source of his political economy, ‘contained the substance’ (EPS, p. 275) of the WN. Second, Stewart wrote about, and quoted some sentences from a 1755 manuscript by Smith (EPS, p. 321).29 In this document Smith allegedly asserted the originality of his opinions, ‘without any considerable variation’ (EPS, p. 322) from a lecture some six years earlier, that is, back to his days at Edinburgh in 1749. According to Stewart, in this manuscript ‘many of the most important opinions in The Wealth of Nations are there detailed’ (EPS, p. 322). For Skar˙zyn´ski, as for his predecessors, neither reports contradicting any French influence could be accepted as concrete evidence.30 28

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Luigi Cossa (1831–96) considered that ‘this writer [Skarz˙yn´ski] is too ready to depreciate Adam Smith in comparison with the Physiocrats’ (1880, p. 163). Indeed, Skarz˙yn´ski not only argued that the Physiocrats were the founders of political economy and Smith simply a compiler, but that his WN was full of contradictions. Unfortunately, this manuscript did not survive. The editors of EPS suggest that the original manuscript might have been ‘destroyed with Stewart’s own papers by his son when suffering paranoia’ (EPS, p. 266). It certainly does not correspond to the early draft or any of the other fragments discovered by Professor W. R. Scott, originally published by him (in Adam Smith as Student and Professor, 1937), and now published in Lectures on Jurisprudence (LJ). Another generally ignored early source in the literature, corroborating the fact that the WN was part of Smith’s lectures, is in Samuel Rogers’s Early Life, where


Ironically perhaps, Skar˙zyn´ski’s attacks on Smith were influenced by Henry Thomas Buckle’s (1821–62) controversial and widely read History of Civilisation in England, published originally in two volumes in 1857 and 1861, respectively.31 Skar˙zyn´ski (1878) criticised Buckle’s account of Smith. Buckle not only showed an unconditional predilection for Smith, but also presented a rather naïve explanation of the consistency issue. He refers to ‘the illustrious Adam Smith’ (Buckle, 1970 [1861], p. 20) or to ‘this mighty thinker’ (ibid., p. 286) or ‘to that most profound and original thinker’ (ibid. p. 259), considering Smith ‘by far the greatest of all Scotch thinkers’ (ibid., p. 255). Moreover, although Hume is ‘a most accomplished reasoner, as well as a profound and fearless thinker, [he] had not the comprehensiveness of Adam Smith, nor had he that invaluable quality of imagination’ (ibid., p. 278). Buckle is very clear in stating that both works of Smith must be taken together, and considered as one. However, by insisting that Smith adopted the deductive method, an assumption detected and rejected by Skar˙zyn´ski, he is misled into defending this flawed assumption.32 In his defence of the consistency between both works, Buckle asserts that: Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, simplified the study of human nature, by curtailing it of all its sympathy. But this most comprehensive thinker was careful, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, to restore to

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the writer Henry Mackenzie, in 1791, is reported as sustaining this thesis (see Clayden, 1887, p. 167). Cossa rightly suggested, regarding the idea of the WN as part of Smith’s lectures, that ‘it is much to be wished that some critic should consult the manuscripts of his lectures … so as to discover what truth there is in this assertion’ (1880, p. 164). Arnold Ruge (1802–80) translated Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England into German in 1859 and 1861. A year after the publication of the first volume of his History of Civilisation in England, Buckle was elected member of The Political Economy Club in 1858. If we remember the influence of John Stuart Mill’s Principles (first published in 1848), Buckle’s emphasis on the deductive nature of Smith’s WN in the second volume of his History, to be published in 1861, is not surprising. In fact, when the editors of the TMS, Raphael and Macfie, assert that ‘Buckle had a curious obsession with methodology’ (TMS intr. p. 21, emphasis added), they are simply ignoring this context, which was essentially different to the German Historical School programme, that is, regarding the deductive and inductive nature of Political Economy. Incidentally, Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie (1827–82), who laid the foundations of the British Historical School, had already pinpointed Buckle’s two main mistakes: ‘Selfishness was not the fundamental principle of Adam Smith’s theory; and his method … was in large measure inductive’ (1879 [1870], p. 150).


human nature the quality of which the Wealth of Nations had deprived it; and, by thus establishing two different lines of argument, he embraced the whole subject. (Buckle, 1970 [1861], p. 351)33 Skar˙zyn´ski simply detected the error that the TMS, based on sympathy, and the WN, based on self-interest, together comprise a complete, independent and almost additive picture of human nature. Against this peculiar interpretation, Skar˙zyn´ski stated that both books gave divergent and irreconcilable views of human conduct.34 2.3.2 Some early reactions A few years after Skar˙zyn´ski, an important English intellectual historian, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), published his influential History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). In this, he gibes at Buckle’s fondness for Smith, and reacts against his account, stating that the TMS is ‘apt to disappoint us by a certain superficiality’ (Stephen, 1991 [1876], vol. 2, p. 71), suggesting that ‘it is impossible to resist the impression … that we are not listening to a thinker really grappling with a difficult problem, so much as to an ambitious professor who has found an excellent opportunity for displaying his command of language, and making brilliant lectures’ (ibid., p. 77). His position regarding the inconsistency of the two works is different, and like Skar˙zyn´ski’s more

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Cf. ‘In the Moral Sentiments, he investigates the sympathetic part of human nature; in the Wealth of Nations, he investigates its selfish part. And as all of us are sympathetic as well as selfish; in other words, as all of us look without as well as within, and as this classification is a primary and exhaustive division of our motives to action, it is evident, that if Adam Smith had completely accomplished his vast design, he would at once have raised the study of human nature to a science, leaving nothing for subsequent inquirers except to ascertain the minor springs of affairs, all of which would find their place in this general scheme, and be deemed subordinate to it’ (ibid., p. 255). It is interesting to note the influence of Buckle’s interpretation in Great Britain, although this might also be a reflection of the prevalent deductive tradition of political economy that the German Historical School was reacting against. For example, in the 1887 English introduction to the WN, Joseph Shield Nicholson (1850–1927) reflects Buckle’s view: ‘[t]he foundation of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” is sympathy – the natural complement to the self-interest and expediency of the “Wealth of Nations”’ (2000 [1887], p. 620). In the 1910 edition of the WN, Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (1861–1939), an American economist who studied under Karl Knies at Heidelberg, follows a similar line: ‘[i]n his Theory of Moral Sentiments he posits the doctrine of sympathy … But what he was concerned with in The Wealth of Nations was an analysis of the economic situation’ (2000 [1910], p. 723).


familiar charge, it was also formed as a response to Buckle’s earlier characterisation of the relationship between Smith’s two books. Stephen considers self-interest in the WN as a motivating force, and sympathy in the TMS as a regulative force. The TMS is regarded: as an answer to the question: given man as a predominantly selfish animal, how does he come to condemn actions which are prompted by his selfishness? The answer is substantially that morality is a kind of reflected selfishness … [reflex selfishness] exerts a regulative power which restrains purely mischievous actions. (Ibid., p. 320) In a way Stephen, as a later convert to what today might be called evolutionary ethics, was an innovator looking at the ‘Smith Problem’ through evolutionary glasses, considering the sympathetic process of the TMS as a reflection of natural human selfishness propounded in the WN. His approach to sympathy as reflected selfishness has remained influential within the current debate, although its roots can be traced back to the Scottish philosopher of common sense, Thomas Reid (1710–96). Reid’s criticism of Smith’s sympathy, in his 1778 letter to Lord Kames, was simply that it ‘is indeed only a Refinement of the selfish System’ (quoted in Reeder, 1997, p. 66). There are two more positions in the early debate that are also worth mentioning as they were influential at the time.35 Albert Delatour (1858–1938) in Adam Smith, sa vie, ses travaux, ses doctrines (1886), which won the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Award, assumes the concordance between the TMS and the WN as part of a more ambitious intellectual system, preceding, if not in content at least in scope, Andrew S. Skinner’s (1976) influential view of Smith as a ‘system builder’.36 Delatour refers to Smith’s works as a whole, as an attempt to describe the history of civilisation, in which the TMS deals 35

36

Oncken (2000 [1898], p. 88) also mentions Richard Zeyss’s Adam Smith und der Eigennutz. Eine Untersuchung über die Philosophischen Grundlagen der älteren Nationalökonomie (Adam Smith and Self-interest. An Analysis of the Philosophical Grounds of National Economy, 1889) and Wilhelm Hasbach’s (1849–1920) Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der politischen ökonomie (An Analysis of Adam Smith and the Development of Political Economy, 1891). Paszkowsky is reported to have presented a normative and descriptive distinction between the TMS and the WN, the former concerned with man as he should be, the latter with man as he is (Morrow, 1969 [1923], p. 6, Oncken, 2000 [1898], p. 88). Jacob Viner, in the first paragraph of his influential ‘Adam Smith and Laissez Faire’, also suggests the importance of Smith’s ‘system-building’ for English economics (Viner, 1927, p. 198).


with the moral development of man, Smith’s Essays deal with the intellectual development, and the WN with the material development of humankind (Delatour, 1886, p. 79). Finally, Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–75), a founding member of the Marburg School of NeoKantianism, in his monumental History of Materialism (1865), quoting Buckle’s proof as ‘conclusive’, defends the unity of both works, acknowledging sympathy and self-interest as different impulses for human actions: ‘[s]ympathy and Interest were with him the two great springs of human actions’ (Lange, 1925 [1865], vol. 3, p. 234). Nevertheless, he correctly deems that both motives cannot be added, and views self-interest as the bridge between the two works, as in the TMS ‘we can everywhere read between the lines that the actions of man are essentially egoistic, and only modified by the effect of sympathy’ (ibid., p. 235, note 1). For Lange, the sympathetic process indirectly provides a corrective for guiding self-interested behaviour through ‘the protection of right by the state’ (ibid.). He precedes Stephen (1991 [1876]) with the idea of sympathy as a regulative force, an interpretation that sets out a common theme that is fundamental to some current approaches to Das Adam Smith Problem. In 1896, Edwin Cannan (1861–1935) published some lectures that had been given by Smith.37 The lecture notes provided irrefutable evidence that the alleged French materialist influence was not a reasonable explanation for the differences between the WN and the TMS, as they demonstrated that Smith’s ideas on political economy were quite clear before his trip to the Continent. Stewart’s words in his Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith were confirmed by this finding, and all explanations based on a shift of mind after Smith’s stay in France were nullified. This discovery further encouraged the thesis that the TMS and the WN are not only a comprehensive exposition of his moral philosophy lectures but, moreover, that they form part of an incomplete system that lacks a theory of jurisprudence,38 which Smith

37

38

Edwin Cannan’s Lectures (1896, Oxford University Press) are currently published as LJ(B), lectures between 1763–64, generally known as Report dated 1766 (as Smith left Glasgow in January 1764, the year 1766 might correspond to the copy date of the original manuscript), together with LJ(A), lectures between 1762–63, generally known as Report of 1762–3. The former lecture notes had been in the hands of the Machonochie family before Edwin Cannan confirmed its authenticity and published them in 1896. The latter, LJ(A), were found later in 1958 by Professor John. M. Lothian, and both are published in (LJ). Smith instructed his executors to burn 16 folios containing his lectures and notes (see Clayden, 1887, p. 167; Rae 1895, p. 434). Only a few essays were allowed to survive and they are published as Essays on Philosophical Subjects (EPS).


himself recognises in the Advertisement to the sixth edition of the TMS.39 Oncken (1897), reacting against the position of the German Historical School, defended the consistency thesis just a year after the publication of Smith’s Lectures. He concludes by urging English political economists: to set themselves the task of inquiring fully into the Smith problem, and thus to protect their great master once and for all from detraction, by presenting his teaching in its entirety, as a system of Moral Philosophy, in which Political Economy forms but a part. (Oncken, 1897, p. 449)40 It is interesting to note, however, that the leading British political economists of that time, for example John Rae (1796–1872), James Bonar (1852–1941) and Edwin Cannan (1861–1935), did not ‘directly touch 39

40

The often-quoted passage reads: ‘In the last paragraph of the first Edition of the present work, I said, that I should in another discourse endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions which they had undergone in the different ages and periods of society; not only in what concerns justice, but in what concerns police, revenue, and arms, and whatever else is the object of law. In the Enquiry Concerning the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I have partly executed this promise; at least so far as concerns police, revenue, and arms. What remains, the theory of jurisprudence, which I have long projected, I have hitherto been hindered from executing, by the same occupations which had till now prevented me from revising the present work. Though my very advanced age leaves me, I acknowledge, very little expectation of ever being able to execute this great work to my own satisfaction; yet, as I have not altogether abandoned the design, and as I wish still to continue under the obligation of doing what I can, I have allowed the paragraph to remain as it was published more than thirty years ago, when I entertained no doubt of being able to execute every thing which it announced’ (cf. TMS VII.iv.37, p. 342). See also his correspondence with the great-grandson of La Rochefoucauld (Corr., p. 287). It is worth mentioning that August Oncken (1844–1911) in fact followed an umschwungtheorie by actually changing his mind, as earlier in Adam Smith und der Kulturgeschichte. Ein Vortrag (Adam Smith and Cultural History. A Lecture, 1874) he had criticised Smith for his materialism and his laissez-faire doctrines very much in the spirit of the German Historical School. Other German historical economists advocating that there was no ‘Smith Problem’ were Wilhelm Hasbach, Emanuel Leser and later, more importantly, the translator of the TMS to German, Wilhelm Eckstein, who gives a very good account of the consistency position in his excellent introduction to the TMS.


the question [Das Adam Smith Problem] at issue’ (Oncken, 1897, pp. 445–6). Thirty years later, in his classic and seminal ‘Adam Smith and Laissez Faire’, Jacob Viner (1892–1970), not only challenged the traditional view of Smith as a precursor of economic laissez faire, but also revived the inherent discrepancies between the TMS and the WN. Viner complains that the extensive revisions and additions to the TMS did not diminish ‘in any particular the points of conflict between the two books’, even allowing that ‘he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217)41 when he revised it. Although this point is worth considering, since in part VI of the TMS, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, newly added to the sixth edition, Smith’s memory fails him when referring to some classical anecdotes (see TMS, especially pp. 251–4), in my opinion this should not be taken as a serious reason for disregarding his last additions. On the contrary, the additions are very relevant to understand Smith’s mature views on virtues. But Viner’s main point, regarding the conflict between both works, is that ‘there are divergences between them [TMS and WN] which are impossible of reconciliation’ (Viner, 1927, p. 201). A few months later, Morrow’s lecture to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the WN at the University of Chicago was published. Morrow here suggests we should understand self-interest as one of the inferior virtues summed up under the name prudence, namely ‘frugality, industry, self reliance’ (Morrow, 1927, p. 330). In an earlier work, Morrow had praised a monograph by Zeyss, ‘which should once for all dispose of Das Adam Smith Problem’ (Morrow, 1969 [1923], p. 8, note 12), in which Zeyss attempted to recover the role of virtues in the TMS, explaining selfinterest as part of prudence. This rightly led to the conclusion that ‘Morrow’s solution of das Adam Smith Problem was to a great extent a restatement of Zeyss’s position’ (Teichgraeber, 1981, p. 108, see supra note 35), but I would like to add that he is also following Stephen’s explanation in two major points. First, the assumption that self-interest in the WN has to be understood as a motivation regulated by the TMS’s ethical view, at least in the sense that ‘self-interested activities must be regulated by justice’ (Morrow, 1927, pp. 330–1). And second, Morrow attributes, as does Viner, a leading role to the apparent theological background of

41

Wilhelm Hasbach in his Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der Politischen Öekonomie (An Analysis of Adam Smith and the Development of Political Economy, 1891) anticipating Viner’s famous remark, maintains that Smith’s sixth edition of the TMS contains ‘among a number of outstanding points much senile, sentimental garrulousness’ (quoted in Eckstein, 2000 [1926], p. 26).


Smith’s ethical, social and economic views, extending the role of sympathy as a ‘necessary presupposition of the doctrine of the natural order expounded in the Wealth of Nations’ (ibid., p. 341). It seems to me that the first point needs no more explanation (self-interest as a motivating force and sympathy as a regulating force), but that the second deserves some attention. For example, Viner, in his iconoclastic paper, relies heavily on a controversial, although highly influential account of the TMS’s harmonious order as guided by God.42 He is probably following Stephen, who considered Smith a ‘thorough representative of that optimistic deism … , the doctrine of final causes as essential part of his system … , human nature as a mechanism skillfully contrived to carry out the divine purposes’ (Stephen, 1991 [1876], vol. 2, p. 71). Morrow also emphasises the role of natural order, writing ‘Nature, spelt with capital N, equals God’ (Morrow, 1927, p. 334), which is very similar to Stephen’s account of Smith’s word Nature being ‘the polite term for God’ (Stephen, 1991 [1876], vol. 2, p. 72). The relationship between Nature and God was very complex during the eighteenth century, but it can be argued that if in the context of the influence of Newton’s spectacular discoveries nature was deified, that does not necessarily entail that God was naturalised. The role of natural order, as optimistic deism, certainly shapes the development of society and tends to the happiness of mankind in the TMS, but, in my personal view, its relevance must not be overstated, and it has to be understood in the context of the Stoic tradition. It is clear that in the WN there is no reliance on Nature (except WN V.ii.k, p. 870), or any other metaphor (disregarding the elusive invisible hand) with a theological or deistic connotation, whereas the TMS is full of them.43

42

43

Jacob Viner was consistent in underlining the role of theological elements in understanding Smith’s legacy, especially in his 1966 Jayne Lectures The Role of Providence in Social Order (1972), but later he was also aware that ‘it is hard for some people today to believe that Smith’s optimistic deism was completely sincere’ (Viner, 1994 [1968], p. 114). Recently, Hill (2001), following Viner, has defended the importance of theology for Smith. In the TMS, Nature with capital ‘N’ appears 53 times, God with capital ‘G’ 25, Deity with capital ‘D’ 20, Divine Being 8, Providence 5, along with others: Allpowerful Being, Supreme Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power, Creator, Great Superior, the Lord our God, all-wise Being, Great Director of the Universe, Great conductor of the Universe, Great Superintendent of the universe, Being of infinite power, The great Director of nature, the Author of nature, divine benevolence, all-seeing Judge of the world, that all-wise Author of Nature, all-powerful Being, great Judge of the world, great Judge of the Universe.


However, if one omits these references, widely used at the time, the structure and content of the TMS remain unaltered. Whether Smith merely drew on the widely used deistic language, or whether his use of this language was deeply felt, will probably remain a subject of controversy; just another Smith Problem. On the one hand, those arguing for the former would say that the explanation for their appearance is simply that they form part of Smith’s lectures aimed mainly at young men destined to follow an ecclesiastical career. Therefore the interpreters, following Stephen (1991 [1876]) or Viner (1927, 1994 [1968], 1972), who have maintained the thesis that Smith’s religious beliefs are fundamental to his philosophical system, would be merely exaggerating this simple fact. On the other hand, pace those who stress Smith’s deism, it could also be argued that within the social context of his time, Smith was too cautious and mindful of public opinion to ignore the use of deistic rhetoric.44 This, in a nutshell, is the background to Das Adam Smith Problem. Oncken (1897, 2000 [1898]), in reaction to the German Historical School, presents a solution to the formal Problem based mainly on facts. Stephen (1991 [1876]) and Lange (1925 [1865]) view sympathy as a regulative force. Morrow (1969 [1923], 1927) tackles the issue of selfinterest as an inferior virtue, which falls under the umbrella of prudence, which in turn leads to an understanding of the TMS as a regulating basis for economic behaviour. He also highlights the fact that Smith’s recurrent idea of self-interest, as a precursor of liberalism, ‘merely means that Smith was preaching, in the economic world, the same gospel of individual rights and individual liberty which in one form or another was the burden of eighteenth-century social thought’ (Morrow, 1927, p. 331). With different nuances, these accounts have dominated most subsequent interpretations. However, Viner’s view of the irreconcilability of the TMS and the WN remains influential. But if the controversy was rich in content, for almost the next 50 years Das Adam Smith Problem remained relatively dormant until its revival after the bicentenary of the publication of the WN.45 Today, although the 44

45

John Dunn, by labelling Smith as a ‘practical atheist’ (1983, p. 119), has made a characterisation which is, in my opinion, worth bearing in mind. Within this period, regarding the consistency issue, Joseph Schumpeter thought that ‘both the Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations are blocks cut out from a larger systematic whole’ (1994 [1954], p. 141). Alec Macfie in his ‘Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments as Foundation for his Wealth of Nations’ (1967) and Lamb (1974) persuasively defended the consistency of both works. One exception, to my knowledge, is Anspach, who thought, like Viner, that ‘the controversy aroused by the two conflicting images of Smith has however been by no means resolved’ (1972, p. 176).


formal ‘Smith Problem’ has been clearly surmounted, the Problem is a subject that continues generating further discussion, so that it is worth analysing some current positions.

2.4 A review and assessment of the current debate For the bicentenary of the publication of the WN, Oxford University Press published the WN and the TMS as the first part of their grand project: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. The tremendous effort made by the editors in introducing and revising the original texts, proved to be an invaluable basis for further academic research on Smith. The Journal of Economic Literature’s review commemorating the WN’s bicentenary already perceived that ‘a kind of Smith renaissance seems to be in process’ (Recktenwald, 1978, p. 56). The next review of Smith in the same prestigious journal acknowledges that ‘since the Wealth of Nations’ bicentenary celebrations in 1976, the rate at which commentary on the work of Adam Smith appears has quickened’ (Tribe, 1999, p. 609).46 Under these circumstances, Das Adam Smith Problem was revived. Analysing the so-called Das Adam Smith Problem, the editors of the 1976 TMS, David Raphael and Alec Macfie (Smith, 1984 [1759]), not only followed Oncken’s line of defence, rebutting Buckle and Skar˙zyn´ski, but dismissed the Problem as a ‘pseudo–problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding’ (TMS intr., p. 20). The editors’ argument that sympathy should not be confused with benevolence relies upon the intuition already developed by Eckstein (2000 [1926], pp. 33–9), summarised in his assertion that ‘it must above all be said that Smith never equates “sympathy” with “benevolence”’ (ibid., p. 36). Just after Oxford University Press published the Glasgow Edition of the TMS, Terence Hutchison, taking the same line as the editors, considered the Problem of consistency ‘as exaggerated or even imaginary’ (1976, p. 482). Amongst others, one of the editors of the WN, Andrew S. Skinner, a proponent of Smith’s system building approach, also supported the point of view that the ‘Smith Problem’ is based on a ‘misunderstanding of sympathy and self-interest’ (1976, p. 112). This generally accepted position was clearly reflected in the review in the Journal of Economic Literature, celebrating the WN’s bicentenary. This, briefly stated, that ‘it is now conventional wisdom that the so-called “Adam Smith Problem”… is passé’ (Recktenwald, 1978, p. 66). Again, Winch’s view coincides with 46

See Brown’s (1997) survey of the literature to corroborate this impressive growth.


‘what most scholars accept, that there is no Adam Smith problem’ (1978, p. 10)47 and Haakonssen, taking the same position, deems as ‘futile to take any more rides on that old hobby-horse “sympathy v. selfinterest” in Smith’ (1981, p. 197, note 19). Thus suddenly scholars’ attention to the Problem seemed to have dwindled, as was reflected in Heilbroner’s reference to the ‘once-heated, now largely quiescent problem’ (1982, p. 427). In general, all these accounts represent the first stage of the debate, considering the ‘Smith Problem’ as basically surmounted. The message was very clear: there is no need to delve into meaningless controversy. However, the subject had not yet been fully exhausted. A second stage in the debate, also defending the consistency position, argues, that the Problem must not be overlooked. For example, Richard Teichgraeber attempts to draw attention to the Problem’s humanistic normative assumptions in order to understand the TMS and consequently the ‘Smith Problem’ as ‘a document in the history of early modern humanist thought’ (1981, p. 122). His assumption is that the treatment of the Problem has been ‘perfunctory’ (ibid., p. 108). But, in the same task of recovering the importance of the ‘Smith Problem’, Laurence Dickey, challenging the view that the sixth edition of the TMS is basically an extension of the first, considers that the problem ‘is still very much alive today’ (1986, p. 609). Both authors agree that to ignore the Problem would constitute an oversight for Smith scholarship, and both would also encourage a reappraisal of Das Adam Smith Problem as a natural inheritor of the civic humanistic tradition, an intuition that will be developed in the next chapter. Soon after, successive approaches acknowledged some kind of a solution, and therefore presupposed, explicitly or implicitly, the importance of the Problem as a subject of research. I shall now undertake a concise review and critical assessment of the relevant literature on this issue. Russell Nieli (1986), after briefly reviewing the history of the ‘Smith Problem’, calls our attention to what he labels the ‘spheres of intimacy’. According to the author, we treat those within our sphere of intimacy differently to those outside it, in a manner that is right and just. Within this framework, Smith’s ethical views do not conflict with his political economy, as the latter, represented by self-interested acquisitiveness, applies to economic relations with people outside our sphere of 47

It is noteworthy that later Donald Winch is more sceptical, briefly referring to the ‘Smith Problem’ as ‘the problem of establishing consonance, if it exists’ (1996, p. 35, emphasis added).


intimacy. Therefore the market is regulated by self-interest in its pursuit of prosperity, with the necessary and important virtues of prudence, economy and industry, but ‘the higher virtues of love and benevolence, Smith believed, are regularly practiced only between people who have some intimate “connexion” with one another’ (ibid., p. 624). This is an interesting insight, especially if we take into account the influence of the ‘famous sect’ (TMS, Adv.), the Stoics. It is possible that the Stoics’ idea of oikeíosis is embedded in Smith, and Hierocles’s famous account of the ‘concentric circles’ constitutes reasonable evidence for this perception.48 However, Nieli’s solution presupposes benevolence as underlying the TMS, practically ignoring the sympathetic process. Subsequently, the Problem has been tackled at a hermeneutic level, leading to some novel approaches. For example, Jerry Evensky convincingly argues that the TMS is dominated by the voice of the moral philosopher, and the WN by a practical-prescriptive voice. Therefore the confusion ‘lies not in the pen of Adam Smith, but in the eyes of those who profess to see an Adam Smith Problem’ (1987, p. 464). More recently, Charles Griswold has praised the ‘protreptic we’ of the TMS

48

Hierocles, according to Stobaeus, stated: ‘Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many circles … the first and closest circle is the one which a person has drawn as though around the center, his own mind … . Next … contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins … The next circle includes other relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local residents, then the circle of fellow-tribesmen, next that of fellow-citizens, and in the same way the circle of people from neighbouring towns, and the circle of fellow-country men. The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole human race … it is task of a well tempered man … to draw the circles together somehow towards the center’ (Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 349). I must add that Smith probably knew this piece of doxography quite well (Mizuta, 1967, p. 143). Vivenza (2002, pp. 204–5) has recently questioned the Stoic origins of oikeíosis, underlining the Aristotelian pedigree of the concept. I believe she is wrong. Oikeíosis is a Stoic concept, and pace Vivenza, who claims that ‘[i]t is therefore unlikely that Smith could have interpreted it as such as early as the seventeenth century’ (sic., 2002, p. 204), I believe that Smith was aware of the concept of oikeíosis through his readings of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch and Stobaeus, for example, not only through Marcus Aurelius as she suggests (ibid., p. 204, note 62). Marcus Aurelius refers only once oikeíosis, and compared to the other classical authors just mentioned, he does not develop the conception of oikeíosis as a primary impulse of human beings to what is familiar, what belongs to oneself. He also refers to oikeíotes, an etymologically related word that only implies affinity of the different parts, in a cosmic or physical context.


(1999, pp. 48–52), also emphasising the narrative aspects of the spectator– actor interplay. In general, these hermeneutic views, although original and refined, are an extension of the fact that Smith’s book on moral philosophy originates more directly from his lectures on the subject, and thus have a narrative structure quite different to that of his more elaborate work on political economy. Jean-Pierre Dupuy exploits the reflective nature of sympathy in the relationship between spectator and actor and attempts to show that selflove for Smith is simply a reflection of sympathy. He follows Thomas Reid and Lange-Stephen in considering that ‘self-love is in reality the reflexive modality of sympathy’ (Dupuy, 1990, p. 116; see also 1993, p. 56). His thrust is to prove an alternative approach to the consistency issue, not as the ‘generally admitted … “specialisation” of domains’, as ‘in the sphere of moral sentiments, sympathy reigns supreme; in that of the economy, selfishness has the field to itself’ (ibid.). However, he makes the mistake of considering ‘une logique de l’autoréferénce indirecte’ (Dupuy, 1987, p. 336), a redoubling of sympathy that contains envy as a dominant principle. Dupuy elaborates a sort of deconstruction of sympathy towards economics, in which envy is also governed by the principle of sympathy. Furthermore he claims to have shown that ‘Smith ended up, despite himself, with a system which is essentially the same as Mandeville’s: a mixture of self-love and envy produces public prosperity’ (Dupuy, 1990, p. 118; see also Dupuy, 1987, p. 337). Certainly there is a misinterpretation of the sympathetic process at this point, and Dupuy’s theory in my opinion is flawed where he views ‘sympathy as utilitarian to the end’ (Dupuy, 1987, p. 331; see also 1993, p. 55). Patricia Werhane introduces her book by acknowledging that ‘the question of how to read the TMS and the WN as consistent texts remains a serious issue in Smithian scholarship’ (1991, p. 10). Her analysis, breaking down the selfish, unsocial and social passions in Smith, is developed to rebut all interpretations of Smith as expounding an egoistic theory of human nature, or as propounding any kind of methodological individualism. She reveals the nature of self-interest, which is present in both works, and in assuming that the TMS lays the ground for the WN, she concludes that they are ‘not contradictory works’ as ‘Adam Smith is consistent in his use of self-interest throughout the two texts’ (ibid., p. 108, emphasis in the original). Geoff Harcourt, in a brief but suggestive essay on Smith and his relevance for modern economists, also defends the significance of the TMS as a framework for developing a market economy by saying that ‘the


thrust of the argument of TMS is the need to design institutions which allow altruism, or “sympathy”, to prevail’ (1995 [1994], p. 230). However, whether or not this conclusion is correct (and I think it is), it is inaccurate to conflate altruism with sympathy. More recently Amos Witzum (1998) has suggested that attempts to solve the Problem have been misled by method. Stating three different ways in which Smith might have tackled the issue of understanding the nature of human character, he proposes a ‘particular indirect method’, which, as a synthesis of the other two flawed methods of description, would help to explain the own-regarding/other-regarding dichotomy. Unfortunately, this process misleads him, I believe, into concluding that ‘Smith presented sympathy and utility as substitutes’ (ibid., p. 511). Finally, what I have defined as the third, most recent and still nascent stage of the debate in the literature proposes either that the Problem has only partial resolutions or simply that no solution has been found, tacitly fostering more research on this issue. Vivienne Brown attempts to transform the question of the ‘Smith Problem’ from ‘how could Smith have written two such works’, to ‘how are those works to be read’ (1994, p. 24, emphasis in the original). She advances the thesis that the TMS should be understood as a dialogical text and the WN as monological, owing to the difference in subject matter, recasting the Problem through a radical twist that underlines the role of self-command and benevolence in the former and the public virtues of justice and prudence in the latter.49 Spencer Pack (1997), analysing the role of justice and prudence, shows that the TMS presents an ethical defence of the acquisitive commercial society, but concludes that this approach constitutes only a partial resolution of Das Adam Smith Problem. He even suggests, persuasively, that Smith might not have wanted to complete his promised system, and in his view ‘the Adam Smith Problem will always remain, or rather it can be only partially resolved’ (ibid., pp. 137–8). One recent contribution to the debate contends that there is a real Adam Smith Problem, and tries to show that the few attempts to solve it ‘are unsatisfactory’ (Otteson, 2000, p. 53). Although James Otteson’s account of the literature on the issue is not exhaustive, his conclusion 49

Strictly speaking, Brown (1994) transcends the traditional Das Adam Smith Problem by arguing that Smith’s account of virtues makes it impossible to read his works as a unified intellectual programme. The new Problem for Brown would be how to read Adam Smith. For a good review of Brown (1994) see Collings and Ortmann (1997).


that ‘there is a problem worth addressing, and that much of the current scholarly consensus rests on insufficient grounds’ (ibid., p. 70) deserves consideration, as we shall see in the next part of this chapter.50 Not only does it seem that ‘unlike old soldiers, old Adam Smith problems neither die nor fade away’, but also that the Problem remains ‘a worthy enterprise’ (Young, 1997, p. 203). An implication of this brief review is that the ‘Smith Problem’ per se and its diversity of interpretations, has presented a rich source for novel approaches that shed light upon an old issue, although many of these current interpretations are a reshaping of some early reactions. One reason for this interest is that the Problem is quite contingent, as it entails the relationship between individual and society, and more specifically, the interdependence of ethics and economics. Not surprisingly Knud Haakonssen, for whom Das Adam Smith Problem had been ‘that old hobby-horse’, now thinks that it ‘is still good for another round’ (Smith, 2002 [1759], p. xxiv), and certainly Otteson (2002) is a good answer to this challenge. Das Adam Smith Problem has not been completely overcome, and probably never will be. The common view of the TMS as foundational in relation to the WN, that is, a moral basis grounding Smith’s political economy, still pervades the debate on the Smith Problem, but even if sympathy is not dealt with in the WN, Smith’s political economy, as it is widely acknowledged, is not devoid of moral content. The TMS not only precedes the WN, but the title of the former begins with a definite article 50

Very recently Otteson (2002) has defended the complementarity of the WN and the TMS based on his market model and familiarity principle. Regarding the latter, though James Otteson explains his position in a very suggestive way, Nieli’s (1986) article about the spheres of intimacy, which relates to what Otteson is arguing, is not discussed. Otteson argues that if we understand that Smith intends a combination of morality and markets, both books are consistent as far as they represent a single conception of human institutions. Moreover, he originally expands this point for Smith’s essay on languages, and suggests explicitly the ambitious task of proving that his thesis could cover the whole of Smith’s legacy, that is, including LJ and his essay The History of Astronomy (see Otteson, 2002, p. 289). The pre-assumption that Smith could have been thinking in terms of markets while working on his TMS, is a strong one. Therefore whether we can assemble a ‘marketplace of morality’ model to understand Smith’s TMS as a plausible interpretation, relies on a rational reconstruction. Another question pertaining Otteson’s recent contribution is what did Smith actually understand by market behaviour and equilibrium (see Chapter 5 of this book), as Otteson (2002) assumes that Smith ‘wanted to make a study of human relations in the same way Newton made a study of heavenly bodies – by observing the phenomena and attempting to generate rules that describe their regular behaviour’ (ibid., p. 101).


(The Theory of Moral Sentiments), and the latter simply begins with an indefinite one (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations). This simple detail, together with Smith’s dedication during his last years to the corrections and additions of ‘the’ TMS, could be a sign of what he was thinking while he wrote his two books, and what he might have thought during his last years. My contention is only a seedbed for further speculation, but with this fascinating and distinctively Smithian unintended consequence, that is, the debate about the consistency between TMS and WN, Smith not only left us with a puzzling question, but also with another elusive conundrum. Any attempt to defend the concordance of the TMS and the WN, will finally depend on a broader understanding of sympathy and an appropriate one of selfinterest. There is general consensus on the latter, but as far as the former is concerned, it seems to me that the argument of the editors of the TMS, David Raphael and Alec Macfie, underpinning the so-called ‘misunderstanding’ on sympathy, has added a new problem in trying to dismiss the old ‘Smith Problem’. In my view, to restrict the concept of sympathy to moral judgement alone distorts Smith’s position. I shall attempt a reassessment of this issue.

2.5 Sympathy and moral approbation The editors of the TMS have strongly defended the thesis that the TMS and the WN complement each other. But after dismissing the ‘Smith Problem’ as ‘a pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding’ (TMS intr., p. 20), they deal with Skar˙zyn´ski and Buckle. Rebutting the latter they argue: He [Buckle] cannot have ‘studied’ TMS if he thinks that it ‘ascribes our actions to sympathy’. Sympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement. The motive to action is an entirely different matter. (TMS intr., pp. 21–2, emphasis in the original) Later, Raphael not only maintains, but also develops this position by stating that ‘the role of sympathy in his book [TMS] is to explain the origin and the nature of moral judgement, of approval and disapproval’ (1985, p. 29). My argument is that Smith’s sympathy not only explains ‘the origin and nature of moral judgement’, but also explains the origin and the nature of morality itself. Even though Raphael stresses the fact that ‘sympathy in Adam Smith’s sense is a socialising agent’ (ibid., p. 31), he is adamant in defending the nature of sympathy only in terms of


moral approbation. This view of sympathy, as just a criterion for approbation, follows the rebuttal of Buckle’s position, whereas sympathy ought not be considered as a natural motivation in human conduct. In this setting, the explanation avoids the issues that the German Historical School had pinpointed by too readily dismissing the cause of Das Adam Smith Problem. But as Elias Khalil has, in my view, rightly argued, confining sympathy to being a criterion of approbation and not a motive for conduct is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’ (1990, p. 255).51 In addition, Samuel Fleischacker probably perceived a similar uneasiness with this issue when he wrote that ‘Raphael and Macfie rightly correct those who say that Smith uses sympathy as the basis of moral action, but they go on to claim, equally misleadingly, that he does use it as the basis of moral judgment’ (1991, p. 258, emphasis added). Certainly, it is right to say that sympathy is not an altruistic or benevolent motive for action, as had been already maintained by Walther Eckstein (2000, [1926]), in what is the traditional view for dismissing Buckle’s account. However, in my opinion it is a mistake to confine the broader sense of Smithian sympathy to moral judgement alone. Raphael insists, paraphrasing Hume, that sympathy ‘is the cement of society’ (1985, pp. 5 and 93) but persists in confining sympathy to being a source of moral approbation or disapprobation. Curiously, he states that sympathy in its vernacular sense, meaning ‘when one feels compassion for the sorrow or the need of other’ (ibid., p. 31) is a motive for action. If sympathy in this narrow sense (as compassion) is a motive for action, why in its broader ‘circumstantial’ or ‘situational’ Smithian sense is it not? If sympathy is a disposition and capacity inherent in human nature that requires an imaginative leap, and leads society to form some general rules for behaviour, why is it not a motive for action? Sympathy, understood within the framework of Smith’s broader sympathetic process, is also a motive for action. Let me briefly elaborate. The first, and very well known sentence in the TMS, ‘[h]ow selfish soever man may be 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’ (TMS I.i.1.1, p. 9), already defines sympathy as

51

Khalil (1990), taking Smith’s account of the nature of virtues, defends an ‘interactionist’ against a ‘functionalist’ approach, giving a convincing argument against the idea that sympathy is not a motive to action.


an inner principle in human nature.52 Smith is aware that common language might mislead readers to what he actually means by sympathy, as: Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellowfeeling with the sorrows of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever. (TMS I.i.I.5, p. 10) This passage is interesting not only for its significance regarding how to interpret Smith’s concept of sympathy, but also because it provides a clue by clarifying what he did not mean by it. After stating that sympathy is not simply fellow-feeling related to pity, as it pertains to ‘any passion whatever’, Smith reiterates that it has to do with ‘joy and grief’.53 The Greek word sumpátheia was very important for the Stoics.54 For them, sumpátheia had a clear cosmic significance that also entailed social overtones, and though it was a fundamental word for the Stoic’s tradition, it had already been used by Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus. The Greek prefix sun, which means together or with (as symposium means drinking with), is joined to páthos, and therefore there is an obvious analogy with the Latin com-passion (the Latin prefix cum is the equivalent of the Greek sun), as Smith duly recognised in the passage just quoted. The etymological origin of the word sumpátheia would simply imply feeling with, or together with; merely sharing a fellow-feeling. But Smith does not mean this kind of sympathy, so it is wrong to conflate sympathy with fellow-feeling, as has been sometimes done. Smith stresses the importance of the causes of the passions, concluding that ‘[s]ympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of 52

Before rebutting, once again, Hume’s account of sympathy, Smith defines it as a ‘power … with which the mind is manifestly endowed’ (TMS VII.iii.3.3, p. 321). 53 After the first edition of the TMS’s was published, Hume wrote a letter to Smith arguing ‘I wish you had more particularly and fully prov’d, that all kinds of Sympathy are necessarily Agreeable. This is the Hinge of your System … . Now it would appear that there is a disagreeable Sympathy, as well as an agreeable … . An Hospital would be a more entertaining Place than a Ball’ (Corr., p. 43). 54 Gloria Vivenza, argues that ‘[a]n immediate point to make is that despite the similarity of terminology Smith’s “sympatheia” has little in common with classical sumpátheia apart from the basic sense of taking the part of, or “suffering together with”, another person’ (2002, p. 41). In fact, Cicero refers to the Greek sumpátheia, especially in his De Divinatione, and translates the Greek word as consensus (cf. Cic.Div II.xiv), and then as a natural connexion.


the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it’ (TMS I.i.1.10, p. 12). Therefore sympathy is different from fellow-feeling, or from its literal etymological sense, as it implies not only to be in the person’s shoes, but also requires knowing where those shoes are standing. Of course I will have fellow-feeling with any passion, but I cannot sympathise ‘ … till informed of its cause’ (TMS I.i.1.8, p. 11). Etymologically, I could sympathise with you if you start crying, regardless the cause, but according to Smith, I could not symphatise with you if you start crying bitterly because you cannot find your pencil to underline this passage. In other words, I can feel and share your passion, but that does not necessarily mean that I can sympathise with it. Perhaps the most important concept for Smith in the process of explaining sympathy, is the role of imagination. The faculty of imagination enables the process and it is by the ‘very illusion of the imagination’ and ‘the idea of those circumstances’ that this broad concept of sympathy takes place. No wonder we can even feel ‘the dread of death’ (TMS I.i.1.13, p. 13). In sum, it is the role of imagination in combination with a circumstantial deliberative process that finally allows the agent to sympathise. The nature of the sympathetic process is determined by ‘the imaginary change of situations from which it arises’ (TMS I.i.4.1, p. 19). Strictly speaking, Smith’s sympathy would be a special kind of empátheia, as the Greek prefix en means in, into, towards or within, reflecting a change of places. The actual sentiments of the person principally concerned become feelings of the spectator through an imaginative changing of places. But the way in which this change of situations takes place, is not trivial. We face the problem of how the imaginary change is performed. Certainly the sympathiser feels with the sympathisee, in what sym-pathy means, but some commentators have found a problem as there is a clear difference between what one would feel if one were in the other’s shoes and what it actually implies to imagine oneself as the other person. The latter applies to Smith’s sympathy, and anticipating an answer to Reid’s criticism that his sympathy was simply a refinement of a selfish system, he clearly states contra Hobbes, in this long proleptic passage, that: Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle. When I sympathize with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in self-love, because it arises from bringing your case home to myself, from putting myself in your situation, and thence conceiving what I should feel in the like circumstances. But though sympathy is very properly said to arise


from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympathize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only son, in order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer, if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die: but I consider what I should suffer if I was really you, and I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion, which does not arise even from the imagination of any thing that has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person and character, but which is entirely occupied about what relates to you? A man may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impossible that he should conceive himself as suffering her pains in her own proper person and character. (TMS VII.iii.I.4, p. 317, emphasis added)55 The change of situation implies a change of person, as I may sympathise with a pregnant woman, though I have never experienced that particular situation, nor will I. If Hume considered sympathy a means of communication related to contagion or infection, as an impression that becomes an idea, Smith transcends Hume by demanding, in addition, a change of person. In this sense Hume’s account of sympathy would be more Hobbesian, as it depends on the sympathiser. Fontaine (1997, passim) has explored the nature of sympathy, investigating what modern economists understand by sympathy. According to him we should distinguish between ‘empathetic identification’ and ‘partial empathetic identification’. The former, which represents Smith’s understanding of 55

Confusion might arise in contrasting this with the following passage: ‘[b]y the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them’ (TMS I.i.1.2, p. 9). James Otteson interprets the latter as meaning that ‘we imagine –contrary to what might have thought – not what our brother feels, but rather what we would feel in his situation; we then assume our brother is feeling what we would feel’ (2002, pp. 19–20), as we have no experience of the other. I believe the latter is fundamental, as sympathy for Smith necessarily involves a rational process in assessing the other’s situation. What the person considered actually feels is only part of the process, as we must check what we should feel if we were him in his situation.


sympathy, implies an imaginary change of circumstances and personhood, while the latter implies only a change of circumstances.56 The circumstances surrounding any passion are a necessary condition to attaining Smith’s sympathy, but they are by no means always sufficient. Yet the principle of sympathy is aimed at attaining mutual sympathy; if the natural affection of sympathy requires a spectator and an agent, it is the process of the concordance of sentiments that finally uncovers the social nature of Smith’s project. In this sense sympathy relates to Cicero’s translation of the Stoic’s word sumpátheia as a ‘natural connexion’ (see infra note 54). If sympathy for Smith presupposes human beings’ social nature, it is the sympathetic process, through the first stage of mutual sympathy, that finally determines an ethics of social interaction. As will be explained later, in Chapter 5, Smith would not conceive an economic Robinson Crusoe; for Smith a human without society would simply not be a human being. Though it is clear that sympathy entails moral approbation, as ‘[t]o approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them’ (TMS I.i.3.1, p. 16), the ‘suitableness to their objects’ is fundamental to understanding the situational character of sympathy. This point demands the fundamental distinction between ‘the cause which excites it [the sentiment of affection of the heart from which any action proceeds], or the motive which gives occasion to it’ and ‘the end which it proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce’ (TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18; cf. II.i.intro.2, p. 67),57 a distinction that will be treated and discussed more extensively in the next two chapters. Sympathy, as a situational capacity, deals with causes and effects, with the proportioned nature of what triggers a passion and the manifestation 56

57

Sugden (2002, p. 75, note 7) has recently questioned Phillippe Fontaine’s position, arguing that Smith’s sympathy only acccounts for partial identification. But there is an identify problem as it seems that there is a contradiction in Smith regarding the self. In my opinion Smith’s sympathy would generally take place without the need of denying the self, but some special situations would require a complete self-denial that actually implies a change of personhood. In this case, imagination would act as a necessary but not always sufficient condition. On a very perceptive account of Smith’s originality compared with Hutcheson and Hume see Harman (1986). I am indebted to David Levy and Sandra Peart for their intuition that Smith’s sympathy, contrary to Hume, presupposes an egalitarian stance. Smith immediately defines cause and effect, regarding the former ‘[i]n the suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or disproportion which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, consists the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action’


of that passion. And for the purpose of assessing any situation, the only possibility is for us to bring the case ‘to our own breast’ (TMS I.i.3.9, p. 18). This would apparently contradict sympathy as a change of situation and person, leaving Smith’s sympathy only as a ‘partial empathetic identification’, but Smith is here thinking in terms of moral approbation, with sympathy as a canon for approval. The introduction of the impartial spectator, and then the supposed impartial spectator, as the man within, that represents our inner conscience, poses the question on how moral assessment should be carried out. Smith believes that ‘[e]very faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them’ (TMS I.i.3.10, p. 19). But if the spectator is blind, deaf, a clinical idiot or pathologically insensitive, it does not necessarily mean that mutual sympathy cannot be attained, or that Smith is presupposing an ideal society of perfect beings. It only confirms that he assumes the importance of social experience, which is closely related to the faculty of sympathy. Although utility is pleasing in aesthetic terms, Smith is aware that ‘we approve of another man’s judgement, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality … . The idea of the utility of all qualities of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not what first recommends them to our approbation’ (TMS I.i.4.4, p. 20). The idea of utility as an ‘after-thought’ (contra Hume), and the thesis that Smith can be labelled as a proto-utilitarian, will be discussed later in Chapter 4, but for my current line of inquiry, it suffices to understand as a preliminary stage that sympathy for Smith is a complex phenomenon, and though it entails judgement, that does not mean that morality, under the sympathetic process, should just be determined by moral approbation. Sympathy as an imaginary change of circumstances and personhood, presupposes a rational process that sometimes entails a kind of self-denial, as it would require a change of persons. This capacity of imagining oneself in the position of someone else, changing places and personhood, constitutes the main pillar of Smith’s moral philosophy. Yet the impartial spectator, together with the concept of propriety and the virtue of self-command, play a fundamental role in shaping the sympathetic process. It is this process, by uncovering the (TMS I.i.3.6, p. 18), and regarding the latter ‘[i]n the beneficial or hurtful nature of the effects which the affection aims at, or tends to produce, consists the merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward, or is deserving of punishment’ (TMS I.i.3.7, p. 18).


nature of propriety and self-command, as will be shown in the next two chapters, that sheds further light on the sympathetic process. We learn from experience to sympathise, and this implies that the sympathetic process might take place in our minds, independent of the actual occurrence of the event of a spectator being face to face with an agent (cf. TMS I.i.3.4, pp. 17–18), that is, sometimes sympathy does not actually take place, but in reality it occurs. In that sense I believe that Griswold has originally referred to Smith’s account of human behaviour ‘ … like moral realists who focus primarily on the particular case rather than a consequentialist’ (1999, p. 54); indeed there are more grounds to consider Smith’s ethical position as realist, than relativist. The emphasis Smith places on different contexts does not necessarily mean that he is a moral relativist. An understanding of sympathy only in terms of moral judgement implicitly assumes a consequentialist view of the sympathetic process, in terms of mutual sympathy. Moral approval requires actions or situations already exercised to be judged, and sympathy, if it were only restricted to the realm of moral approval, would play no part in the generating process per se. But sympathy as a principle in human nature is not only a capacity, but also a disposition, and therefore it pertains to both the origin of moral judgement and to the process of attaining it. It is this process that grants moral autonomy. Indeed, the instrumental feature of the sympathetic process, as directed towards a concordance of sentiments, does not tell the whole story as a final cause to which all efficient causes tend. The fact that there is a natural tendency towards mutual sympathy does not necessarily mean that the sympathetic process will only take place when considering the future pleasure that the concordance of sentiments will produce. For Smith, human beings would sympathise not only when foreseeing pleasure, or any outcome (to avoid a utilitarian or hedonistic connotation). The final cause of the sympathetic process could be seen as a télos, but understood in the Aristotelian sense, not as a simple attainment of an end, but also as ‘contributing to it’, for its own sake. It is in this grand sense that the sympathetic process is actually teleological, and not simply consequentialist. In fact, I believe that it is not correct to restrict sympathy as a concept of means-to-ends, as the process is not merely instrumentally related to the concordance (or non-concordance) of sentiments,58 and therefore it cannot 58

This teleological bias that presupposes sympathy as a vehicle leading to concordance, or to the utility of mutual sympathy, which although always pleasurable, is not an end, also leads Witzum (1998) incorrectly to conflate sympathy and utility.


be simply reducible to moral approval (or disapproval). Sympathy, understood as the sympathetic process, also entails a motivational force that is shaped by a continuous process of transformation inherent in human interaction, and a pleasurable end does not exclusively determine it. To assume that sympathy is not related to moral motivation invalidates the sympathetic process in its broad sense. Sympathy narrowly understood as the exercise of moral judgement would in practice render the individual devoid of any moral autonomy. For Smith, moral judgement is socially embedded since moral codes emerge from social interaction, but the ethical role of moral autonomy, represented by the ‘supposed impartial spectator’, is fundamental to Smith’s ethical system. The TMS not only concentrates on the consequences of our behaviour that allow moral judgement, but also, and more importantly in my view, on the motives that trigger our conduct. Propriety, in contrast with merit, morally works as a motive for action (see TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18 and II.i.intro.2, p. 67). For Smith, in a proto-Kantian insight that will be explored in Chapter 4, morality also evolves at an ad intra level of consciousness.59 The Smithian distinctive meta-virtue of self-command, that ‘is not only a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241), is the paradigmatic example of propriety in this sense. Indeed, self-command is related to propriety, since ‘the effects are too often but too little regarded’ (TMS VI.concl.7, p. 264). The philosophical meaning of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of self-command, and the role of conscience introduced by the supposed impartial spectator, situates the sympathetic process within a philosophical tradition that seems closer to Kant than to utilitarianism. Indeed, for Smith moral actions are not simply determined as such by their outcomes, but also by the motives for which they were undertaken. In this sense, sympathy grants moral autonomy to the individual. Surprisingly, the assumption of sympathy as merely associated with moral judgement has been common in the literature, perhaps, as I suggest, as a consequence of the TMS editors’ authoritative emphasis on jettisoning the ‘Smith Problem’. For Werhane ‘sympathy and selfinterest are different kinds of phenomena. Self-interest is a motivating force. Sympathy … is the means through which we understand (but do not feel) the passions of others and ourselves. Therefore, sympathy has no role in motivation’ (1991, p. 97). Jeffrey Young (1997), quoting 59

I believe that David Raphael’s distinction between propriety as related to right and wrong, and merit as related to praise and blame (Raphael, 1985, pp. 29–30) is correct, as propriety is firmly linked to moral autonomy, and merit to moral judgement.


Raphael and Macfie’s remark, thinks that this is a valid explanation of the difference between self-interest and sympathy, implying that the former is a motive to action, and the latter is not. For him, also, this is one important reason for explaining the ‘Smith Problem’ and once again the TMS editors ‘effectively deal with this’ (ibid., p. 24). Even James Otteson, the most radical contemporary interpreter of Das Adam Smith Problem before the publication of his book, agrees, stating that ‘Raphael is right to point out that Smithian sympathy is not a motive to action at all; rather, Smith means by ‘sympathy’ a harmony or concordance between the sentiments of an actor and of an observer’ (2000, p. 64). The ‘sympathy problem’ needs reassessment, since we cannot reduce the sympathetic process solely to moral approval. Fortunately, Knud Haakonssen, in his introduction to the new Cambridge edition of the TMS, has briefly tackled the issue of sympathy and moral autonomy. He sees sympathy as ‘practical imagination’, asserting that: We spontaneously see people as purposeful and this is the central act of practical imagination [sympathy] … . We cannot get to the stage of either approving or disapproving of a standpoint until we see it is a standpoint. Sympathy in the most important Smithian usage is this latter process which is preparatory to any assessment of people, it is not assessment itself … he [Smith] often uses sympathy in both the traditional sense of ‘approval’ and in the more original sense explained here. (Smith, 2002 [1759], p.xiv, emphasis in the original) The sympathetic process precedes and directs our behaviour, relying not only on its consequences or effects, but also on the antecedent causes which trigger our conduct. Fleischacker (1999) has greatly contributed to this debate, and I believe that Smith’s ethical account also implies a deontological stance in which conscience plays a leading role.60 60

To avoid confusion, let me explain what I understand here by deontology. Based on the Greek to deon, that which is binding, right and even needful, implying not only a sense of moral obligation, but also one of being in want, Bentham coined the word deontology in 1814. Moreover, he wrote his Deontology between that year and 1831. However, Bentham’s deontology is based on duties towards an end, as act-consequentialism. But in the case of Smith’s deontology, it would be agent-relative. It implies duty, not determined by the consequences, but motivated within the agent, by the supposed impartial spectator. The fact that Bentham’s Deontology is focused towards ends, does not mean he did not regard motives. Indeed, Bentham was very aware of the importance of motivation, as shown by his A Table of the Springs of Actions


The fact that this view has been practically ignored is, ironically, a consequence of Das Adam Smith Problem, as I have attempted to argue. Its major implication is that the role of moral autonomy in Smith’s TMS has been relatively neglected.

2.6 Conclusions Das Adam Smith Problem continues to be a source of debate. Ironically its history and the variety of interpretations shed light not only on an issue that is still pervasive, but also on our understanding of sympathy. The traditional interpretation of the Problem as a misunderstanding of the meanings of self-interest and sympathy has led some scholars to consider the latter not as a motive for action, but simply as entailing moral judgement. After an analysis of the sources and the debate, it has been argued that this instrumental position narrows Smith’s concept of sympathy. The TMS presupposes sympathy as a principle in human nature that fosters a continuous relationship between spectators and agents, a natural interdependence among social beings. Sympathy, for Smith, not only accounts for moral judgement, but more importantly perhaps, it influences human behaviour ex ante. The emphasis on propriety, on what is ‘praiseworthy’, distances Smith from his successors, especially from the utilitarian tradition. His moral system also involves a process of self-transformation within the praxis of interaction through the moral autonomy of the ‘supposed impartial spectator’. However, the process of sympathising is also part of a complex social phenomenon in which human beings take part in a continuous reciprocal interplay. In this natural process of human beings within society the individual is even led to form ‘certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided’ (TMS III.4.7, p. 159). Morality depends on social experience, as the TMS ‘looks upon the individual not as an absolute and irreducible entity existing prior to social experience, but as a product of his social environment’ (Morrow, 1927, p. 179).61 Propriety for Smith, in contrast with the effects or

(1817). But motives to action are determined by a desire for pleasure and an aversion to pain. Certainly Smith would react against the idea of pleasure and pain as the sole motivational determinants. 61

Glenn Morrow was probably the first to notice an agency-structure dichotomy in Smith. He suggests that in the TMS society determines the ethical man, but that in the WN it is the individual’s self-interest which determines the economic structure (1927, pp. 335–6). Lamb (1974) explicitly tackles the relationship


consequences of merit, not only entails an innate human faculty, but it is also the result of social psychology. Smith’s ethical view of human being’s nature is mainly social, and may be expressed by paraphrasing Kant’s celebrated metaphor that ‘society without agents is empty, but agency without society is blind’ (Kant, 1990 [1787], p. 93). The famous and frequently quoted passage of ‘the butcher, the brewer, or the baker’ (WN I.ii.2, pp. 26–7) as a dominating force in exchange, together with the well-known passages about the invisible hand, have given rise to a narrow and biased perception of Smith’s thought within neoclassical economics, either distorting or simply ignoring his moral views. It is not negligible that Smith wrote: ‘those general rules of conduct, when they have been fixed in our mind by habitual reflection, are of great use in correcting the misrepresentations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be done in our particular situation’ (TMS III.4.12, p. 160, emphasis added). He knew the power of self-love, especially in the economic realm, but he was also aware that ‘general rules’ ought to guide us as to what is fit and proper. Self-interest, and virtues in general, cannot be detached from the social implications underlying the concept of sympathy. For the bicentenary of Smith’s death, in 1990, 10 Nobel laureates either presented or prepared papers in order to commemorate their debt to ‘the father of the science’. Their contribution was published as Adam Smith’s Legacy. His Place in the Development of Modern Economics (1992). Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, there is not a single reference to the TMS among the 10 essays. But earlier, 1998 Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen,62 a healthy exception among economists, and well aware of Smith’s philosophy, had rightly affirmed: ‘Indeed, it is precisely the narrowing of the broad Smithian view of human beings, in modern economies, that can be seen as one of the major deficiencies of contemporary economic theory’ (Sen, 1987, p. 28). A promising sign in our discipline is that, during the last two decades, interest in the whole of Adam Smith has been growing rapidly. Indeed, it can now be said to be flourishing.

between the individual and society in Smith. More recently Patricia Werhane has suggested this line of inquiry (1991, pp. 144–5), but criticises it. Jean-Pierre Dupuy also sees that in the TMS ‘Smith apparaît beaucoup plus en effet comme le précurseur du Durkheim’ (1987, p. 329). 62

Vivian Walsh suggests there has been a revival of classical theory, represented especially by Sen, who not only has campaigned against ‘the vulgar (and interested) misunderstanding of what Smith meant by “self-interest”’ (2000, p. 22), but has also fostered a renewed ‘second wave’.

3 Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis Discourse and Civic Humanism

3.1 Introduction Adam Smith added a new section entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’ to the sixth and last edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this late addition, he mainly discusses what I will call the four Smithian virtues: self-command, prudence, beneficence and justice. Scholars have long recognised the centrality of these virtues in the articulation of Smith’s moral theory. What has gone relatively uncommented, however, is the fact that these four virtues constitute a fundamental aspect of his ethics, and that they are a theory in and of themselves. As part of this larger project, the present chapter provides a broader context for Smith’s TMS by analysing and outlining its possible reliance on the classical tradition of the ‘cardinal virtues’. It will make the case that the ‘civic humanist’ paradigm represented a central feature for Smith’s recasting of these virtues, and that, accordingly, the ideology of civic humanism remained a powerful influence during the Scottish Enlightenment. I argue that Smith has too readily been assimilated to the natural jurisprudential tradition, neglecting the prominence of self-command, as a virtue with civic humanist overtones, within his four principal virtues. A proper understanding of this crucial virtue, and of Smith’s narrative, reveals that his account was motivated by a far more humanist tradition of thought. The next part of this chapter will briefly explicate the peculiar nature of virtue as ‘manliness’ in the Greek and Roman tradition. During the Renaissance, the idea of the vir virtutis was revived, and the contest between virtù and fortuna became a central feature of humanist discourse. In Section 3.3, I argue that this civic humanist legacy significantly shaped Smith’s position on the question of standing armies, as 57


well as his concept of self-command. The fourth part of this chapter will briefly characterise the classical tradition of the four cardinal virtues (prudence, courage, temperance and justice), a set of ideas which, from Plato up through the scholastics, remained the essential ‘excellences’ of moral character. Section 3.5 examines Smith’s interaction with this tradition, paying special attention to the virtue of self-command. I make the case that the widespread scholarly practice of identifying this virtue as essentially Stoic is mistaken. Smith’s use of the idea of self-command, the only Smithian virtue related to propriety, coincides precisely with the Socratic virtue of enkráteia, which, in turn, is firmly linked to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne. Lastly, I argue that Smith’s understanding of these concepts relies heavily on the humanist vision of the vir virtutis. The Smithian theory of virtues combines the natural jurisprudential language of rights and duties with a humanist tradition of thought. The virtus of self-command exalts the consequentialist nature of the other Smithian virtues, which are complemented by its all-encompassing nature. In short, this chapter is a vindication of a dialogue between virtues and commerce in Smith, between the twilight of a civic humanist tradition and the rise of political economy.

3.2 The tradition of virtus One of J. G. A. Pocock’s central aspirations in The Machiavellian Moment is to give an account of the development of the idea of ‘virtue’ from the revival of the Greco-Roman tradition in quattrocento Florence up to the American Revolution. Pocock investigates the concept of ‘virtue’, not only as the correlative antagonist of fortuna, but also as an independent term with its own richly defined content. Yet a central tenet of Pocock’s argument is that virtue ‘cannot be satisfactorily reduced to the status of right or assimilated to the vocabulary of jurisprudence’ (Pocock, 1985, p. 41), and that we should, therefore, look for a predictable opposition between ‘republican’ and ‘liberal’ discourses. Accordingly, much recent scholarship, noting the significant influence of natural jurisprudential thought on Smith’s enterprise, and accepting Pocock’s dictum that liberalism and republicanism cannot coexist, has failed to recognise the essential role of humanist ideas in the development of Smith’s theory.1 1

See, for example, Forbes (1976) and Haakonssen (1981). On Smith and civic humanism, research includes Pocock’s own work (1975, 1983, 1985, 1999), Dwyer (1987, 1990, 1992), Robertson (1983a, 1983b, 1985, 1987), Phillipson (1983) Teichgraeber (1981), Dickey (1986) and Evensky (1989). The debate

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While the focus on ius has overshadowed the importance of virtus in Smith, I will contend that both approaches are naturally intertwined within the Smithian project.2 As Pocock is well aware, ‘ “virtue” is a word with a long history and a great many meanings’ (Pocock, 1985, p. 41). I will begin by briefly examining one particular, classic meaning of virtue that Quentin Skinner explains with reference to the idea of the vir virtutis (1978, vol. 1, p. 87 and passim), in order to see whether Smith inherits part of this tradition, and how he fits it into his narrative. The word virtue relates to the Latin virtus, which is used to translate the Greek word areté. As is the case with many Greek words, any translation is difficult, and probably misleading, and this is certainly the case of areté, which had a long history before it acquired its Socratic moral overtones. It seems that the Greeks might have presupposed that the root of areté, as related to manly qualities, was in the epic Ares, which stands for the god of war and slaughter, son of Zeus and Hera, and later called by the Romans ‘Mars’. This popular etymological mistake, linking areté to warlike manliness, has an understandable cultural value in itself, as it implicitly stresses the character of the martial virtues, so prominent, for example, in the Iliad and the Odyssey and throughout the classical tradition.3 But just as the Greeks had the cardinal virtue of andreía between the jurisprudential approach and civic humanism is best reflected in the collection of essays by Hont and Ignatieff (1983). Although Winch (1978, 1996) makes use of the political discourse of civic humanism, in Winch (1983) he expresses some reservations about its methodology. Phillipson (1983, p. 200, note 89) is also worth reading, as it provides a taste of the debate in question. Harpham (1984) provides a powerful critique of Winch’s (1978) approach to Smith, calling for a better understanding of liberalism, and in Harpham (2000) he investigates Smith’s concept of liberty, questioning any republican interpretation. Stimson (1989) also criticises any republican interpretation of Smith by suggesting that we cannot find a coherent Smithian theory of politics. 2

3

Pocock refers to the ‘two-buckets fallacy’ (1983, p. 248). Vivienne Brown reflects the rather generalised view that ‘the language of rights and markets seems to lie uneasily beside the language of virtue and corruption in spite of a number of attempts to straddle both interpretative paradigms’ (1994, pp. 101–2). Smith not only had promised a treatise on Jurisprudence (TMS VII.iv.37, p. 342; see also Corr. pp. 286–7), a vow that he reluctantly maintains in the advertisement to the last edition of the TMS, but makes ample use of it, not only, as it is evident, in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, but also in his moral philosophy and political economy. ‘In the city-state courage was called manliness, a clear reminiscence of the Homeric identification of courage with manly areté’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939], pp. 6–7) and ‘the word areté had originally meant warlike prowess’ (ibid., p. 8). In Plato’s Cratylus (407d1) the God Ares is etymologically related to the masculine


(fortitudo), derived from anér, which denotes ‘man’, the Romans, following this ‘manliness tradition’, coined the Latin word virtus from vir, also meaning ‘man’. Cicero summarised this cultural tradition of virtuemanliness-courage when he wrote Appelata est enim ex viro virtus; viri autem propria maxime est fortitudo (‘it is from the word for man that the word virtue is derived; but man’s chief quality is fortitude’) (Cic.Tusc, II.xviii.43, 1966, pp. 194–5). Some 150 years later, Plutarch referred to Roman martial prowess and wrote, in Greek, that evidence for its importance ‘may be found in the only Latin word for virtue, which signifies really manly valour’ (Plut.Lives, vol. 4, 1968, p. 121). However, strictly speaking, the Greek word areté is related to áristos,4 which means that which is best, or most perfect, and that is the reason that many translations, instead of using the word virtue for areté, prefer the word ‘excellence’ or even ‘goodness’. In this broader sense we understand the so-called ‘Renaissance man’, whose aim is to attain universal excellence in all aspects of virtue. But virtus and areté, in their moral aspects were linked to the cardinal virtue of courage, and were contrasted with the effeminate (fortuna). For example Cicero, referring to the virtue of fortitudo, which in Latin corresponds to the cardinal virtue of courage, wonders ‘what is more vile or disgraceful than a womanish man?’ (Cic.Tusc, III.xvii.36, 1966, p. 271). This value system was revived during the Renaissance, as a reaction against the Augustinian view of human nature and the scholastics’ deviation from the classic moral significance of courage. It became a relevant feature of the civic humanist tradition. The archetypal example is when Machiavelli, in chapter XXV of The Prince, states that virtù must not only resist, but even beat and coerce fortuna, which is a woman.5 arren and as well as to to andreion, an adjective that clearly relates to andreia, the cardinal virtue of courage. MacIntyre (1988, p. 26) argues that areté, in postHomeric uses (inscriptions on grave-stones for example), means courage and manliness. In The Odyssey 4. 725 areté is related to esthlós, that which is noble, and in 22. 244 it is linked to to áristoi, that which is best or excellent, which represents the real etymological root of areté. But in The Iliad 20. 242 there is a connection between areté and that which is manly. The passage in The Odyssey 8. 266ff, when Ares seduces Aphrodite, and they are then set up by Volcanus, exemplifies another important feature of Ares’s manly character. 4 5

‘The root of the word [areté] is the same as that of áristos’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939], p. 5). In chapter XXV of The Prince, Machiavelli says that fortune ‘shows its powers where no force has been organised to resist her’ (Machiavelli, 1988 [1532], p. 85), where ‘powers’ is a translation of virtù. At the end of the chapter Machiavelli concludes ‘fortune is a woman, and if you want to control her, it is necessary to treat her roughly’ (ibid., p. 87). Perhaps Skinner and Price’s

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The Romans, who had worshipped the goddess Fortuna,6 already considered that she would be subdued by virtus, creating this classical relationship between virtù and fortuna which became a style of Renaissance discourse. This revival of vir virtutis, of ‘the truly manly man’ (Skinner, 1978, vol. 1, p. 87) rooted in the classical tradition, shaped the ideals of the civic humanist tradition. Skinner rightly considers that ‘this emphasis on man’s creative powers came to be one of the most influential as well as characteristic doctrines of Renaissance humanism’ (ibid., p. 98). Its influence stems from the simple acceptance of the idea that fortuna is a woman, and therefore attracted by the vir, the man of true manliness, a quality she is especially keen to reward. The Prince should not only know how to coerce her if circumstances demand it, but must also strive to attract the goddess to gain her favours, as the achievement of power and glory oscillates along with this flirtation. Success finally depends on how fortuna is combined with virtù. This cluster of ideas, encompassed by the virtue–manliness–courage triad, remained a central aspect of intellectual discourse in modern political thought an aspect that is still present in Smith’s discourse.

3.3 Smith’s vir virtutis narrative and the standing army debate Smith also inherits part of this tradition, especially when he writes about standing armies and the martial spirit, and in a more explicit manner when he refers to the ‘awesome and respectable’ virtue of selfcommand. The latter will be treated extensively in Section 3.5.1 of this chapter. Regarding the former, we know that in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Smith simply considered that ‘a wellregulated standing army is superior to every militia’ (WN V.i.a.39, translation is not literal enough as the original reads ‘perché la fortuna è donna, ed è necessario, volendola tener sotto, batterla ed urtarla’ (Machiavelli, 1891 [1532], p. 365), which is probably better translated as ‘since fortune is a woman, it is necessary, if one wants to reduce her to obedience, to cane and to strike her’. Earlier Quentin Skinner was closer to the latter sense stating that ‘he [Machiavelli] ends by declaring with a characteristic flourish that, ‘because fortune is a woman’ the aim of the man of virtù must be ‘to beat and coerce her until she becomes submissive to his will’ (1978, vol. I, p. 121). 6

The Goddess was depicted with the cornucopia during the Roman Republic, a symbol of plenty, but the Christian tradition broke with this image, and she was later represented by the wheel of change, a symbol of the unexpected, resembling the idea that she was moved by whim, and not liable to be a potential ally (see Skinner, 2000, pp. 29–30).


p. 705, cf. V.i.a.25, p. 700).7 His justification for defending this thesis is based on the progress of commercial society, rather than on any antirepublican ideological grounds. Indeed, Smith is aware that ‘[m]en of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous to liberty’, and after that he immediately adds, ‘[i]t certainly is so, wherever the interest of the general and that of the principal officers are not necessarily connected with the support of the constitution of the state’ (WN V.i.a.41, p. 706). Yet the debate is not simply confined to economics. His demand that those generals and chief officers (who, according to Smith, should be the ‘principal nobility and gentry of the country’) have ‘the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority’ (ibid.), is a basic concern which is at the core of those who criticised mercenaries and defended the militia. Duty towards the country is the political as well as moral cornerstone that underpins the first duty of the sovereign: defence. With this demand for those in command, which resembles the reasons for defending the militia against an army of mercenaries, Smith argues that a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty, and on the contrary, in some cases it can be favourable to it. There is a difference between a merely professional standing army, and Smith’s proposed standing army, in that the latter is commanded by those few who share the spirit of a republican commitment to the politeia. This view is complemented further by the image of ‘the patriot who lays down his life for the safety, or when for the vain-glory of this society, appears to act with the most exact propriety’, concluding that ‘his conduct, therefore, excites not only our entire approbation, but our highest wonder and admiration, and seems to merit all the applause which can be due to the most heroic virtue’ (TMS VI.ii.2.2, p. 228). Sublime courage, giving up his own life for his country, makes the patriot an object of wonder and admiration, an example of perfect propriety. Our 7

For this highly sensitive political issue in Scotland, Andrew Fletcher’s A Discourse of Government with relation to the Militias (1698, reprinted in Daiches, 1979) is fundamental to understanding the importance of militias within the Scottish context. On Fletcher, see Daiches (1979) and Robertson (1983b, pp. 141–51; 1985, pp. 22–59). On the standing army debate see Schwoerer (1974), Western (1965) and especially Robertson (1985) for an analysis of the issue in Scotland. The best account of Smith and the militia issue remains, in my view, Winch (1978, pp. 103–20; 1996, p. 55, pp. 114–23), although I believe that there was an actual shift of mind in Smith influenced by his mature economic thoughts (according to Winch’s interpretation, Smith continued to support militias). However, I am not proposing a new Adam Smith Problem. See also Hont and Ignatieff (1983, pp. 7–8) and Robertson (1985, pp. 201–32) for Smith’s justification of the standing army.

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natural love for our country also reflects a strong commitment, as ‘[w]e do not love our country merely as part of the great society of mankind: we love it for its own sake, and independently of any such consideration’ (TMS VI.ii.2.4, p. 229).8 As Knud Haakonssen has concluded, ‘in modern conditions a militia could never replace a standing army altogether’ (1981, p. 179, emphasis in original), but Smith’s defence of a standing army is carried out in a very eclectic way, selecting the stronger points of two apparently antagonistic positions, which in his proposal somehow become combined. Moreover, at times it appears that Smith is not fully at ease with the superiority of a standing army over a militia, and in those occasions, the civic humanist language permeates the debate. The standing army debate, with different nuances, followed the trajectory of Machiavelli’s warning to the Prince regarding the need of virtù to defend the principality against fortuna. Such virtù could only express itself through a citizen militia under the Prince’s command, and not through mercenaries who ‘are useless and dangerous’ (Machiavelli, 1988 [1532], p. 43).9 As a matter of fact, according to his correspondence, as late as 1760 Smith endorsed the cause of the Scottish militia.10 But his change of opinion is not negligible if we remember that even Francis Hutcheson, Smith’s teacher and predecessor in the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, also promoted the idea of a citizen militia ‘by turns’. In his A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three 8

9

10

Smith’s encomium for the love of one’s country is particularly powerful in his late addition to Chapter II, Of the order in which Societies are by nature recommended to our Beneficence, in part VI. The next chapter is entitled Of universal Benevolence, and the difference between the usage of beneficence and benevolence is, in my view, not negligible, as the former entails a sense of duty, that is only intentional in the latter. Another wonderful example of how civic language is combined by Smith with an economic discourse, is when he discusses the relationship between a member of society and his society, concluding that ‘its prosperity and glory seem to reflect some sort of honour upon ourselves’ (TMS VI.ii.2.2, p. 227). The concept of glory is repeatedly stressed by Cicero, especially in his De Officiis, as is the concept of honour. Sallust also delves into the idea of glory, while Seneca stresses the concept of honour. Both concepts were fundamental for the modern moral and political discourse that preceded, and certainly influenced, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment. Moreover ‘experience has shown that only rulers and republics that possess their own armies are very successful’ (Machiavelli, 1988 [1532], p. 44). ‘The Lincolnshire mobs provoke our severest indignation for opposing the militia’ (Corr., p. 21) and in a letter to William Strahan, Smith refers to Nathaniel Hooke’s The Secret History of Colonel Hooke’s Negotiations in Scotland, in Favour of the Pretender; in 1707, concluding that it ‘may throw a damp upon our militia’ (Corr., p. 68).


Books; Containing the Elements of Ethics and the Law of Nature (1747), he writes: Military arts and virtues are accomplishments highly becoming all the more honourable citizens. Warfare therefore should be no man’s perpetual profession; but all ought to take their turns in such services. And however it may be observed, that, when according to modern custom, armies are made up of the very dregs of people, fellows too dissolute and worthless for any other occupation, whosoever takes this way of life for a few years is made unfit for any other occupation in future; yet the case would be quite otherwise if all best citizens served in our armies by turn. This method too would bring along with it these grand advantages: all the people would be trained and skilled in military service. Should one of our armies be entirely cut off, we could have another of veterans immediately: were the chief officers cut off; we would have others of equal experience in readiness to take command: and it would be no easy matter for either any ambitious citizen at home, or any foreign invader, to trample upon the rights of an armed people well trained in military service. (Hutcheson, 1764 [1747], pp. 348–9) Hutcheson, as well his ablest disciple, Smith, saw the benefits and dangers of military training. But Smith’s shift of mind regarding the militia prompted Adam Ferguson, after reading the WN, to write to Smith, stating: ‘but you have likewise provoked the militia, and there I must be against you’ (Corr., pp. 193–4).11 Ferguson not only supported military valour as a cornerstone of civic virtue, but also was much more cautious regarding the benefits of the commercial progress of society. As Pocock has recently argued ‘the continuing emphasis on virtù in the Greek and Roman sense ... is what sets a certain distance between him [Ferguson] and Hume or Smith’ (1999, vol. 2, p. 346). Since this distance has been attributed to Smith’s preference for natural jurisprudence over civic

11

Alexander Carlyle, a founding member of the Edinburgh Poker Club, wrote an anonymous pamphlet attacking Smith’s position on the standing army in the WN. Adam Smith was an active member of the Edinburgh Poker Club which was formed in 1762 by Adam Ferguson with the explicit aim of ‘stirring up’ the militia issue, Ferguson’s most cherished cause (cf. Ferguson’s pamphlet entitled Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia, 1756). Little wonder that Pocock refers to Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) as ‘the most Machiavellian of the Scottish disquisitions’ (1975, p. 499).

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virtues, and of a standing army over a militia, that gap may not be quite so wide.12 Smith’s final position in the WN takes a pragmatic approach to the progress of society. Book V of the WN starts with the following passage: The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force. But the expence both of preparing this military force in times of peace, and of employing it in time of war, is very different in the different states of society, in the different periods of improvement. (WN V.i.a.1, p. 689) The standing army is an inevitable consequence of progress, and a necessary institution for the protection of individual liberty. Smith’s much debated theory of the four stages of society (‘hunters, shepherds, agriculture and commerce’, LJ i.27, p. 14),13 a reflection that constitutes the 12

13

Nicholas Phillipson argued that Smith’s civic language has been practically ignored, and that this also extends to the Scottish context (1983, p. 200, especially note 89). But after 1983 much work has been done on this issue (cf. supra note 1). It has been argued the Smith’s stadial theory is proto-Marxist: ‘[t]he essential idea embodied in the theory [four stages’ theory] is that societies undergo development through successive stages based on different modes of subsistence’ (Meek, 1976, p. 6, emphasis on original) or ‘the eighteenth-century concept of ‘mode of subsistence’ must be transformed into what Marx was later to call mode of production’ (ibid., p. 229, emphasis on original). Although Meek (1976) had attributed to Smith the originality of the stages theory, pointing out that Turgot had developed it independently, today it is widely accepted that various authors had developed this idea in Europe (see especially Hont (1987), who establishes the continuity between earlier natural law theories and Smith’s four stages theory, calling our attention to Pufendorf’s strong influence). Skinner (1982) has questioned Meek’s Marxist interpretation. Before Meek’s attempt to ideologise Smith, Macpherson (1962) and Schlatter (1951) had suggested through ‘possessive individualism’ or a rather sequential ‘history of private property’, respectively, an argument from Hobbes and Locke that culminates with Adam Smith for a particular view of capitalist society. In this setting I fully sympathise with Donald Winch, who persuasively argues: ‘Smith’s politics is much more problematic than it has been made to appear’ (1978, p. 26). Smith also refers to the four stages theory in (LJ, p. 459). It must be underlined that Smith’s ‘history of mankind’ is presented as a sequence of states; it is not an evolutionary history. But the interpretation of this sequence as an spontaneous order à la Hayek, is still a matter of debate. In this line, James Otteson has duly distinguished between ‘unintended order’ and ‘spontaneous order’ (2002, p. 6, note 3).


core of the following analysis (WN V.i.a, pp. 689–708), is paramount to his analysis of this issue, as it is already suggested in the last sentence of the passage quoted above. In the advanced state of society, the two impediments to the existence of a militia are economic and technical, that is, ‘the progress of manufacturers, and the improvement in the art of war’ (WN V.i.a.8, p. 694).14 We also learn from history, starting with Philip of Macedon, of the superiority of a standing army, but Smith observes that a militia with experience in the field can become like a standing army, warning that ‘the American militia may become in every respect a match for that standing army’ (WN V.i.a.27, p. 701). As a consequence of the division of labour, there is a high opportunity cost involved in citizen’s leaving their particular trade, and so the need for a standing army is supported by an arrangement of ideas that combine economic, historical, political and psychological arguments. This broader focus in tackling an issue is distinctively Smithian. But specialisation was, in the advent of commercial society, an important cause of corruption that undermined the role of virtù. While Hume and Smith believed that the material and moral gains of a commercial society would preserve liberty, Ferguson saw in them the risk of corruption, understood as meaning ‘the loss of autonomy in the pursuit of sociability, the loss of a sense of self without which there can be no sense of the public’ (Pocock, 1999, vol. 2, p. 347). It is no coincidence that Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) starts with an analysis of morals, and ends with an uneasy portrayal of corruption.15 Clearly Smith reflects

14

Regarding the latter it is worth mentioning the following passage: ‘[s]ince the invention of fire-arms, strength and agility of body, or even extraordinary dexterity and skill in the use of arms, though they are far from being of no consequence, are, however, of less consequence’ (WN V.i.a.21, p. 699, emphasis added). One recurrent classical theme revived during the Rennaisance, as was briefly discussed in Section 3.2, was the idea of physical prowess, and Smith’s typical grammatical construction clearly reflects the importance of prowess, regardless of firearms. 15 Jack (1989) discusses certain aspects of the debate from Mandeville to the Scottish and the French Enlightenment. The idea of political corruption, which is different from the modern understanding of the term, with its economic overtones, is fundamental to this debate. Corruption was related to the decline and fall of the republic, to a loss of public spirit resulting from the sacrifice of the public benefit in favour of the private one (an important theme, for example, in Machiavelli’s History of Florence). On the modern economic and political nuances of this debate and the relationship between self-interest and public benefits in commercial society, Albert Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests (1977) is, in my opinion, already a classic.

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the gradual abandonment of the civic narrative in its more Fletcherian form, but his discourse still retains conspicuous vestiges of civic language. After a brief analysis of the history of war, Smith concludes that there is a need for a standing army as a consequence of the modern techniques of the ‘age of commerce’: In ancient times the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized. The invention of fire-arms, an invention which at first sight appears to be pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization. (WN V.i.a.44, p. 708) These ‘unavoidable effects of the natural progress of improvement’ (WN V.i.a.43, p. 708) are unintended consequences of the advancement of society, but this does not mean that Smith disapproves of classical republicanism. Of course this tradition was ‘far more than a set of claims about political structures: it was an ethical position’ (Nelson, 2001, p. 892) which also entailed a way of life represented by the vivere civile. From this perspective, political arrangements influenced by the republican tradition underlying the civic humanist approach also attracted Smith, as he proved with his reiterated commendations of the ‘republican form of government’ which ‘seems to be the principal support of the present grandeur of Holland’ (WN V.ii.k.80, p. 906).16 The praise of English colonists in America, whose ‘manners are more republican’, and their governments, which ‘have hitherto been more republican too’ (WN IV.vii.b.51, p. 585), also corroborates this assumption. 16

Of course, this is a highly debatable characterisation, for at least two reasons. First, it is difficult to reconstruct what Smith actually understood by republicanism in general (which is distinct from Holland’s republicanism in particular), and second, though Smith repeatedly praises Dutch commercial success, in the next sentence he is also quite critical, referring to ‘the great mercantile families’ that influence ‘the administration of that government’ (WN V.ii.k.80, p. 906). Regarding the former, David Steuart Erskine, Lord Buchan, a distinguished student of Adam Smith, in his recollections of Smith published in The Bee (June, 1791) states that ‘he approached to republicanism in his political principles’ (Rae, 1965 [1895], p. 124). Similarly, Burke, after resigning from the Whig party, referred to Smith as ‘a thorough and loyal Whig’ (ibid., P. 379). But this represents a Whig interpretation of Smith’s republicanism, which is also debatable, as well as more complex if we bring Hume into the discussion (see Stimson, 1989). Another source for this debate, is when Smith refers to Rousseau’s second Discourse as ‘only the true spirit of a republican carried a little too far’ (EPS, p. 251).


Furthermore, his language resembles the éthos of the civic humanistic tradition when he speaks of ‘the effeminate and ill-exercised militia of the great Persian empire’ (WN V.i.a.29, p. 702, emphasis added) and when he repeatedly and severely criticises the gradual decay of the martial spirit, calling for government intervention. For example, just after praising the Greek and Roman republics for maintaining the martial spirit of their citizens, Smith adds that ‘in the progress of improvement the practice of military exercises, unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to decay, and, together with it, martial spirit of the great body of the people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates’ (WN V.i.f.59, pp. 786–7). Soon thereafter, he writes: But a coward, a man incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the character of man. He is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind, as another is in his body, who is either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use of them. He is evidently the most wretched and miserable of the two; because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity and wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the most serious attention of the government. (WN, V.i.f.60, p. 787) Smith’s approach to the standing army debate is an excellent example of the dialogue between virtue and commerce that I am trying to uncover. The reader witnesses the rational triumph of economic progress within a vir virtutis atmosphere. Moreover, in his famous passage foreseeing the drawbacks of the division of labour, Smith grumbles that a man performing a few simple operations ‘generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become’ rendering him ‘incapable of defending his own country in war’ (WN V.i.f.50, p. 782).17 17

The much-discussed similarities between Smith’s complaints and Marx’s theory of alienation, reflect another of the unintended negative consequences of the progress of civilised society. This recurrent idea also leads Smith to say that ‘[a] man, without proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward’ (WN V.i.f.61, p. 788), which shows to what extent Smith’s language epitomises the tradition of virtù.

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He goes even further, claiming that ‘[h]is dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues’ (ibid., emphasis added), and calling once again for government intervention. In brief, while Smith delegates defence to professional soldiers, he does not necessarily wish to deprive the citizen of martial virtue. The classical virtus of the Greco-Roman tradition interacts with the fundamental condition for economic progress, that is, the division of labour, and specifically the need for labour as the source of wealth. Smith’s undertaking combines the civic humanist tradition with the ‘stubborn facts’ of a rapidly developing economic society in what Pocock has appropriately termed ‘commercial humanism’ (Pocock, 1985, pp. 50 and 194). Regarding the standing army debate, although Smith supports the approach, it can be argued that he is still thinking within the conceptual framework of the civic tradition.

3.4 The philosophical tradition behind the cardinal virtues While Machiavelli, ‘not indeed a man of the nicest morality even in his own times’ (TMS VI.i.16, p. 217),18 focused on the complex relationship between his virtù and fortuna, following in the footsteps of classical and humanist authorities, he radically deviated from them in terms of what was considered to be the necessary and essential treatment of the cardinal virtues. By circumventing this aspect, Machiavelli not only reacted against the intellectual establishment, but also revolutionised the subject of politics. The Romans, basically adopting and adapting the Greeks’ ideas, considered that virtus was related to many qualities, but among them, the four cardinal virtues, and courage in particular, occupied a pre-eminent position. Smith’s position within this tradition of thought, however, is a subject that has been either ignored or treated perfunctorily, with a few notable exceptions, and so it is worth revisiting certain aspects of this debate. Joseph Cropsey, for example, analyses Smith’s four virtues under the assumption that they are the cardinal virtues (1957, pp. 37–49), and though he is aware of the relevance of these virtues to Smith’s moral theory, in his interpretation of one passage he concludes ‘that all virtue and the maximization of pleasure meet in self-command, leaving us 18

It is important to note that already in his Edinburgh lectures Smith was aware of Machiavelli’s contribution to history and modern political science. Smith apparently would have lectured that ‘Machiavelli is of all Modern Historians


with the idea that virtue is a form of maximization of pleasures and minimization of pains’ (ibid., p. 49).19 This reading of self-command as a virtue with utilitarian overtones, is in my view incorrect, as the passage that Cropsey quotes (TMS IV.2.6, p. 189) refers to what I will later suggest, in Section 3.5.2, is the Epicurean virtue of prudence.20 Vincent Hope points out that ‘Smith examines the cardinal virtues in detail’ (1989, p. 106), and then incorrectly states that the Smithian virtues ‘are the cardinal virtues’ (ibid., p. 112). Norbert Waszek analyses the Stoic’s influence and the sources of the four Smithian virtues, concluding persuasively that ‘Smith is in the broad stream of the cardinal virtues issue in Western ethical thought with its origins in the Greek, especially Socratic tradition. And yet it can be argued that the particular manner in which Smith defined those traditional virtues distinctly echoes Stoic ideas and terminology’ (1984, p. 603). Athol Fitzgibbons has argued that ‘Smith’s four virtues ... prudence, justice, self-command, and benevolence, were his eighteenth century namesakes for the traditional Stoical virtues, which had been ... wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage’ (1995, p. 104). This account uncritically accepts Cicero as the spokesman of the Stoic tradition.21 Yet while Cicero follows ‘the Stoics above all, not as an expositor, but, as is my custom, drawing from their fountains when and as it seems best, using my own judgement and discretion’ (Cic.Off, I.6, 1991, p. 4), and while he is an important source for Stoical thought, his writings are hardly an uncomplicated summary of Stoic ideas, to say nothing of the neo-Stoicism that influenced the Scottish context. Second, beneficence (or benevolence, assuming, as does Fitzgibbons, that these words are synonyms, but noting that the latter etymologically entails a volitive the only one who has contented himself with that which is the chief purpose of History, to relate Events and connect them with their causes without becoming a party on either side’ (LRBL, p. 115), much resembling Machiavelli’s famous dictum on the verità effetualle della cosa, in chapter XV of The Prince. Moreover, Smith refers two times to Machiavelli’s historical reports in his WN and his works were in his Library (Bonar, 1966, p. 106). 19

20

21

When Vivenza (2002, p. 194) asserts that ‘Waszek was the first to link the cardinal virtues to Smith’s moral philosophy’, she ignores Cropsey’s Polity and Economy (1957), though it must be said that his treatment of the issue is perfunctory. Vivenza (2002, pp. 54–7 and 197) interprets Smith’s prudence as Epicurean, too, but she is aware that there are also nuances of Stoicism in Smith’s concept of prudence, concluding that it is a mixture. Fitzgibbons (1995, p. 105) not only relies on a ‘Ciceronian Stoicism’ for Smith’s account of virtues, but considers that, in Smith’s case, benevolence is the civic humanist virtue par excellence.

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sense) was never a principal virtue for the Stoics, although it takes on an important and particular sense for Smith. My attempt here is to see how Smith received and revised this important tradition. More recently Charles Griswold simply states that ‘[t]he cardinal virtues for Smith are self-command, prudence, benevolence and justice’ (1999, p. 202), and James Otteson refers to ‘the four principal virtues’ and ‘the four cardinal Smithian virtues’ (2002, pp. 15, 166). In Knud Haakonssen’s recent introduction to the Cambridge edition of the TMS, he argues more precisely that Smith ‘revised the traditional schema of the cardinal virtues which in his hands become prudence, benevolence, justice and selfcommand’ (Smith 2002 [1759], p. xx). And yet, just before this book went to press, Gloria Vivenza’s ‘Postcript’ to her Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, which was published in Italian in 1984,22 concludes categorically that the four Smithian virtues ‘do not correspond to the cardinal virtues of Christianity, or even those of the classical world’ (2002, p. 202). I will briefly outline the tradition of the four cardinal virtues in order to assess whether there are any similarities between them and the Smithian virtues. Although the tradition of the four principal virtues has pre-Socratic antecedents (especially in some fragments of Democritus), it basically began with Plato, first in the Socratic Protagoras, and then in the Republic, where he expounds his more developed views on the cardinal virtues. Broadly speaking, Plato endeavours to transfer the virtues of the pólis to the individual. In his attempt to found an órthe pólis, Socrates demands the following qualities: sophía (wisdom), andreía (courage), sophrosúne (temperance) and dikaiosúne (justice) (Pl.Rep, 427E, 1999, p. 347), a cluster that reappears, although in a different form, in his later dialogue Laws.23 These four main virtues were carried forward by the

22

23

I must confess that a few years ago Emma Rothschild had strongly encouraged me to read Vivenza’s Adam Smith e la cultura clasicca (1984). With the difficulties inherent to a non-native Italian, I much profited after reading it, but I disagreed with some points. Her ‘Postcript’ to her rather late but very welcome English translation (Vivenza, 2002) is an excellent piece, which could have been turned into a book in itself. The translation of her book into English is an important contribution to Smith scholarship, and I am certain that it will produce a debate on some important issues that have been rather neglected, especially as a result of her emphasis on Aristotle’s influence on Smith. In Plato’s Laws the four principal virtues as human goods are dependent on the divine (Pl.Lg, I.631C-D, 1967, p. 25). Temperance and courage are related to the producing and soldier social classes, respectively, and wisdom to the leadership of the philosopher king. Justice, as the principal virtue, maintains the harmony


tradition initiated by Zeno at the Stoa Poikile. According to Plutarch, ‘Zeno admits several different virtues, as Plato does, namely prudence, courage, moderation [sophrosúne] and justice’ (Plu.St, quoted in Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 378 and vol. 2, p. 375). As a consequence of the Platonic–Stoic scheme, in the Hellenistic world the four chief virtues were widely adopted as canonical,24 and sometimes combined with Aristotle’s more extensive catalogue of virtues. For Plato, justice has pre-eminence among the four principal virtues (Pl.Rep, 432b–434d), but apparently for Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, wisdom comprises all virtues: ‘justice was wisdom concerned with assignment (or distribution), sophrosúne (self-control, temperance) was wisdom concerned with acquisition, bravery wisdom concerned with endurance’ (quoted in Sandbach, 1975, p. 42, a passage that most probably corresponds to Plutarch’s Stoic Self-Contradictions 1034c–e). Similarly Cicero refers to the four virtues as ‘perception of truth ... preserving fellowship among men, with assigning to each his own ... greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered spirit ... order and limit in everything that is said and done’ (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991, p. 7) – wisdom, justice, courage and temperance, respectively. For Aristotle, particular justice was related to his principle of assignment by desert (Arist.EN, V.iii.7, 1994, p. 269),25 and for Plato, the all-encompassing virtue of justice refers to the harmony of the other three virtues, as each element performs its own particular function without interfering with the functions of the others. The Stoics adopted Plato’s four virtues, while reconceptualising them in order to avoid Plato’s metaphysical assumptions and the all-encompassing nature of dikaiosúne. Although the Stoic tradition is complex, and varies in its different historical stages (Early, Middle and Roman or late Stoicism),26 and bearing in mind that it is difficult to talk about the Stoic between them, allocating each part of the soul its proper function, and no other. Virtue is also for Plato harmony of the soul, and the four principal virtues correspond to its natural constitution (intellect-wisdom, feeling-temperance, willcourage, and justice remains as the principal virtue which regulates the others). 24

25

26

Cicero repeatedly refers to the four principal virtues (prudentia, iustitia, fortitudo, temperantia) following the tradition of the Stoa (cf. Cic.Inv, II.LIII.159, 1968, p. 327) or his classic definition of the four chief virtues in (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991). I focus exclusively on Aristotle’s particular justice since for Grotius, in the tradition of natural law, it will then become perfect right. Smith inherits Grotius’s definition of justice almost literally, à la Cicero (see infra Section 3.5.3). It should be noted that in the Prolegomena of Grotius’s De Iure Belli ac Pacis, justice is defined as ‘abstaining from that which is another’s’. Roughly speaking, Early Stoicism is represented by Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC), Cleanthes (331–232 BC) and Chrysippus (c.280–c.206 BC). Middle Stoicism is

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doctrine as such, one thing common to the Stoics, as Cicero points out, is that they consider that all four virtues ‘are bound together and interwoven’ (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991, p. 7). This insight about the unity of virtues, which follows the Socratic and Platonic tradition,27 will prove important in the development of the idea of the four principal virtues. It seems that the first to use the word ‘cardinal’28 with respect to the virtues was Ambrose of Milan,29 and later Aquinas reports ‘that there are four virtues of the soul whereby it lives spiritually in this life, namely prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, and he [Augustine of Hippo] adds that the fourth pervades them all’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.58,8, vol. 37, 1963, p. 41, emphasis in the original). Therefore the Christian tradition inherited the four cardinal virtues as being: prudence (prudentia), fortitude (fortitudo), temperance (temperantia) and justice (iustitia) and the latter, for Augustine of Hippo, maintains its grand Platonic sense. Although Aquinas uses Aristotle’s phrónesis, or practical wisdom, as prudentia, instead of the elusive and all-encompassing wisdom (sophía, sapientia), which involves theoretical wisdom, there are some additional relevant differences with the Greco-Roman tradition that influenced and contrasted with the virtus propounded by classical republicanism. Cicero summarises the tradition of the four virtues as follows: ‘courage is displayed in toils and dangers, temperance in forgoing pleasures, prudence in the choice of goods and evils, justice in giving each his due’ (Cic.Fin, V.xxiii.67, 1999, pp. 469–71). The main feature of this account is that all the principal virtues are related to the individual, to the self, although they are certainly encompassed by the social structure of a pólis or res-publica, to speak literally of a classical Greco-Roman tradition. After Augustine of Hippo, the scholastics, especially Aquinas, altered the

mainly represented by Panaetius (c.180–110 BC) and Posidonius of Apamea (c. 135–c.51 BC). And Roman or Late Stoicism, principally by Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), Epictetus (AD 50–138), Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80) and Hierocles (second century AD). What we know today about Stoicism is basically from doxography and some fragments, mainly through the legacy of Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Marcus Aurelius, Hierocles, Stobaeus, Epictetus and Galen. 27

28

29

This Socratic idea is, for example, clearly stated in Protagoras (331e; 359b and 361a–b). Cardinalis comes from cardo, literally a hinge of a door. Aquinas states ‘a cardinal virtue is concerned with the main points in human life: like a hinge on which a door turns’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.123,11, vol. 42, 1963, p. 35). Aquinas reports that ‘Ambrose comments, We know that there are four cardinal virtues, namely, temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, I, vol. 23, 1963, p. 117, emphasis in the original).


classical tradition of the four principal virtues in order to accommodate them to the Christian dogma. The old moral currency continued to circulate, but with a new design. First of all, the political framework of the zˆoon politikón,30 in its wide social Greek sense, was substituted, or rather expanded, to include the City of God. According to Aquinas, for Augustine ‘prudence is knowledge of what we should seek or avoid, temperance the curbing of lust for fleeting pleasure, fortitude the firmness of spirit against passing trials, and justice the love of God and our neighbour pervading the rest’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.58, 8 vol. 37, 1963, p. 41, emphasis in the original. Note the Stoic influence on this account). Aquinas adopted Augustine’s account of justice as ‘the virtue which renders what is due in actions between equals’ (ibid., Ia2æ.61, 4, vol. 23, p. 125), merely regulating man in his dealings with others, but leaving his dealings with God to the theological virtues.31 Another important change is in reference to courage, which is replaced by fortitude. For the scholastics, fortitudo is no longer the vir virtutis related to martial success, which pursued the classical idea of human glory, but rather is focused on overcoming obstacles.32 Fortitudo is a strengthening virtue in the face of dangers, like fear, which prevent man from attaining what he must and therefore the cardinal virtue lost its characteristic of physical prowess. Also, while either wisdom or prudence had been the

30

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32

Seneca in De Beneficiis, attributes to the the Cynic Demetrius the Latin term sociale animal for zˆ oon politikón (Sen.Ben, 1887, p. 198), while Aquinas argues that primo quidem quia homo naturaliter est animal sociale (‘first, because man is naturally a social animal’, (Aq.ST, 1a.96, 4, vol. 13, 1963, p. 135), following Aristotle’s famous idea of the zˆ oon politikón (Ar.Pol, III 1278b20, 1998, pp. 200–1). For Augustine of Hippo justice involved supernatural qualities, but Aquinas restricted the cardinal virtues to the human realm, developing the divine or theological virtues of faith, charity and hope, as God is the real and true télos. Aquinas concludes his article entitled ‘Is justice always towards another?’ within the question ‘on justice’ by stating that ‘A man’s actions with regard to himself are sufficiently straightened out when his emotions are ruled aright by the other moral virtues. His actions with regard to another, however, call for a special rightfulness in relation to the other on which they bear, not only to his acting itself. And so for such actions there is a special virtue, and this is justice’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.58, 2, vol. 37, 1963, p. 25). I am grateful to Quentin Skinner who duly remarked upon this point the classical impetus to act of classical courage, in contrast to the Christian fortitudo. This apposition is important, and while Ambrosio maintained the martial view of fortitudo, it was his disciple Augustine of Hippo who christianised the four virtues as manifestations of God’s love. Later on Aquinas argues that in the classical tradition ‘courage ought not to rank as a cardinal or chief virtue’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.123,11, vol. 42, 1963, p. 35) as it is not directed to a goal, in the newly baptised Aristotelian concept of télos.

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primary virtues for Zeno and the Stoics, then for Aquinas prudentia, as the Aristotelian intellectual virtue of phrónesis, constituted the principal virtue. Methodologically, Aquinas attempts to give a systematic account of the four cardinal virtues according to their formal objects and the faculties in which they reside. Regarding the latter Aquinas assumes that prudence as principal virtue, resides in the rational part of the soul. Justice resides in the will,33 temperance in the sensitive appetites (the concupiscible), and fortitude in the urge or impulse to resist fear (the irascible), and all three are participants of prudence.34 With reference to the formal objects of the cardinal virtues, Aquinas implies that ‘any virtue that causes a good judgement of reason may be called prudence; every virtue that causes actions to fulfil what is right and due may be called justice; every virtue that restrains and tames the passions may be called temperance; every virtue that strengthens the mind against any onset of passion may be called fortitude’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, 3, vol. 23, 1963, p. 123). As with the Stoics, Aquinas insists on the pre-eminence of one main virtue (prudentia), but also considers that the other three virtues are interrelated (cf. ibid., Ia2æ. 61, 4, vol. 23, pp. 125–9). Therefore the cardinal virtues are all intertwined, but the vir virtutis tradition lost its classical connotation of martial prowess.

3.5 The Smithian virtues Before analysing Smith’s account of virtues, we should first briefly examine how this classical tradition was assimilated by Francis Hutcheson. In his A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books; Containing the Elements of Ethics and the Law of Nature (1747), Hutcheson writes that prudence is ‘a cautious habit of consideration and forethought, discerning what may be advantageous or hurtful in life’ (ibid., 1764 [1747], p. 70), which combines Epicurean and Stoic elements, while fortitude is ‘that virtue which strengthens the soul against all toils or dangers we may be exposed to in discharge of our duty’ (p. 70), within the Stoic and 33

This is one reason why justice as ‘giving to every man his due’, in commutative terms, related to the will is an ad extra virtue, towards others, and the other three cardinal virtues are ad intra virtues, that is, related to man’s nature. 34 ‘There are four virtues as we are considering it at present, namely, our essentially rational part, and this is complemented by prudence, and our derivatively rational part. This is threefold, namely, the will, which is the seat of justice, the concupiscible power, the seat of temperance, and the irascible power, the seat of courage’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, 3, vol. 23, 1963, p. 121).


Christian tradition that lost the ad extra quality of andreía, and focused in the inner self that faces the external. Temperance ‘is that virtue which restrains and regulates the lower appetites toward sensual pleasures’ (p. 72), and justice is the ‘sovereign virtue to which all the rest are subservient’ (p. 72), also following a Platonic scheme. 3.5.1 Self-command In the third section of part VI of the TMS, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, added just before Smith’s death, and occupying nearly half of this part, Smith praises the classical martial virtues implicitly linked to self-command. The first paragraph refers to the Smithian virtues, but underlines that ‘[t]he most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty’ (TMS VI.iii.1, p. 237). For Smith, ‘[w]ar is the great school both for acquiring and exercising this species of magnanimity [self-command]’, stressing that ‘it is this habitual contempt of danger and death which ennobles the profession of a soldier’ (TMS VI.iii.7, p. 239). Elsewhere he refers to ‘the rash, the insolent, the slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous’ characters of men as causing ‘ruin to the individual, and misfortune to all who have anything to do with him’ (TMS IV.2.1, p. 187, emphasis added). The italicised adjective is used in the pejorative, classicalhumanist sense, that is, as an antithesis of the manly virtus that has to tame the capricious and effeminate fortuna. In the first part of the TMS Smith refers to Cato’s ‘manly fortitude’ (TMS I.iii.1.13, p. 48), and in part VI he again touches on the same subject, adding that ‘[f]ortune has in this [Catiline’s conspiracy] ... great influence over the moral sentiments of mankind, and, according as she is either favourable or adverse, can render the same character the object, either of general love and admiration, or of universal hatred and contempt’ (TMS VI.iii.30, pp. 252–3), combining the apposition between virtus and fortuna. In the third part of the Sense of Duty, Smith praises: The man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command ... In success and in disappointment, in prosperity and in adversity, before friends and before enemies, he has often been under the necessity of supporting this manhood. (TMS III.3.25, p. 146) Soon after, he explicitly refers to ‘the manhood of self-command’ (TMS, III.3.34, p. 152). But one passage in particular, which is an excellent example of the type of narrative I am trying to uncover, makes the point

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most clearly: No character is more contemptible than that of a coward ... .We esteem the man who supports pain and even torture with manhood and firmness; and we can have little regard for him who sinks under them, and abandons himself to useless outcries and womanish lamentations. (TMS VI.iii.17, p. 244) In addition to all these vir virtutis remarks,35 Smith states that self-command ‘is not only a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241). This passage suggests self-command as an important virtue with a foundational character, which, as we will see, represents its unique distinctiveness. Near the end of the TMS, in the conclusion of the sixth part of ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, Smith sums up his four virtues: self-command, prudence, justice and beneficence, which I have labelled the ‘Smithian virtues’. Only self-command is assessed by its propriety, regardless of its effects or consequences (cf. TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18 and II.i.I.1, p. 65). The final paragraph of part VI is worth reproducing, and reads as follows: But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but a small part, of that approbation. Those effects may sometimes be agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and though our approbation is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice; and though it is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to make and to maintain the exertion. The effects are too often but too little regarded. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added) The example Smith uses to underline the different nature of selfcommand is related to ‘the most heroic valour’ that ‘may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice’. Once again 35

Martin Calkins and Patricia Werhane (1998, p. 50) too readily link areté to manliness, but they correctly underline the masculine and heroic overtones of Smith’s self-command.


this assessment of self-command resembles martial virtue, and suggests the cultural tradition of virtus. The connection of self-command to virtus is evident, as is the influence of the underlying republican tradition in the WN, as has already been suggested in the brief analysis of the standing army debate. Therefore, my argument clearly opposes Vivienne Brown’s judgement that ‘the account of morality in TMS diverges widely from the public virtus of civic humanism (or classical republicanism)’ (1994, p. 209). More than divergence, there seems to actually be a certain amount of convergence. Although, as I have argued, self-command relates to the vir virtutis tradition, its actual nature as a virtue per se is complex. Prior to the sixth edition, Smith’s self-command appears to have many meanings. First, it is related to control of passions as ‘the great, the awful, and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require’ (TMS I.i.5.1, p. 23). Then, when Smith writes that ‘[s]elf-command, which constitutes the dignity of every passion ... we reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes ... that concerted tranquility, which it requires so great an effort to support’ (TMS I.i.5.3, p. 24), it resembles the Epicurean ataraxia, or tranquillity of mind, governing the natural passions of our nature. Also, Smith considers that in ‘the great school of self-command’ we study how ‘to be more and more’ masters of ourselves (TMS III.3.22, p. 145).36 But soon thereafter it appears again related to the martial virtues: ‘hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue [self-command]’ (TMS III.3.37, p. 153). Finally, there is a peculiar paragraph in which Smith refers to the ‘absolute’ self-command of the American savages (TMS V.2.9, pp. 205–6), which definitely implies a complete physical and psychological self-denial. A first reading gives the impression that self-command is related to control of the passions, to the cardinal virtue of temperance, at times involving a dose of self-denial. But what makes it a different and relevant virtue for Smith? The answer is simple: its unique character as the foundation of all virtues, which not only underpins all the other Smithian virtues, but keeps them intertwined following the tradition of the cardinal virtues. Self-command, as a foundational virtue, very much resembles a designation that derives from the Greek virtue of enkráteia. I 36

Cf. ‘the man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command’ (TMS III.3.25, p. 146).

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will attempt to show, pace the editors of the TMS and the prevailing view on the nature of self-command, that the underlying assumption for considering self-command as ‘distinctively Stoic’ (TMS intr., p. 6),37 is flawed. Self-command is originally a Socratic virtue, with some important nuances in its meaning.38 The general argument that has been given for considering selfcommand as essentially Stoic is, explicitly or implicitly, related to the widely discussed Stoical concept of apátheia. One common and particular interpretation of apátheia literally translates the word as ‘without passions or emotions’, which would explain the Stoic indifference towards worldly events. This interpretation is debatable.39 I support the view, against the vernacular use of the word ‘stoical’,40 of those who maintain that ‘apátheia does not imply a wise man without emotions, but that all

37

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40

An exception is Athol Fitzgibbons, who, as we will see, correctly but without further explanation states that ‘[s]elf-command was a synonym for Platonic temperance’ (1995, p. 105). Curiously, Brown (1994, chapters 3 and 4), in what is probably one of the best available analyses of Smith and Stoicism, did not pinpoint this issue referring to ‘self-command as pre-eminently Stoic virtue’ (ibid., p. 98) and simply to the ‘Stoic virtue of self-command’ (ibid., p. 215). There is general agreement in the literature on the Stoic nature of Smith’s virtue of self-command. Even Gloria Vivenza, in the most thorough and developed analysis of Smith and the classics, argues that self-command ‘is indeed a virtue with undeniably Stoic characteristics’ (2002, p. 57). The fact that enkráteia is a Socratic virtue of course does not necessarily imply that it did not influence the Stoics. Moreover, it must be stressed that the language of vir virtutis is often overlapped with the ethical discourse of the Stoics. Not in vain does Smith refer to the ‘spirit and manhood of their [Stoics] doctrines’ (TMS VII.ii.29, p. 283). I use the word ‘debatable’ carefully, as there is no agreement on this issue. For example, a great scholar like Ludwig Edelstein insisted that for the Stoics selfmastery was ‘undoubtedly, freedom from passion, apátheia. Virtue consists in not being disturbed by events’ (1966, p. 2), ‘all passions have to be subdued’ (ibid., p. 52) or ‘passions must be erradicated’ (ibid., p. 56). Also a philosopher like Martha Nussbaum refers to the concept of apátheia as ‘what the Stoics said it was. It is extirpation’ (1994, p. 401) or ‘the Stoic does not hesitate to describe the wise person as totally free from passion’ (ibid., p. 390). The standard English dictionary entry for stoical is ‘characterized by impassivity or resignation’. Paul Heise has correctly, in my view, argued that ‘[t]he fundamental Stoic propensity to one’s own nature, oikeíosis, and its concomitant directive to act “according to nature” became not a call to quietism or laissez faire but a call to lead oneself and the community to their natural providential end’ (1991, p. 67).


his emotions are rationally controlled’ (Rist, 1978, p. 259).41 Sandbach arrives at a similar conclusion relying on what the Stoics actually understood by páthos.42 In fact, morally indifferent things for the Stoics, such as wealth, rank or reputation, are neither good nor bad, but simply indifferent (cf. Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 419–23); its moral content is neutral. We can pursue these indifferent things provided they spring from a literally ‘good’ impulse, which the Stoics named eupátheia. This idea proves that the Stoics had no intention of ‘eradicating’ passions. The latter is simply one questionable interpretation of Stoic philosophy, an interpretation which has in my view, paid mere lip service to their philosophical project. It is difficult to imagine the sage as devoid of feelings, as practically inhuman. Smith shared this generalised view, stating that ‘the stoical apathy is, in such cases, never agreeable, and all the metaphysical sophisms by which it is supported can seldom serve any other purpose than to blow up the hard insensibility of a coxcomb to ten times its native impertinence’ (TMS III.3.14, p. 143). If Smith endorsed the view that apátheia for the Stoics simply meant eradicating passions, it is even more difficult to imagine him relying on the Stoical concept of apátheia as fundamental to the development of his virtue of self-command, thus reinforcing my argument that Smith was not thinking exclusively in Stoic terms when he referred to self-command.43 Plutarch, after stating Zeno’s four principal virtues, reports that Cleanthes ‘adds the following words: “This strength and might, when it arises in what seem to be matters requiring persistence, is enkráteia; when in matters requiring endurance, courage; concerning deserts, justice; concerning choices and avoidances, sophrosúne” ’ (Plu.St, quoted in Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 378 and vol. 2, p. 375). In this statement prudence or wisdom are absent, having been replaced by enkráteia. The latter would 41

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Following this line of thought: ‘The point of Stoic virtue, notwithstanding the heavy earnestness of some of our sources, is not abandoning ordinarily enjoyable and useful activities’ (Long, 1996, p. 177) or ‘it must be a caricature of the wise man to think that he has become insensitive to human concern ... . Things do move him, but not in such a way as to disturb his balanced judgement’ (Frede, 1986, p. 110). ‘It is sometimes said that the Stoics wished to eradicate emotions ... what the Stoics wished to abolish was no emotion but ‘passion’ (páthos) or, as Cicero translated the word, “mental disturbance” ‘ (Sandbach, 1975, p. 59). The influence of the Stoics on the Scottish context is very complex. Hutcheson, who translated Marcus Aurelius into English, not only presented a neo-Stoicism divergent from the Ciceronian heritage, but also platonised some of his Stoic reformulations. Shaftesbury’s influence on Hutcheson’s moral sense is also informed by his particular reading of the Stoics.

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seem to support the assertion that self-command is essentially Stoic, but first, let me take a moment to trace the philosophical history of this virtue. The Greek word eg-kráteia literally means ‘inner power’ or ‘power within oneself’ (as for example, with the word démos-kráteia), making ‘self-command’ a fairly good translation of the term.44 Its opposite is akra ¯sía. In his Memorabilia45 Xenophon portrays Socrates as referring to enkráteia as the ‘foundation of all virtues’ (X.Mem, I.v.4, 1997, p. 67), and later in a dialogue with Euthydemus discussing the importance of enkráteia, Socrates suggests that ‘enkráteia is a very great blessing [áriston] to a man’ (X.Mem, IV.v.9, 1997, p. 329). Yet, the noun enkráteia appears only four times in Plato’s works (and the adjective enkrátes, eighteen times). For example, he defines sophrosúne as ‘a kind of beautiful order and a continence [sophrosúne] of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase ‘master of himself’ [enkráteia]’ (Pl.Rep, IV 430e.7, 1999, p. 359). Therefore Plato, in the only appearance of this word within his dialogues, defines the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne as a kind of enkráteia. Aristotle first defines sophrosúne as a mean between pleasure and pain (Arist.EN, II.vii.3, 1994, p. 99). He then continues his analysis of sophrosúne (Arist.EN, III.x-xii, pp. 173–87) by contrasting it with profligacy (akola˘sía). Soon thereafter, in Book VII, which also belongs to his Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle follows Plato’s definition, stating that ‘it is clear that enkráteia and akra¯sía relate only to the objects to which sophrosúne and akola˘sía are related’ (Arist.EN, VII.v.9, 1994, p. 405). This analogical contrast is important, as it shows that for Aristotle the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne includes enkráteia, as akra ¯sía is also one kind of akola˘sía.46 But sophrosúne and enkráteia involve a process of choosing 44

45

46

Enkráteia is commonly translated as self-control, self-restraint or continence. For an excellent account of the evolution of enkráteia’s meaning, see Gauthier and Jolif (1959, vol. 2.ii, pp. 579–81). Memorabilia was a widely read and a very important classical text during the eighteenth century. The book was in Smith’s library (Mizuta, 1967, p. 153), and he undoubtedly knew it quite well. He is reported to have referred to the ‘accounts we have of the Condemnation of Socrates’ (LRBL, p. 180, the emphasis on the plural added) and, when dealing with the ‘Socratick method’, Smith would have explicitly mentioned ‘the dialogues of Xenophon and Plato’ (ibid., p. 146). Akra ¯sía for Aristotle is perhaps better translated as weakness of will, and relates to doing the wrong thing knowingly (Ar.EN, VII 1146b31–5, 1994, pp. 384–9), in contrast to Socrates, who ascribed akra ¯sía to ignorance, implying that no one would do the wrong thing knowingly. In other words, if one knows that something is bad or wrong, one will simply not do it. The nature of akola ˘sía is more complex, as it appears in Aristotle like a second nature, as akin to doing wrong things deliberately. Regarding the former, Aristotle distinguishes between akra ¯sía


and assessing that which is good and rational to do. In this setting, for Aristotle sophrosúne, as self-possession, is a central excellence for the deliberations of the person of practical wisdom.47 As Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, sophrosúne became ‘the virtue not of setting constraints upon one’s goal, but of moving with due and deliberate caution in one’s choice of means’ (1988, p. 48),48 combining páthos in terms of constraint of passions, and práxis, in relation to prudential deliberation. First of all, it is important to underline that the notion of ‘selfcommand’ was not widely employed in eighteenth-century moral discourse; it was more common to hear about self-control or even self-restraint in the neo-Stoic tradition of constraint of passions. It appears to me that ‘command’ gives this virtue a sense of direction which complements its ad intra connotation, and which distinguishes it from the all-encompassing coercive nature of self-control.49 The actual meaning of enkráteia confirms this very simple intuition. Self-command implies a person ‘possessed of himself’, somebody who knows what to do in addition to what not to do.50 Certainly for Smith, self-command, as a virtue strictly related to propriety, corresponds to enkráteia,51 as an for appetites and desires (akra ¯sía haplo ¯ s) as morally worse than akra ¯sía in respect to anger (akra ¯sía thumou ¯ ) (ibid., VII 1149a24-b26, pp. 404–9). This distinction is literally followed by Smith (cf. TMS, VI.iii.3, p. 238). It is noteworthy that Smith uses fortitude, manhood and strength of mind for controlling akra ¯sía thumou ¯ and temperance and moderation for commanding akra ¯sía haplo ¯ s. 47

48

49

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51

As Amélie Rorty points out ‘the phronimos is a sophron’ (1980, p. 272), but of course the reverse does not follow. Incidentally, see also how Alasdair MacIntyre links sophrosúne with courage and manliness (1988, p. 26), reinforcing the argument of self-command and vir virtutis. Otteson (2002) states that ‘Smith calls the ability to control one’s passions and consciously direct one’s actions “self-command” ’ (p. 55), he then emphasises the idea that self-command ‘presupposes the notion that one can freely choose to act in one way or in another way’ (p. 238–9), finally linking free human choice as ‘embodied in Smith’s notion of the virtue of self-command’ (p. 291). These remarks are very much in the same line that I am trying to defend here, but James Otteson, though clear about what he means, does not give additional evidence for this important conclusion. In this sense, I suggest that Pocock’s characterisation of Ferguson’s understanding of morality in terms of virtue as long as one remains ‘possessed of oneself’ which is ‘the precondition of the occasionally necessary sacrifice of the self to the public good’ (Pocock, 1999, pp. 347 and 352) is reminiscent of Smith’s understanding of self-command, and goes at least someway towards bridging the gap between Smith and Ferguson. Furthermore, the noun enkráteia, as well as the adjective enkrátes, appear in the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Demosthenes and are very

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ad intra virtue that also requires the exercise of individual deliberation. In the Platonic–Aristotelian tradition, the philosophical evolution of this concept is firmly linked to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne, which is also an aristocratic virtue.52 In conclusion, self-command is not simply a Stoical virtue; it has an important philosophical tradition that has been completely ignored in the literature on Smith. Werner Jaeger rightly considers enkráteia as a virtue that ‘became a central conception in our moral code’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939], vol. 2, p. 53). Within the tradition of the cardinal virtues, the latter is true, and enkráteia’s nature is not exclusively related to the restraint of passions. Indeed, for Aristotle, enkráteia does not only mean endurance of pain, but also victory over desire (Ar.EN, VII 1150.a.32, 1994, p. 415). The significance of this interpretation of selfcommand pertains not only this particular virtue, but by simple extension, to all Smithian virtues. Self-command must be seen as related to individual free choice,53 in a positive way that gives moral autonomy to the individual, and grants excellence, through propriety (a theme that will be discussed in the next chapter) to all other Smithian virtues. The then famous writer Henry Mackenzie54 is reported to have referred to Smith as ‘an exception. He had twice Dr. Johnson’s learning – who only knew one language well, the Latin – though he had none of his affection’ (Clayden, 1887, pp. 166–7). Smith’s command of Latin and Greek was very strong. Additional proof of the latter statement is found in the impressive collection of works by classical writers in his library common in Xenophon (cf. Lidell and Scott, 1996, p. 473), among others. All these classic authors were well known to Smith. 52

53

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In the sense that, as Alasdair MacIntyre has suggested, ‘it is the virtue of a man who could but does not abuse his power. One part of such restraint is the ability to control one’s passion’ (1981, p. 136, emphasis added). Soon thereafter MacIntyre adds that sophrosúne ‘does not necessarily imply restraint so far as one’s goals are concerned; it is rather restraint in the manner of realizing these goals’ (ibid.). Edward Harpham suggests that ‘[o]ne could argue that the ideal of selfcommand itself demands a certain amount of negative liberty if it is [to] be realized’ (2000, p. 236). The complexity and distinctively Smithian nature of self-command combines, in my opinion, a negative and then a positive aspect, that is, it evolves from a negative virtue to a positive one. In this sense, Calkins and Werhane (1998) have also briefly developed this broader character of selfcommand. They argue that ‘[s]omeone who evidences self-command is continent and capable of controlling his or her passions through a combination of knowledge, foresight, self-reliance and self-control. As a result, that person is also capable of integrating into society and participating in the community’s fruitful or productive interactions’ (1998, pp. 45–6). Walter Scott referred to Henry Mackenzie as the ‘Scottish Addison’.


(Mizuta, 1967), his repeated emphasis on the study of the Greek language in his letters to Lord Shelburne concerning the education of his son (cf. Corr., pp. 28, 29 and 31) and his command of Greek in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. I would venture not only that Smith’s virtue of self-command is influenced by this important philosophical tradition, which I have briefly summarised, but also that Smith was well aware of the Greek word enkráteia, its nature and meaning and its relationship with the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne. However, one could contend that there exists an oversight in my argument, specifically where it assumes that self-command for Smith is principally related to propriety, that is, it presupposes that it is an ad intra virtue. Indeed, Smith also claims in the TMS’s previous editions, that ‘selfcommand ... by which we restrain our present appetites, in order to gratify them more fully upon another occasion, is approved of, as much under the aspect of propriety, as under that of utility’ (TMS IV.2.8, p. 189). The latter quotation also appears to reflect a consequentialist approach to self-command, in contrast with the one added to the sixth edition, which basically confines self-command to propriety, as the effects ‘are too often but too little regarded’ (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264). Should we now understand self-command as related to propriety and utility, or should we assume that Smith’s last words are a lapsus that he overlooked while working on the last edition, perhaps allowing for the fact that when Smith wrote the sixth edition ‘he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217)? I believe neither. Throughout the TMS, Smith is concentrating on the ‘awesome and respectable’ virtue of self-command as his principal virtue. The apparently contradictory sentence merely reflects a particular feature of self-command, that is, what Smith recognises as the ‘Epicurean virtue of prudence’ that enables us ‘to abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future time’ (TMS IV.2.6, p. 189).55 In this specific passage, he is linking self-command to a prudential pursuit 55

The Epicurean influence on Smith is clearly reflected by a longstanding intellectual tradition. Although the epithet ‘Epicurean’ brought connotations of hedonism and religious dissent, similar to those of ‘Hobbist’, it is a fact that Epicurus himself, as well as Lucretius and Horace, were quite influential on Smith. Gassendi and St Evremond had revived this tradition in the seventeenth century, and it had a major impact on natural philosophy through its corpuscular theory of matter, especially through Newton’s Opticks. In the early eighteenth century it was Bayle’s task to endorse an Epicurean morality, and the Epicurean influence on Hume is also fundamental, as has been persuasively argued by Moore (1994) in his challenge to the view of Hume’s moral

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of pleasure and avoidance of pain, which involves a concern with the consequences as well as with the propriety of self-constraint. In this sense it is simply the prudential part of the excellence of self-command, which is also consistent with the Aristotelian definition of sophrosúne as the observance of the mean (mesótes) with respect to pleasures and pains (Ar.EN, II.vii.3, 1994, p. 99). Smith’s later additions to the TMS certainly contributed to broadening the meaning of self-command.56 It appears that for Smith self-command is as relevant as phrónesis is for Aristotle, as it entails not only a kind of self-denial or simple control of passions, but also a notion of prudential deliberation. This explanation is strengthened when we recall that according to Smith ‘to act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice and proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is no temptation to do otherwise’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241). In its broader sense, self-command is a meta-virtue, upon which all of the other three Smithian virtues, judged by merit, depend. But selfcommand is not only literally beyond the other Smithian virtues, it is also behind them, underpinning the moral value of actions. This feature of enkráteia is the basis on which to attain moral excellence. However, this broader sense of self-command is linked to our conscience, to the supposed impartial spectator who is capable of assessing the propriety of our behaviour, regardless of its consequences. In this setting, self-command is a virtue that enables proper moral behaviour, providing the moral structure that sets the ground for future actions to be judged. This complementing of Smith’s propriety and merit, represented by self-command and the other virtues, respectively, has been wonderfully summarised by Knud Haakonssen as ‘a most extraordinary combination of an ideal of intentions with an actual ethics of consequences’ (1981, p. 65).57

philosophy as fundamentally Hutchesonian. It is not negligible that Smith altered his view of the Epicureans from the ‘worst of all three’ to ‘the most imperfect of all three’ (TMS VII.ii.45, p. 307) in the last edition of the TMS, nor that he added the characterisation of ‘the peaceable and indolent Epicureans’ (TMS VII.ii.1.28, p. 281). 56

57

Curiously Werhane (1991, pp. 9, 41 and 100) puts forward three times the idea that Smith added the notion of self-command in the sixth edition, after the publication of the WN. In my view, strictly speaking, Smith developed the concept of self-command as a meta-virtue in his last edition, but the notion linked to enkráteia and sophrosúne was already quite significant since the first edition. In his new introduction to the Cambridge edition of the TMS Knud Haakonssen stresses that ‘judgment in terms of merit or demerit is, according


In summary, while it appears to be a contradiction for Smith to relate self-command in the last edition mainly to propriety, and in the previous editions also to utility, this is merely a consequence of the broad sense that Smith later attributes to self-command as a meta-virtue encompassing all the others, including prudential deliberation. Self-command is a distinctively Smithian virtue that encompasses the humanist discourse that was still pervasive during the second half of the eighteenth century. The broad character of self-command contrasts with the specific nature of the Smithian consequentialist virtues of prudence and justice, and although it is intellectually appealing as a complex virtue, it lacks the pragmatic simplicity of the other virtues. The former virtue will prove, in my view, to be the remnant of a civic humanist tradition that is combined in Smith with a jurisprudential approach. The latter tradition influenced his pragmatic account of justice and, more subtly perhaps, of prudence. 3.5.2 Prudence The editors of the TMS not only consider self-command as ‘essentially Stoic’, but go so far as to declare that Smith interprets prudence ‘in a Stoic manner’ (TMS intr., p. 6). We have shown that the former assertion is perfunctory and requires elaboration, but the latter, if not mistaken, is definitely misleading. First, we have already mentioned that the Stoic tradition is complex, and that some classical exponents of the cardinal virtues tradition sometimes refer to prudence (phrónesis), while others speak of wisdom (sophía). In general it seems that the Stoics do not make the distinction between the former, practical wisdom, and the latter, theoretical wisdom (cf. Sandbach, 1975, p. 42), as Aristotle did. Furthermore, what they actually did understand by wisdom or prudence is a matter of debate; we simply know that the Stoics, following Socrates and Plato, believed that all virtues are a form or manifestation of wisdom or prudence. Second, if we simply take Cicero’s account of prudence as the correct choice of good and avoidance of evil, this broad definition is closer to Aristotle’s boúleusis and even perhaps phrónesis,58 as practical to Smith, derivative from judgment in terms of propriety’ (Smith 2002 [1759], p. xvii). However, I believe that this not only applies to judgement, but also to morality in general, in terms of motivations and consequences. 58

In this Aristotelian sense, I see great affinities between my own understanding of Smith’s project and Samuel Fleischacker’s attempt, in his A Third Concept of Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (1999), to recover Kant’s third Critique as relevant to understanding Smith’s moral philosophy. Fleischacker also draws some very interesting connections between Smith and

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intelligence pursuing the right means to the only end, rather than to what Smith understands by inferior prudence. Smith clearly states: Wise and judicious conduct, when directed to greater and nobler purposes than the care of the health, the rank and reputation of the individual, is frequently and very properly called prudence ... superior prudence ... necessarily supposes the utmost perfection of all intellectual and of all the moral virtues. It is the best head joined to the best heart. It is the most perfect wisdom combined with the most perfect virtue. It constitutes very nearly the character of the Academical or Peripatetic sage, as the inferior prudence does that of the Epicurean. (TMS VI.i.14, p. 216) As Norbert Waszek (1984) has persuasively argued, Smith conceives two levels of morality: one for the wise few, and one for the common man. Regarding prudentia, this intuition is clearly explicit when Smith distinguishes between superior prudence ‘of the Academic or Peripatetic sage’ which requires the ‘most exact propriety’ as ‘[i]t necessarily supposes the utmost perfection of all intellectual and of all moral virtues’ (TMS VI.i.15, p. 216), and inferior prudence. Smith’s moral philosophy simply concentrates on the latter, as the more practical and simple concept of the Epicureans.59 The Aristotelian phrónesis is another problem for the pragmatic Smith, as is Plato’s sophía. He prefers to focus on the worldly prudence that acts ‘as a bridge between the two books [WN and TMS] because it is both moral and economic virtue’ (Griswold, 1999, p. 203),

Aristotle, and although Aristotle’s influence on Smith is a subject that had been unduly neglected, the very recent translation of Vivenza’s Adam Smith e la Cultura Classica (1984) will certainly fill the gap, making up for the long wait that scholars not proficient in Italian endured with a suggestive, but in parts debatable, new ‘Postcript’. On Aristotle’s influence on Smith, Laurence Berns (1994) and Martin Calkins and Patricia Werhane (1998), also provide interesting contributions. 59

Smith explicitly states the Epicurean connection in the last quoted passage, linking inferior prudence with the character of an Epicurean. Before, in the beginning of the section on prudence, Smith refers to how by growing up, ‘he soon learns that some care and foresight are necessary for providing the means of gratifying those natural appetites, of procuring pleasure and avoiding pain ... In the proper direction of this care and foresight consists the art of preserving and increasing what is called external fortune’ (TMS VI.i.2, p. 212). Other references to Epicurean prudence can be found in (TMS IV.2.6, pp. 189–90 and VII.ii.2, pp. 294–300).


what Gloria Vivenza aptly defines as ‘domestic’ prudence (2002, p. 197). Indeed, as many scholars have argued, Smith’s prudence, with an emphasis on ‘a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry and application’ (TMS IV.2.6, pp. 189–90), represents the pragmatic and worldly face of this virtue which pervades his TMS and his WN. In his conclusion to the section on virtues, Smith restricts prudence to ‘our own happiness ... originally recommended to us by our selfish ... affections’ (TMS VI.concl.1, p. 262). His understanding of prudence is simple: The care of the health, of the fortune, of the rank and reputation of the individual, the objects upon which his comfort and happiness in this life are supposed principally to depend, is considered as the proper business of that virtue which is commonly called Prudence. (TMS VI.i.5, p. 213) Security, therefore, is the first and the principal object of prudence. The method of improving our fortune, which it principally recommends to us, are those which expose to no loss or hazard; real knowledge and skill in our trade or profession, assiduity and industry in the exercise of it, frugality, and even some degree of parsimony, in all our expenses. (TMS VI.i.6, p. 213) Prudence is related to self-interest, in which ‘the habits of economy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought ... deserve the esteem and approbation of everybody’ (TMS VII.ii.3.16, p. 304). It is a self-regarding virtue that fosters Smith’s recurrent defense of the right of all people to the ‘bettering of our condition’. The latter does not entail the cold greediness of the homo œconomicus as a socially detached acquisitive individual, as it demands not only the propriety of selfcommand, but also the approval of the impartial spectator and supposed impartial spectator, as ‘the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast’ (TMS VI.i.11, 215). So George Stigler’s remark that the WN is ‘a stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest’ (Stigler, 1982, p. 136) is not only biased and misleading, but simply mistaken. Selfinterest, as nothing more than another of the motivations behind prudence, is not the blind pursuit of one’s own wishes, wants or desires regardless of others. In neoclassical economic terminology, it would be the maximisation of a person’s utility, but subject to the all-encompassing impartial spectator constraint. For Adam Smith human nature is

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predominantly social, which explains the relevance of the impartial spectator, and human conduct is fundamentally ethical, which is determined by the social interaction that leads to moral rules. However, there is one approach that might lead us to consider prudence as Stoic. It is related to the complex Stoical concept of oikeíosis, which encompasses a sense of belonging,60 appropriation or ownership, of making something one’s own, and also of something coming to belong to oneself. According to the core thesis of oikeíosis,61 man is not only motivated to self-preservation by self-interest, but he also has a natural impulse to sympathise with others. Smith is well aware of this important insight when he states that ‘according to Zeno ... every animal was by nature recommended to its own care, and was endowed with the principle of self-love, that it might endeavour to preserve, not only its existence, but all the different parts of its nature, in the best and most perfect state of which they were capable’ (TMS VII.ii.I.15, 272).62 Nevertheless, oikeíosis is not particularly related to the virtue of prudence for the Stoics, as it is a principle of self-motivation embedded in human nature. Moreover, the definition of prudence from the Early Stoics, was later defined by the anthologist Stobaeus as ‘the science of what should or should not be done’ (Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 380),63 which is 60

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I believe Brown (1994, pp. 95–7) correctly links Smith’s self-love to oikeíosis. Heise (1995, p. 19) also states that ‘the self-interest or self-betterment of Smith is the oikeíosis of the Stoics’, but I am not fully convinced that from a single passage we can infer that ‘[i]n the sixth edition of TMS, Smith became even more Stoic’ (ibid., p. 23). Neither author mentions Hierocles’s classic example of the concentric circles (cf. Long and Sedley, 1999, vol. 1, p. 349; and note 48, chapter 2), which would definitely reinforce their argument. See Schofield (1995, 1999, pp. 760–8), Inwood and Donini (1999, pp. 677–82), Long (1996, pp. 250–64), Sandbach (1975, pp. 34–5), Engberg-Pederson (1990; 1995), and Edelstein (1966, p. 35). Elsewhere Smith refers to ‘[e]very man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person’ (TMS VI.ii.I.1, p. 219). Brown (1994) and Heise (1995) analyse the importance of oikeíosis for Smith, and Vivenza (2002, pp. 203–6) calls our attention to the Peripatetic influences. In my opinion, this is wrong, as the concept of oikeíosis is fundamentally Stoic, and Smith was well acquainted with sources like Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Stobaeus and Marcus Aurelius, amongst others. Stobaeus’s works were part of Smith’s library (Mizuta, 1967, p. 143). In Stobaeus’s Eclogae (2.63, pp. 11–12) he also refers to prudence as ‘the theoría and práxis of what should be done’ (emphasis added). As I have mentioned, the distinction between theoretical and practical phrónesis is Aristotelian, and


similar to Cicero’s definition (‘choice of goods and evils’). However, the latter entails a process of rational deliberation, a Peripatetic and Epicurean overtone that Smith applies to his particular account of prudence. There is a combination of classical influences in Smith’s concept of prudence.64 The main difference, of course, between Smith’s account of inferior prudence and the Epicurean concept of prudence, is that for the latter ‘prudence ... was not desirable upon its own account’ (TMS VII.ii.2.8, p. 296). For the Epicureans, prudence was not valued as a virtue as such, but only as a means to an end. Smith is aware that in the calculation of future pleasure and the avoidance of future pain (which also includes the endurance of present pain for the sake of pleasure or less pain in the future), the Epicureans considered temperance as fundamental. Yet, in this sense, temperance also lost its classical tradition as a cardinal virtue, as according to Smith ‘[t]he whole value of this virtue [temperance] arose from its utility ... Temperance, in short, was nothing but prudence with regard to pleasure’ (TMS VII.ii.2.9, p. 297). In general, I contest the narrow but widely accepted view that Smith’s ‘theory of virtue traces its roots to the Stoics’ (Werhane, 1991, p. 41). In reality, the problem becomes more complex as different philosophical traditions are combined. Inferior prudence is related to well-being as ‘the habits of oeconomy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested motives, and at the same time are apprehended to be very praiseworthy qualities, which deserve the esteem and approbation of everybody’ (TMS VII.ii.3.16, p. 304). It is essentially a self-regarding virtue, generally material in its scope, and partly Epicurean in its classical tradition. Inferior prudence, in this narrower sense of prudence, preaches the right of each human being to improve his material condition. Smith is well aware of the Aristotelian tradition when he refers to superior prudence, and is certainly quite familiar with the Aristotelian concept of phrónesis. But in answering the question of why Smith focuses on a narrower concept of prudence, it can be argued that he takes a pragmatic, realist and eclectic stance. He neither overlooks, nor ignores, the classical tradition. On the contrary, his position on prudence has an Epicurean basis, combined with Stoic overtones of self-preservation with some clear the italics reflect the Socratic and Platonic idea of one phrónesis that can also be sophía. 64

Not to mention a Hobbesian emphasis on self-preservation and man’s capacity to take care of his own affairs, a connection that has been convincingly developed by Cropsey (1957).

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Aristotelian and Peripatetic nuances. However, Smith’s account of prudence implicitly comprises the right to improve our condition, and this insight definitely presupposes the jurisprudential language of rights.

3.5.3 Justice and beneficence For Smith, ‘mere justice’ is ‘a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour’ (TMS II.ii.I.9, p. 82) – the classic Ciceronian cuique tribuere ius suum. Therefore justice is simply defined in its commutative sense (Aristotle’s ‘corrective’ sense) as ‘when we abstain from doing him [our neighbour] any positive harm, and do not directly hurt him, either in his person, or in his estate, or in his reputation’ (TMS VII.ii.1.10, p. 269). The simple laws of justice ‘guard the life and person of our neighbour; the next are those which guard his property and possessions; and last of all come those which guard what are called his personal rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others’ (TMS II.ii.2.2, p. 84). Life, property and contracts are basic principles implied in the ‘sacred and religious regard not to hurt or disturb in any respect the happiness of our neighbour’ (TMS VI.intro.2, p. 218). He is following Grotius, whom he praises at the end of the TMS,65 in his definition of commutative justice (see TMS VII.ii.I.10, p. 269). Grotius represented the modern tradition of natural law as a reaction against Aristotelianscholastic assumptions about natural law, limiting the notion of justice (and especially rights) to their commutative aspect.66 The development 65

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‘Grotius seems to have been the first who attempted to give the world any thing like a system of those principles which ought to run through, and be the foundation of the laws of all nations; and his treatise of the laws of war and peace, with all its imperfections, is perhaps at this day the most complete work that has yet been given upon this subject’ (TMS VII.iv.37, pp. 341–2). Very good accounts of the natural law tradition are Tuck (1979) and Haakonssen (1985). For Grotius, see Tuck (1999, pp. 78–108) and for Pufendorf (ibid., pp. 140–65) and Hont (1987). Tully (1991) provides a useful introduction to Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man and Citizen and Teichgraeber (1986, pp. 20–6) presents another good synthesis of Grotius’s project. For its relevance to the Scottish Enlightenment in particular, Haakonssen (1996) presents a clear account that complements his classic The Science of a Legislator. The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (1981) and its importance for Smith is developed in Hont and Ignatieff (1983, pp. 26–43). In Britain, Cumberland, with his De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philosophica (1672), completed the triad of modern natural law philosophers. For Cumberland, see Darwall (1995, pp. 80–108).


of the natural law tradition initiated by Grotius, reformulated by Pufendorf and adapted by Locke, is fundamental in the shaping of Smith’s view, as has been persuasively shown by Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (1983, pp. 24–43), and was very influential in the curriculum of Scottish universities.67 But its enormous influence did not signal the end of the civic humanist tradition. Undoubtedly, Smith’s account of prudence and justice is quite restricted compared to what Aristotle had to say about phrónesis (prudentia) and certainly in comparison to what Plato understood by dikaiosúne (iustitia). I believe that, putting aside the complex and sometimes elusive classical meaning of these virtues, in focusing mainly on negative justice and inferior prudence, he obeys this jurisprudential tradition; its emphasis is on ius, not on virtus. The importance of jurisprudence is undeniable, as it ‘was the social science of the eighteenth century’ (Pocock, 1985, p. 49). Moreover, even though Smith follows the modern natural law tradition, his reformulation of it within the framework of the sympathetic process and the impartial spectator, overcomes many of its problems, as has been suggested by Haakonssen (1981, pp. 99–134).68 On the other hand, beneficence, as the virtue of doing good to others, somehow also entails a sense of duty.69 Smith is clearly aware of the ‘limited powers of beneficence’ (TMS VI.ii.intro.2, p. 218), as it ‘is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building ... Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice’ (TMS II.ii.3.4, p. 86). At the individual level, beneficence plays a relevant role, as it appears as a mechanism required to regulate prudence in the presence of a third person, though it is a consequence of the sympathetic process. But this virtue also relates to our relationship with society, which has political implications (see TMS VI.ii.2, pp. 227–34). In a broader scheme, it is also fundamental for the 67

68

69

Moore and Silverthorne (1983) argue that Gershom Carmichael, the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, and therefore Hutcheson and Smith’s predecessor, was responsible for establishing the natural jurisprudential tradition in Scottish Universities. And as Pocock has argued, ‘Scottish Enlightenment was happening in the schools, not the salons’ (1999, p. 326). In his view, ‘Smith’s rejection of a ‘utilitarian’ or consequentialist account of rights and their accompanying virtues, and his adoption of a Unitarian spectator account, gives him the best of both worlds [natural and acquired right]’ (Haakonssen, 1981, p. 102). For Aquinas beneficentia is the theological virtue of charity (cf. Aq.ST, 2a2æ 23, vol. 34, 1963). Vivenza (2002, pp. 66–8) draws some very interesting connections between Smith’s and Cicero’s concept of benevolence, suggesting its political significance.

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providential plan, as it involves the often discussed principle of design. The way ‘nature’ functions not only demands individual sacrifices to the public interest, as in a process of inverse oikeíosis, these levels of individual sacrifice reach a third stage in which the individual must privilege even the greater interest of the universe.70 In this manner, once Hierocles’s concentric circles have reached the final circumference, they implode towards the individual who is at the centre. Of course, Smith’s account of beneficence presents clear traces of Stoic doctrines. Prudence and justice are related to the language of rights, the former as my right to better my own condition, and the latter as my right to life, property and contracts. Beneficence involves the language of duties, so there is a combination of what pertains to the self and to the community. However, one must bear in mind that the Smithian theory of virtues assumes that rights and duties are underpinned by the virtus of selfcommand, and this fundamental virtue not only reflects a humanist language, but also involves a notion of self-possession and moral autonomy. If Smith’s account of virtues is complementary to the tradition of virtù, the role of self-command within this scheme is quite significant: The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtuous ... The most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty. (TMS VI.iii.1, p. 237) Taking Grotius’s influence as a starting point, it is worth considering one detail that is important for our account of the Smithian virtues. Smith is conscious that ‘we may often fulfill all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing’ (TMS II.ii.1.9, p. 82), simply by respecting rights. Here he concentrates on commutative justice, defined as ‘that justice which I have treated of above’, what Grotius calls ‘justitia expletrix, which consists in abstaining from what is another’s’ (TMS VII.ii.I.10, 70

For example, ‘[t]he wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest of his particular order or society. He is at all times willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part. He should, therefore, be equally willing that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe, to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and director’ (TMS VI.ii.3.3, p. 235).


p. 269). But then he continues, stating that ‘the second sense of the word coincides with what some have called distributive justice, and with the justitia attributrix of Grotius, which consists in proper beneficence’ (ibid., last emphasis added). Smith’s account of justice has been often criticised for taking a libertarian stance, only considering its negative definition as Grotius’s ‘expletive justice’. Some have even stated that his ‘notion of justice’ is ‘not well developed in the TMS or in any of Smith’s writings’ (Werhane, 1991, p. 43). However, distributive justice, in its grand but elusive sense, is also implicit in his account of virtues: distributive justice, an imperfect right in the Grotian tradition, is included under the virtue of beneficence,71 so it is indirectly amongst the four Smithian virtues. Therefore, when Brown (1994, p. 210) goes so far as to argue that in Smith’s account, ‘the truly moral virtues of beneficence and self-command do not carry any public or political resonances’, she is, in my view, erring regarding the interpretation of both virtues.72 Indeed, Smith argues: ... we are said not to do justice to our neighbour unless we conceive for him all that love, respect, and esteem, which his character, his situation, and his connexion with ourselves, render suitable and proper for us to feel, and unless we act accordingly. It is in this sense that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit who is connected with us, though we abstain from hurting him in every respect, if we do not exert ourselves to serve him and to place him in that situation in which the impartial spectator would be pleased to see him’. (TMS VII.ii.I.10, p. 269) Smith probably focuses on inferior prudence and negative justice in order to bring the ‘excellences of character’ closer to men. Although he was well aware of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, he assumes a pragmatic stance very much influenced by the jurisprudential tradition. Moreover, his concept of prudence as ‘inferior prudence’ is in a certain 71 72

Griswold (1999, p. 252) also develops this connection. Though there is a longstanding tradition underlining the importance of benevolence, and beneficence, in Smith’s system, I would side with Gloria Vivenza who is of the opinion that ‘benevolence is not a particularly significant theme in Smith’s economic thought, and its importance is largely restricted to the moral sphere’ (2002, p. 65). In general, the role of the impartial spectator is fundamental. But it is undeniable that beneficence has political relevance for Smith, as is quite clear in chapter 2, Of the order in which Societies are by nature recommended to our Beneficence, part VI, as I have previously argued.

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way similar to the same Epicurean tradition that he so categorically dismisses as ‘undoubtedly the most imperfect of all the three [systems]’ (TMS VII.ii.4.5, p. 307). At that time, few intellectuals would have appreciated being labelled as ‘Epicureans’ or ‘Hobbists’, as these epithets contained a severe pejorative sense that incited public disapproval, and even the risk of being accused of atheism. He knew what his friend David Hume had to go through. Once again Smith, avoiding what during his time could have been controversial, is very cautious.

3.6 Conclusions In the TMS, Smith presents four virtues that not only inherit part of the Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean and cardinal virtues tradition, but which also differ drastically in their nature and spirit. The cardinal virtue of fortitude does not appear, but is implicit, together with the vir virtutis tradition, in self-command. Smith continuously refers to phrónesis and dikaiosúne, but concentrates on what he terms inferior prudence and, following the jurisprudential tradition, on commutative justice. Smith adds beneficence, the virtue of doing good to others, which encompasses distributive justice. The virtue of self-command, although apparently Stoic, has its origins in the Socratic virtue of enkráteia, which is related to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne of Plato and Aristotle. Selfcommand is the only Smithian virtue that can be considered a metavirtue, as all of the other three virtues, judged by their effects, add ‘lustre’ to their consequences through the propriety of Smith’s most humanistic virtue. In this pre-eminent sense, self-command resembles the character of prudence or wisdom for the Stoics, or prudentia for Aquinas. Furthermore the Smithian virtues are all interrelated in that self-command has a special position in this scheme. The other three virtues, beneficence, prudence and justice, judged by their consequences, not only ‘participate’ (to use a Platonic connotation) in selfcommand, but are also exalted by its propriety. In other words, for Smith the motives underlying his virtue of self-command dignify and ennoble the consequentialist nature of his other virtues. I have suggested that the language of rights and duties, of inferior prudence, negative justice and beneficence, is underpinned by the Smithian virtù of self-command. He combines a jurisprudential approach to virtues, with humanist resonances that are still loud enough in his virtue of self-command, as well as in his defence of the standing army. Of course we cannot fully understand Smith’s position on virtues without the sympathy-spectator framework, but I believe that this


exercise has shed further light on the nature of his last attempt to give an account of the Character of Virtue, as it implies a recovery of the significance of the four Smithian virtues. From a virtue ethics perspective, Smith’s intention is perhaps a pragmatic undertaking which seeks to put aside all the metaphysical assumptions attached to the virtues underpinned by phrónesis or dikaiosúne in the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions, respectively. Yet he repeatedly praises the manly virtue of courage, of superior prudence and general justice. Undoubtedly he has inherited the civic humanist tradition through the use of its distinctive language. The TMS, and the WN to a lesser extent, reflect a permanent dialogue between this tradition and the jurisprudential one, between the remnants of virtus and the ascent of political economy. The all-encompassing virtue of self-command, necessary to ennoble the virtuous character of prudence, beneficence and justice, is proof that Smith’s defence of commercial society was carried out with a humanist consciousness. In this sense, ‘the first chapter in the history of political economy is also a further chapter in the continuing history of civic humanism’ (Pocock, 1975, p. 426). But Smith’s last attempt to develop a theory of virtues was like the Maginot line: he came to be known mainly as the father of the science of economics, as the prophet of self-interest.

4 Adam Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’: Its Meaning and Philosophical Implications

4.1 Introduction The first part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is fundamental to Adam Smith’s moral philosophy. It is peculiarly entitled ‘Of the Propriety of Action’. Throughout the TMS Smith repeatedly refers to ‘propriety of conduct’, to the idea of ‘acting with propriety’, and even to ‘love of propriety’. Moreover, in the last part of the TMS he celebrates some affinity between his moral approach with all ‘those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety’, that is, Plato, Aristotle and Zeno. But, what does he actually mean by ‘propriety’? Does it only correspond to the canonical understanding that views propriety as the attainment of a concordance of sentiments? Or in addition to the latter, is it simply an extension of Shaftesbury’s ‘politeness’, the Addisonian criterion for proper behaviour, as the mark of gentlemanliness? In this chapter I will re-examine Smith’s concept of propriety, arguing that it is also a complex and distinctively philosophical concept. The next section of this chapter briefly analyses the context of the concept of propriety, concluding that its vernacular moral connotation, stemming from its etymological root proprius, inherits its ad intra character, that is, internal to the agent. Section 4.3 addresses Smith’s concept of propriety. I argue that the concept of propriety evolves. Initially, the meaning of propriety is simply restricted to the ground necessary to exercise the sympathetic process, as the precondition for attaining mutual sympathy. Then, the sense of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of self-command and the role of conscience, which is introduced by the supposed impartial spectator, acquires a new philosophical 97


dimension that is especially built on in the last edition of the TMS. In Section 4.4, I show that this broader understanding of propriety has philosophical significance. It not only dismisses any interpretation of Smith as a proto-utilitarian, asserting the fact that for Smith, moral actions are not simply determined as such by their outcome, but also by the motives for which they were undertaken. I suggest that if some of his contemporaries, notably Hutcheson and Hume, prepared the ground for utilitarianism, Smith anticipated some features of Kantian ethics. Finally, in section 4.5, although I argue that the philosophical nature of propriety is distinctively Smithian, I attempt to track down the classical sources that influenced the concept of propriety, rebutting the widespread view that Smith could have been allured by Cicero’s concept of decorum. The fact that Smith explicitly links propriety to Cicero’s officia supports my view that this concept, within the context of the supposed impartial spectator and the virtue of self-command, is linked to duty. My thesis therefore, is that there are more grounds to consider Smith as a deontologist, than as a proto-utilitarian.

4.2 Propriety and its context Propriety has its etymological root in the Latin word proprius, which entails the idea of something not common when compared with other things, something peculiar, or of something belonging to one only. In relation to this last definition it also refers to one’s own, to a possession, and therefore its obvious link to ‘property’. In fact, the word proprietas is the Latin word for the Greek idiotes,1 which derives from idios (the Latin equivalent of proprius), one’s own, pertaining to oneself. Idios also relates to private interests in opposition to the public, implying also the notion of private property for the Greeks.2 In the seventeenth century propriety was a doublet of property, but comprising a wider meaning that relates to its etymological root. For example, Hobbes would declare ‘[a]nd therefore where there is no Own, that is, no Propriety, there is no Injustice; and where there is no coercive Power erected, that is, where there is no common-wealth, there is no Propriety’ (Hobbes, 1996 [1651],

1

2

In the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology it is asserted that proprietas is Cicero’s Latin translation of idiotes (Onions, 1966, p. 716). However, as a caveat, I have not been able to corroborate this assertion. For the Greeks, idiotes was a person without public attribution, basically anyone who was not involved in the affairs of the polis; in other words, a private person not sharing the concerns of the community.

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p. 106, original emphasis), clearly drawing on proprius’ general meaning of one’s own.3 Locke would, in turn, use both words, propriety and property, interchangeably. His famous definition of property as ‘Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general name, Property’ (Locke, 2000 [1689], p. 350, original emphasis)4 reflects the broader realm of propriety. Nowadays, we still maintain its original etymological root in words like ‘appropriate’ or ‘proprietor’, but the modern social sense of property has been narrowed exclusively to that of material ownership. In English, the word ‘propriety’, breaking away from the word ‘property’, acquired a moral connotation, suggesting correct behaviour, that is, what the proper thing to do is. For example, in the influential Spectator, the Whig periodical published by Steele and Addison between 1711 and 1714, we read ‘Virgil has excelled all others in the Propriety of his sentiments’ (Addison and Steele, 1965 [1712], vol. 2, p. 586). Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (fifth edition, 1743) defines ‘Property, or Propriety, Proprietas, that which constitutes or denominates a thing proper; or, it is a particular virtue or quality, which nature has bestowed on something, exclusive of all others’.5 Later, in his 1755 English Dictionary Doctor Johnson defines propriety as ‘Peculiarity of possession; exclusive right’, and ‘Accuracy, justness’, but he finds ten different meanings for the word ‘proper’. One of these meanings relates in general to ‘fitness’, and another to the French word propre, in the sense of ‘elegant’. In the French Encyclopédie of 1765, the entry for propreté says that it ‘concerns the body, what is decency and good manners (moeurs); propreté shows the respect one has for society and for oneself, for man must respect himself’.6 Soon after it defines propriété as a quality in philosophical terms, and then in terms of natural laws and politics as legitimate ownership within civil society.

3

4

5

6

Elsewhere Hobbes refers to ‘power as propriety’, or ‘Rules of Propriety’ (1996 [1651], p. 125), ‘Propriety of Subjects’ (ibid., p. 225) and ‘Propriety in his land’ (ibid., p. 228). Cf. ‘... every Man has a Property in his own Person’ (Locke, 2000 [1689], p. 287, original emphasis). Locke also refers to ‘[t]he measure of Property, Nature has well set, by the Extent of Mens Labour’ (ibid., p. 292, original emphasis), and soon after he refers to the ‘Rule of Propriety’ (ibid., p. 293, original emphasis). The third edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) uses similar terminology, defining propriety as ‘a particular virtue or quality which nature has bestowed on some things exclusive of all others’. The original reads: ‘eft à l’égard du corps ce qu’eft la décence dan ses moeurs, elle fert à témoigner le refpect qu’on a pour la fociété & pour foi même; car l’homme doit fe refpecter’.


The French understanding of propre and propreté, as cleanness, elegance and refinement, albeit mainly focused on the external, also reflects propriety’s moral sense during the eighteenth century and its link to proper behaviour and good manners.7 While ‘propriety’ had a popular moral meaning during the eighteenth century, it was a word not widely used in this sense within the British philosophical writings of the period. Smith’s predecessors Cudworth, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Mandeville, Wollaston, Balguy, Berkeley, Hutcheson and Butler, do not use ‘propriety’ with any original philosophical connotation. Neither do his contemporaries Hume, Ferguson or Reid.8 In this sense, Smith’s case is different. He not only used the word extensively in the TMS (it appears more frequently than sympathy in the TMS),9 but ‘propriety’ plays a fundamental role within his moral philosophy. At first sight its meaning might look like the popular understanding of the concept, but propriety for Smith, as this chapter attempts to show, is more complex.

7

8

9

Rousseau’s famous distinction, in his second Discourse, between the corrupted amour propre as egoism, and the virtuous amour de soi-meme as natural self-love, probably implicitly suggests his reaction against propriety’s modern sense of property as material ownership (Rousseau, 1993 [1755], p. 73). It is interesting to mention that abbé Du Bos’s Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (1719), a book that belonged to Smith’s library (cf. Mizuta, 1966, p. 60) and that was certainly read by him (he refers to Du Bos in TMS V.2.10, p. 207), mainly perhaps due to its influence on Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism (1762), anticipates Rousseau’s distinction between amour propre and amour de soi-meme. One exception is Henry Home, Lord Kames. Recalling the French propreté he says ‘[t]hus it appears, that a taste for cleanness is inherent in our nature. I say more: cleanness is evidently a branch of propriety, and consequently of selfduty’ (Home, 1778 [1773], vol. 1, p. 325). In the second volume he refers to ‘the principle of chastity, like that of propriety or of decency’ (ibid., vol. 2, p. 23). Chapter X of his influential Elements of Criticism (1762) is entitled ‘Congruity and Propriety’, suggesting that congruity and propriety entail what is suitable, ‘what is fit and proper’ (Home, 1785 [1762], p. 333; note that he seems to be paraphrasing Smith; cf. TMS III.4.12, p. 160). Then Home says: ‘I call propriety a law, no less, than justice; because both are equally rules of conduct that ought to be obey’d: propriety includes that obligation; for to say an action is proper, is in other words to say, that it ought to be performed’ (ibid., p. 348). This is strikingly similar to the meaning of Smith’s propriety that I attempt to uncover. Perhaps not surprisingly Lord Kames and Adam Smith were well acquainted. But the credit of originality still belongs to Smith, as the TMS was published first. The word propriety appears 213 times in the TMS, and sympathy, 180.

Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’

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The fact that propriety, in its etymological context, retained the original peculiarity that it pertains to the self in the moral realm, constitutes the basis of my argument. Indeed, at a general level it is interesting to note that the definite divorce between ‘propriety’ and ‘property’ left the former with a moral connotation, although pertaining to the self, restricting the latter simply to private capital ‘goods’ belonging to a person. But in particular, the aim of this chapter is to prove that not only the modern concept of property, following the Hobbesian–Lockean and Grotius–Pufendorf tradition, was fundamental to shaping Smith’s political economy, as it is widely acknowledged, but also that his idea of ‘propriety’ is very significant within his moral philosophy project. The latter is an aspect that has been relatively neglected, notwithstanding its philosophical consequences.

4.3 Propriety in the TMS 4.3.1 Propriety as the grounds for sympathy The first part of the TMS is entitled ‘Of the Propriety of Action’. This section is extremely important for Smith’s purpose as it defines the sympathetic process, introducing the impartial spectator. Initially in the TMS, propriety appears simply as ‘the pitch which the spectator can go along with’ (TMS I.ii.intro.1, p. 27). It is related to the emotional level that the agent has to achieve in order to fulfill his intention of being the object of sympathy, reaching ‘the point of propriety’. This intention necessarily comprises the effort that this emotional exertion requires, which is represented by the sense of propriety, and exercised through the multifaceted virtue of self-command. Smith refers to ‘our natural sense of propriety ... to consider what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator’ (TMS I.ii.3.8, p. 38). Then propriety is a natural ‘power’ that allows the agent to attain a proper disposition of character that will permit any spectator to sympathise with him. In this first stage, propriety appears simply as an inner sense that ought to be exercised in order to reach mutual sympathy. This is the canonical definition or understanding of propriety; the attainment of ‘concord’ of feelings, or the necessary ground that will allow the impartial spectator to go along with the agent ‘lowering his passion to that pitch’ (TMS I.i.4.7, p. 22). Already in the first part of the TMS, Smith brings forward the distinction between the two aspects from which action proceeds, ‘first, in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce’


(TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18; cf. II.i.intro.2, p. 67). The ‘suitableness or unsuitableness’ of the former he defines as propriety or impropriety, and the ‘beneficial or hurtful effects’ of the latter as merit or demerit. The first part of the TMS is dedicated to ‘propriety’, and the second to ‘merit’. Propriety is ad intra, internal to the agent, but the consideration of the consequences of our actions, that is, merit or demerit, regardless of the inner intentions prior to the action, is ad extra, external to the agent. Thus Smith would refer to ‘propriety of affections’, simply to ‘propriety in the motives’, or he would conflate propriety to ‘the intention or affection of the heart’. Certainly the distinction between the motive and the effect is as old as morality itself,10 but in an epoch that turned the focus of ethics to the consequences, Smith’s revival of moral motivation is definitely noteworthy. Moreover, Smith was very aware of this fact: Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of affections, and have given little attention to the relation which they stand in to the cause which excites them. In common life, however, when we judge of any person’s conduct, and of the sentiments which directed it, we constantly consider them under both these aspects. (TMS I.i.3.8, p. 18) The pragmatic Smith is also conscious ‘[t]hat the world judges by the event, and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great discouragement of virtue’ (TMS II.iii.3.1, p. pp. 104–5). Action is required, since ‘indolent benevolence’ alone, without actual beneficence, is just a good wish. We know ‘that the praise of good intentions, without the merit and good offices, will be but of little avail to excite either the loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self-applause’ (TMS II.iii.3.3, p. 106). Smith also complains that Hutcheson’s system, which makes virtue consist in benevolence, focuses just on the beneficial effects, omitting the important question of the causes of other virtues. In Smith’s own words: The view and aim of our affections, the beneficent and hurtful effects which they tend to produce, are the only qualities at all attended to in this system [Hutcheson’s]. Their propriety and impropriety, their suitableness and unsuitableness, to the cause which excites them, are disregarded altogether. (TMS VII.ii.3.15, p. 304)

10

Hume also clearly underlined this distinction (see, for example, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3.2.2–11, 2000 [1739–40], pp. 307–9) and, of course, there is a long philosophical tradition behind it, going back to the Greek philosophers.


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It is precisely this clear distinction between motives and effects in Smith’s moral philosophy, the distinction that criticises the emphasis on the consequences by underlining the importance of motives, which demands a re-examination of propriety. But first it is necessary to understand how sympathy occurs with respect to propriety. In the second part of the TMS, which focuses upon merit, Smith carries through the distinction between merit and propriety (TMS II.i.intro.2, p. 67), but he stresses another subtle difference between both. Propriety demands ‘not only that we should entirely sympathize with the person who acts, but that we should perceive this perfect concord between his sentiments and our own’, but for merit ‘[n]o actual correspondence of sentiments, therefore, is here required’ (TMS II.i.5.11, p. 78). Thus we have to distinguish the impartial spectator’s relationship with the person who performs the action (propriety), from his relationship with the person upon whom the action is performed (merit). The role of sympathy is deeper in terms of propriety than it is in relation to merit. The former requires complete concordance of sentiments, what Smith defines as direct sympathy, but the latter only requires indirect sympathy, as it is a ‘compounded sentiment’ (TMS II.i.5.2, p. 74). In other words, in terms of propriety or impropriety there is a spectator and then an agent, but in terms of merit or demerit there is a spectator, an agent and the person upon whom the action is performed. In terms of moral approbation the two stations scheme (depicted below) requires full concordance of sentiments, but the three stations scheme comprises a direct sympathy with the agent and an indirect sympathy with the person acted upon. It is only the latter that finally determines merit or demerit, as the spectator focuses upon the effects; the object is the person acted upon. Graphically (I am indebted to Khalil (1990) for this graphical representation): Two stations

Three stations

impartial spectator

impartial spectator

direct sympathy

agent

direct sympathy

agent

indirect sympathy

person to be considered


Propriety, compared with merit, presupposes a more demanding sympathetic process. In this light, propriety is an ad intra faculty of the agent that should derive from a complete concordance of sentiments with the impartial spectator. However, in terms of merit (or demerit), usually moral judgement relies upon indirect sympathy (indirect antipathy) towards the person acted upon, while the gratitude (or resentment) of the person is morally enhanced if there is direct sympathy with the motives of the agent. I will return to this point below, but for the purpose of the argument, in this first stage propriety is associated with the relationship between the impartial spectator and the agent, between a hypothetical self and the actual self. In the third part of the TMS, ‘Of the Sense of Duty’, Smith stresses the importance of the ‘supposed impartial spectator’,11 the inner voice that: When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of. The first is the spectator, whose sentiments with regard to my own conduct I endeavour to enter into, by placing myself in his situation, and by considering how it would appear to me, when seen from that particular point of view. The second is the agent, the person whom I properly call myself, and of whose conduct, under the character of a spectator, I was endeavouring to form some opinion. The first is the judge; the second the person judged of. (TMS III.i.6, p. 113) This implies a radical move, as the analysis is now restricted to oneself,12 and as Vincent Hope has argued, it is Smith’s achievement ‘to reinstate conscience as the source of virtue’ (1989, p. 83). In particular, within this part, the third chapter, ‘Of the Influence and Authority of

11

12

Also called ‘the man within the breast’, ‘the supposed and well-informed spectator’, ‘the great arbiter of our conduct’, ‘the great judge and arbiter of our conduct’, ‘demigod within the breast’, ‘the great inmate of the breast’, ‘the judge within’, ‘the inhabitant of the breast’, ‘the ideal man within the breast’, ‘the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct’ and ‘the Vicegerent of God within us’. I am indebted to Sam Fleischacker who has called my attention to a point which is worth clarifying. When I refer to ‘one’ self I am not implying that Smith holds this one-self as a unitary one. This one-self is part of a divided self.


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Conscience’, was not in the first edition of the TMS. It was included in the second edition (1764), but the majority of this chapter consists of additions made to the sixth and last edition of the TMS (1790). In the chapter on conscience, the ad intra character of the sense of propriety is reinforced by the role of the supposed impartial spectator, and by the virtue of self-command. This feature is clear when Smith argues that ‘[t]he degree of self-approbation with which every man, upon such occasions, surveys his own conduct, is higher or lower, exactly in proportion to the degree of self-command which is necessary in order to obtain that self-approbation. Where little self-command is necessary, little selfapprobation is due’ (TMS III.3.26, p. 147). Moreover, Smith stresses its moral import when he asserts that ‘[t]he love of it [self-approbation], is the love of virtue’ (TMS III.2.8, p. 117). Not surprisingly, man desires not only praise but ‘praiseworthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise’ (TMS III.2.1, p. 114). But so far the analysis, although it has evolved from three and two selves to one self, continues to be expressed in terms of moral approbation. 4.3.2 Propriety and moral obligation The issue is more complex when the nature of Smith’s virtues enters into the analysis, specifically when the ‘great, awful and respectable’ virtue of self-command, which relates to the supposed impartial spectator, performs its role. In the beginning of the TMS Smith praises ‘what noble propriety and grace do we feel in the conduct of those who, in their own case, exert that recollection and self-command which constitute the dignity of every passion, and which bring it down to what others can enter into!’ (TMS I.i.5.3, p. 24). In this introductory passage Smith hints at an important clue: the close relationship between propriety and selfcommand. This connection persists throughout the whole TMS, but it is exalted with the final additions to the last 1790 edition.13 In fact, for the sixth edition of the TMS Smith added a completely new part entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’. It is no coincidence that this entirely new part concerns virtues. Nor is it by chance that the third section of this completely new addition is entitled ‘Of Self-Command’, and that it 13

Patricia Werhane argues that Smith added the concept of self-command to the sixth edition of the TMS (1991, pp. 9, 41 and 100). This is incorrect, as it can be easily shown that for Smith the concept of self-command was quite clear since the first edition. However, as I argue in this chapter, for the last edition Smith did actually develop and emphasise the virtue of self-command.


comprises nearly half of this new sixth part. In my view this represents a fundamental clue to Smith’s mature moral views, reflecting the importance he attributes to the virtue of self-command. In the section concerning virtues, Smith analyses his principal virtues, that is, prudence, justice, beneficence and self-command. In the conclusion to this section, Smith synthesises his thoughts on the nature of virtues. Although prudence is recommended to us ‘by our selfish affections’, and justice and beneficence ‘by our benevolent affections’ (TMS VI.concl.1, p. 262)14 as self-regarding and other-regarding virtues, respectively, Smith concludes that: In our approbation of all those virtues, our sense of their agreeable effects, of their utility, either to the person who exercises them, or to some other persons, joins with our sense of their propriety, and constitutes always a considerable, frequently the greater part of that approbation. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added) On the contrary, self-command is ‘principally and almost entirely recommended to us by one; by the sense of propriety, by regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator’ (TMS, VI.concl.2, p. 262). Below is the complete final paragraph of part VI of the TMS: But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but a small part, of that approbation. Those effects might sometimes be agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and though our approbation is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or injustice; and though it is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still 14

In the literature on the Smithian virtues benevolence is usually misunderstood. The virtue is actually ‘beneficence’, that of ‘doing’ good. Benevolence, related to volition (‘willing’ good) is the motivation behind beneficence and justice, as it is clear from the passage just quoted. For example, Bentham clearly states that ‘ “Benevolence” is a word employed to describe the desire of exercising the virtue of beneficence’ (1983 [1831], p. 127). And if Hutcheson clearly saw that benevolence would entail beneficence, Smith is aware that ‘[i]t has been observed already, that proper benevolence is the most graceful and agreeable of all affections ... as its tendency is necessarily beneficent’ (TMS VII.ii.3.4, p. 301), distinguishing benevolence as a motive that tends to the action of beneficence.


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appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to make and to maintain that exertion. The effects are too often but too little regarded. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added) The other three Smithian virtues related to merit, that is, prudence, justice and beneficence, are mainly approved by their consequences. By contrast, the virtue of self-command is judged by the supposed impartial spectator, by our moral alter ego, and it is reflected in our sense of propriety. Thus the strict etymological sense of propriety as ad intra, is what pertains to oneself, regardless of the external outcome. Moral approbation of self-command does not necessarily depend upon the effects, as ‘valour’ employed in the cause of injustice can still appear ‘great and acceptable’. From a consequentialist point of view, it is easier to see how we morally approve or disapprove of the virtues of prudence, beneficence and justice, as it is within the framework of the impartial spectator and the agent. But it is not clear how we have to deal with self-command, as it pertains to the supposed impartial spectator, as an ad intra virtue within oneself. In the literature it has customarily been assumed that the sympathetic process is performed only in terms of moral approbation, as a narrowly understood teleological means to the process of an end, in which the moral motivations are a separate issue.15 The virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence, related to the impartial spectator and judged by the consequences, would fit in this framework. Moral approbation, in terms of the impartial spectator, allows us to learn from others how to behave, as there is a continuous social interplay that guides the behaviour of individuals. But we face a different situation with the virtue of self-command. It is ‘the strong sense of propriety’ (TMS VI.concl.7, p. 264), in other words ‘the cause which excites an action’, that determines the moral judgement of the virtue of self-command. But this cause, as the object of 15

As I have already argued in Chapter 2, when the editors of the TMS, in an attempt to categorically dismiss Das Adam Smith Problem, state that ‘[s]ympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement. The motive to action is an entirely different matter’ (TMS intr., pp. 21–2, original emphasis), I believe they were paying mere lip service to Smith, as this sentence has generated a generalised view of the sympathetic process only in terms of moral approbation, neglecting the role of the sympathetic process as related to moral motivation (see Section 2.5).


moral judgement, is approved or disapproved by the supposed impartial spectator. Now, the crucial question is whether self-command is only a process of internal deliberation, which is restricted to the self and does not entail action. The example Smith gives is related to valour, which corresponds to the cardinal virtue of courage (fortitudo or andreía), definitely suggesting that self-command is not merely confined to inner deliberation, but also that it might result in action. But regarding the cause of action, is it judged in relation to its outcome ex ante or ex post? It seems to me that as self-command still appears ‘great and respectable’ regardless of its consequences, we do not necessarily require the actual outcome of the action in order to morally judge it. As we concentrate upon the cause that excites the action, the supposed impartial spectator can simply be situated ex ante, focused on the motives prior to action. Given that the supposed impartial spectator is the judge of selfcommand, Smith is granting self-sufficiency to the individual. My point here is that Smith’s idea of motivation gives autonomy to the individual, and through the supposed impartial spectator, as members of society who have learned through experience what is good or bad, we can act based on what we believe is right. I believe that this deontological position, pace Rothschild who declared that Smith ‘is not ... a deontologist’ (2001, p. 336, note 56), is also present in Smith’s TMS.16 Also, I maintain that there is no ‘tension’ between motivation and effects in Smith’s moral philosophy, but on the contrary, that they complement each other.17 The concordance of a benevolent affection with a beneficial consequence, for example, leads to the most admired combination of propriety with merit. But propriety, is not only necessary, its absence may override merit, as: If in the conduct of the benefactor there appears to have been no propriety, how beneficial soever its effects, it does not seem to demand,

16

17

Let me briefly explain again what I understand by deontology (cf. note 60, chapter 2). In the case of Smith, and a fortiori of Kant, as I will argue below, deontology is agent-relative, which is different from a utilitarian interpretation of duty towards an end. The former implies duty, but not duty determined by the consequences, but rather duty motivated within the agent, either by the supposed impartial spectator or by reason, respectively. The fact that Bentham’s Deontology is focused towards an end does not mean he did not consider motives (see infra note 30). Cf. ‘The great tension at the heart of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is indeed over the morality of intentions and the morality of consequences’ (Rothschild, 2001, p. 124).


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or necessarily to require, any proportionable recompense. (TMS II.i.4.1, p. 73) Virtuous actions have merit only if they come from proper motives. Smith insists that ‘[t]o act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is no temptation to do otherwise ... Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241). All other virtues without ‘the great, awful and respectable’ virtue of self-command appear to be morally inferior. Therefore, as certain amount of self-command is necessary for all other virtues to stand out, propriety in general adds moral worth to merit. In other words, coming back to the analysis of direct and indirect sympathy abovementioned, in terms of virtues we can conclude that indirect sympathy is morally enhanced by the sense of propriety involved in direct sympathy. That is why ‘[t]he propriety of a person’s behaviour, depends not upon its suitableness to any one circumstance of his situation, but to all the circumstances, which, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we feel, should naturally call upon his attention’ (TMS V.2.5, p. 202). To judge the merit (or demerit) of an action, we should take into account not only the effect upon the person to be considered to indirectly sympathise with his gratitude (or resentment), but also all other circumstances, in particular the motives that initially guided the agent to act, that is, direct sympathy. In brief, merit attained with propriety is, for Smith, the real object of moral admiration. In this framework, that is, within the relationship of propriety, selfcommand and the supposed impartial spectator, the sense of propriety transcends its initial stage as simply the necessary ground for the sympathetic process, and acquires a new philosophical dimension. Now the focus is not only upon the agent who strives, through the faculty of propriety, to attain the sympathy of the impartial spectator, but upon the person himself, the one self. Direct sympathy represents propriety in its first stage. The conflation of impartial spectator and agent, resulting in the supposed impartial spectator, represents not only propriety in its second stage, but also a subtle transition from moral judgement to moral obligation. In the first part of the TMS propriety was defined in relation to the impartial spectator, in terms of an undeveloped notion of self-command. Yet with the introduction of the supposed impartial spectator, the sense of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of selfcommand, acquires a new moral relevance that transcends moral judgement and implies a sense of duty. The latter is the reason that Smith


delves into the supposed impartial spectator in the third part of the TMS, entitled ‘Of Duties’. In this part, the sense of propriety acquires a new dimension with its link to ‘the great, the awful, and respectable’ virtue of self-command and therefore with the supposed impartial spectator. To corroborate this point, let me briefly elaborate on certain characteristics of self-command. 4.3.3 The nature of self-command From the first pages of the TMS, Smith distinguishes the amiable from the respectable virtues within the framework of the sympathetic process. The former help the spectator to sympathise with the agent, while the latter facilitate the agent’s struggle to moderate his emotions (the canonical understanding of propriety developed above in Section 4.3.1). For Smith, ‘[t]he amiable virtues consist in that degree of sensibility which surprises by its exquisite and unexpected delicacy and tenderness. The awful and respectable, in that degree of self-command which astonishes by its amazing superiority over the most ungovernable passions of human nature’ (TMS I.i.5.6, p. 25). Once again, however, the role of selfcommand as foundational in terms of moral worth is clear: The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one: the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of selfgovernment, of that command of passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other. (TMS I.i.5.1, p. 23) In this definition, self-command is understood in relation to passions, to the emotional moderation needed by the agent to attain sympathy from the impartial spectator, and in general to achieve the ‘control of passive feelings’ (TMS III.3.21, p. 145). But when the supposed impartial spectator is introduced in the third section, ‘Of Duty’, the moral worth of self-command is for Smith very much like the unattainable virtues of the Stoic sage. In the human process to acquire the virtue of self-command, Smith concludes that a child, after moderating his passions: thus enters into the great school of self-command, it studies to be more and more master of itself, and begins to exercise over its own


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feelings a discipline which the practice of the longest life is very seldom sufficient to bring to complete perfection. (TMS III.3.22, p. 145) Then continuous references to ‘manly countenance’ and ‘the manhood of self-command’ (e.g. TMS III.3.34, p. 152), follow Smith’s attempt to clarify the nature of self-command under the new light shed by the supposed impartial spectator. He concludes that ‘[h]ardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue [self-command]’ (TMS III.3.36, p. 153). As it has been shown in Chapter 3, Smith’s virtue of self-command inherits the humanist classical tradition of virtù which had been revived during the Renaissance, and which permeates the development of classical republicanism up through the Enlightenment (see Pocock, 1975). It is self-command’s unique nature, embedded by the spirit of the humanistic tradition, that shapes propriety as an important philosophical concept. Smith’s analysis of all ‘those Systems [Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics] which make Virtue consist in Propriety’ in the final section of the TMS is rather panegyric.18 The reason is quite simple. Aristotle and Zeno, with some evident differences, basically sustained Plato’s account of the four cardinal virtues. In one way or another, they all praise what Smith defines as self-command. Indeed, for Smith ‘the ancient systems, which place virtue in propriety, seem chiefly to recommend the great, the awful, and the respectable virtues, the virtues of self-government and self-command; fortitude, magnanimity, independence upon fortune, the contempt of all outward accidents, of pain, poverty, exile, and death’ (TMS VII.ii.4.1, p. 306). In my view, this is the best definition Smith gives of self-command, a virtue that reflects the tradition of civic humanism, fully representing the neglected Socratic virtue of enkráteia (see Section 3.5.1). On the one hand, self-command is the one virtue that underpins our sense of propriety, making possible many others.19 18

19

Especially, perhaps, because he is pleased to declare that ‘[Plato’s] account, it is evident, coincides in every respect with what we have said above concerning the propriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.I.11, p. 270) and ‘[Aristotle’s] account of virtue too corresponds pretty exactly with what has been said above concerning the propriety and impropriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.I.12, p. 271). Smith’s praise of Stoicism, and Zeno in particular, as is well known, are numerous throughout the TMS. It is noteworthy that in the conclusion of part VI of the TMS, quoted above, Smith refers in the plural to ‘the other virtues of self-command’ (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264).


On the other hand, ‘the propriety of our own conduct’ for Smith ‘constitutes the real essence of virtue’ (TMS VI.iii.18, p. 244), and therefore the virtue of self-command has a very special position in Smith’s ethical system.20 It is a complex ad intra virtue that contrasts with the dominant consequentialist nature of the other virtues, although it also complements them. Self-command, as the virtue necessary to attain the sense of propriety, conjoined with the supposed impartial spectator, attains a volitional character that is reflected by the sense of duty.21 In Smith’s example of an earthquake in China that killed millions of people, he explains, à la Hume, the natural reaction that ‘[i]f he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own’ (TMS III.3.4, pp. 136–7). However, the ‘propriety of resigning to the greatest interests of our own’ (TMS III.3.4, p. 137) rests upon the supposed impartial spectator. It is the sense of propriety, supported by the virtue of self-command and the supposed impartial spectator, that corrects ‘the natural misrepresentations of self-love’ (TMS III.3.4, p. 137). Human beings can overcome the delusions of self-love through the triad of propriety, the supposed impartial spectator and selfcommand, understood within the sympathetic process, which will ‘lead us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided’ (TMS III.4.7, p. 159). These ‘general rules of morality’ implicitly prioritise motivation over effects, and give precedence to propriety over merit. Their formation implies a revival of morality as internal to the agent, although not isolated from other agents, as for Smith the individual moral consciousness is the result of social intercourse. Indeed, Smith’s ethical system is primarily a social theory of ethics, as the ‘general rules which determine what 20

21

Self-command is not simply the control of passions. The idea of self-command is deeper than self-control, as it implies a sense of direction. Self-control has a coercive character that only relates to the control of passions, but selfcommand, although also implying the control of passions, relates to the person who knows where he or she is going. In brief, it is not only a negative virtue, but it can also be interpreted as a positive one, as has been argued in Chapter 3. Unsurprisingly, Smith refers to a ‘sense of duty and propriety’ (TMS IV.2.11, p. 192), ‘duty and propriety’ (TMS VI.iii.19, p. 245), and the ‘sense of propriety and duty’ (TMS VI.iii.21, p. 246).


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actions are, and what are not, the objects of each of those sentiments, can be formed no other way than by observing what actions actually and in fact excite them’ (TMS III.4.9, p. 160). But it is the virtue of selfcommand that leaves room for an inward process of deliberation that stresses the role of duty. Although the shaping of these ‘general rules’ is a consequence of a social practice, embodied within the sympathetic process, its exercise is a matter of individual deliberation. Specifically, within the corruption debate – that material progress entails moral decline – in which self-love plays a predominant role, Smith is extremely clear when he states: Those general rules of conduct, when they have been fixed in our mind by habitual reflection, are of great use in correcting the misrepresentations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be done in our particular situation. (TMS III.4.12, p. 160, emphasis added) Self-command, as the virtue that gives lustre to all other virtues, as the virtue that determines the sense of propriety and that is continuously supervised by the supposed impartial spectator, implies a sense of duty. This position is different from a purely consequentialist moral stance. In fact, Smith’s concept of propriety, understood in its philosophical complexity, implies a return to an emphasis on motives assessed by individual consciousness, and exercised as moral duties. The latter is clearly deviating from classical utilitarianism, as for Smith: That the sense of duty should be the sole principle of our conduct, is no where the precept of Christianity; but it should be the ruling and the governing one, as philosophy, and as, indeed, common sense directs. (TMS III.6.1, p. 171) Smith concludes his section on duty with the sentence ‘[n]o action can properly be called virtuous, which is not accompanied with the sentiment of self-approbation’ (TMS III.6.13, p. 178). The supposed impartial spectator is the ‘arbiter of our conduct’, and its role, reflected in the sense of propriety and exercised through the virtue of self-command, determines the ‘propriety of our conduct’. In conclusion, propriety, as ad intra, is the mark of our moral conduct, not only because it will add moral worth to any action, but also because it is morally valuable in itself as a motive to action.


4.4 Philosophical implications Although the concept of sympathy and the impartial spectator had been used by Hume and Hutcheson,22 what is clearly original to Adam Smith is the emphasis he places on propriety. I have attempted to show that when encompassing the supposed impartial spectator and the virtue of self-command, this philosophical concept acquires a new dimension as a motive to action. The sense of propriety, strengthened by self-command, not only complements the beneficial effects of Hutcheson’s reiterated emphasis on ‘publick usefulness’ (Hutcheson, 1728, p. 294), which also characterises Hume’s philosophical position, but also has moral worth in itself, regardless of the effects. It is my intention to show that if Hutcheson and Hume prepared the ground for Bentham, Smith paved the road for some of Kant’s ideas on ethics. The literature on Smith and utilitarianism is divided. For example Glossop (1976) considers both Hume and Smith as utilitarians, while Thorstein Veblen affirms that ‘Smith might well be classed as a moderate utilitarian’ (Veblen, 1933 [1899–1900], p. 131) and even John Rawls considers the TMS specifically as pre-utilitarian (Rawls, 1999 [1971], p. 20, note 9). Martin (1990) analyses Smith’s criticism of Hume, suggesting that Smith had two fundamental objections in mind. First, that Hume mistakes the role of reason in morality, and second, that he fails to make morality essentially social, as Smith certainly did. According to her, Smith had a good point in the former, but she argues convincingly that the social nature of morality is also present in Hume. Marie Martin concludes that Smith and Hume ‘have been interpreted by many as either utilitarians or precursors of utilitarianism. Although false in both cases, such readings make more sense applied to Hume than to Smith’ (ibid., p. 119), doing justice to Smith.23 Recently, Emma Rothschild has 22

23

It has been commonly argued that, even though ‘impartial spectator’ appears in the first issue of the Spectator, it is a distinctively Smithian concept. However, Hume, in his second enquiry, uses similar metaphors like ‘judicious enquirer’, ‘impartial enquirer’, ‘spectator’, ‘indifferent spectators’ and Hutcheson in his An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections with Illustrations upon Moral Sense (1728) uses the notion of ‘Spectator’, the idea of an ‘Actor and an Agent’ and ‘Observer’. But Smith’s strong emphasis on impartiality is definitely his contribution. Fleischacker (1991, p. 252, note 18) persuasively defends the philosophical originality of Smith’s impartial spectator. Knud Haakonssen distinguishes between means-utility and ends-utility, arguing that ‘it is clearly misleading to say that Hume’s moral theory in general, and his theory of justice in particular, is utilitarian’ (1981, p. 41).


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correctly argued that Smith rejects Hume’s moral system, as in the Smithian sympathetic process ‘the convergence of sentiments depends on judgements about motives, as well as about consequences’ (2001, p. 231). For Alec Macfie ‘Smith then was not a utilitarian’ (1967, p. 48). T. D. Campbell states that ‘Smith does assume that utility is the standard by which to assess the good and bad qualities of a total way of life’ (1975, p. 76), and labels Smith’s position as ‘contemplative utilitarianism’.24 In addition, David Raphael argues that ‘Hume is by and large a utilitarian. Adam Smith is an antiutilitarian, indeed a natural law theorist, but his natural law is natural law with a difference, a genuinely empiricist natural law’ (1972–73, p. 88). I believe it is also erroneous to say that Smith is ‘antiutilitarian’; it would be better to simply say that he is not a protoutilitarian. Moreover, Raphael’s claim of Smith’s antiutilitarianism rests upon the wrong ground. It is not in the modern natural laws framework, the tradition inherited from Grotius and his ablest disciple Pufendorf, that we find Smith’s disparity with utilitarianism, but in his explicit rebuttal of the foundations of classical utilitarianism and in his concept of propriety. Finally Samuel Fleischacker has suggestively argued for Smith’s ‘utilitarianism without utility’ as ‘a clear ancestor of Kant’s purposiveness without purpose’ (1999, p. 147). But there is another problem: what is actually utilitarianism, and more intriguing perhaps, how should we understand the concept of utility within the eighteenth-century context. Regarding the former, I will assume a classical and general conception of utilitarianism, of a Benthamite sort, as he is the indisputable father of this philosophical movement. But there is much debate as to what we should understand by utility in eighteenth-century parlance. Fred Rosen (2000), in an attempt to defend Smith’s adherence to a certain type of utilitarianism, in which utility, when not meaning useful, would lead us to Hume, has recently called our attention to this issue.25 His contribution, regardless of whether or not one agrees with the conclusion, is important as it pertains to another, more fundamental, question which is at the core of this book, that is, context. By labelling Smith as a utilitarian, contemplative utilitarian or any other version of the same, we run the risk of circumventing or intentionally skipping the real problem of what Smith actually 24 25

See also Campbell and Ross (1981) and Campbell (1971, pp. 217–20). Fred Rosen has examined Smith’s concept of utility, defending the thesis that Smith is using it as a Humean utilitarian. It is noteworthy that in Cicero’s De Officiis the concept utile can be understood both as a means to an end (as something useful), or as an end in itself (as beneficial).


meant by utility. I acknowledge that such an enterprise is beyond the scope of this chapter, but, having made this caveat, I believe that we would not be falling into the historiographic practice of looking at the past through the eyes of those who lived after it by attempting to determine whether Smith’s ideas can be considered a precursor of Bentham’s utilitarianism.26 Bentham begins The Principles of Morals and Legislation with the sentence ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’ (1988 [1781], p. 1, original emphasis). Then Bentham asks the question ‘[t]he interest of the community then is, what?’. The answer is very simple: ‘the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it’ (ibid., p. 3). The ‘classical utilitarian doctrine’, as labelled by John Rawls (in Sidgwick, 1981 [1874], p. v), rests upon the Epicurean dictum of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain as the natural objects of desire and aversion, and then extends from the individual to society. Smith is unusually resolute in discarding the Epicurean system27 as ‘altogether inconsistent with that which I have been endeavouring to establish’ (TMS VII.ii.2.13, p. 298), and goes further to consider this system as ‘undoubtedly the most imperfect’ (TMS VII.ii.4.5, p. 307),28 therefore opposing any form of hedonism. Now focusing upon society, utilitarianism claims in general that whatever produces the greatest happiness for the members of society is morally right. In this broad sense Smith stresses this particular idea of a summun bonum as the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and some passages in the TMS definitively have a pre-utilitarian tone.29 If Smith denies the foundations of utilitarianism, he is not completely 26

27

28

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Bentham had a very poor opinion of Scottish Enlightenment moral thought, referring to them, with the exception of Hume, as a whole ‘host of Scotch sophists’ (1998 [1831], p. 27). As I have already mentioned elsewhere, within the seventeenth and eighteenth century context, Epicureanism had a pejorative sense in moral philosophy, similar to that of a ‘Hobbist’, that was meant to be applied to atheists. It is worth mentioning that up to the fifth edition of the TMS Smith would refer to the system of Epicurus as ‘the worst of all three’. The change in the sixth edition from ‘the worst’ to ‘the most imperfect’ is not negligible, in my opinion (see Section 3.5.2). For example, while dealing with punishment and ‘the general interest of society’, Smith asserts that ‘[w]hen the preservation of the individual is inconsistent with the safety of the multitude, nothing can be more just that the many should be preferred to the one’ (TMS II.ii.3.11, p. 90). Elsewhere he also refers to ‘the greatest possible quantity of happiness’ (TMS VI.ii.3.2, p. 235), though the latter is clearly within a Stoic context, referring to the ‘all-wise Being’.


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opposed to its beneficial consequentialist nature, as the importance that he attributes to motives does not necessarily exclude the significance of effects.30 However, if we take into account the philosophical concept of propriety, and the emphasis it places on motivation, Smith deviates from the predominant focus on consequences. Indeed, it is Smith’s emphasis on propriety that constitutes a radical departure from Hutcheson’s reiterated accent on the ‘greatest possible Aggregate, or Sum of Happiness’ (Hutcheson, 1728, p. 219) or ‘the greatest Universal Happiness of the whole’ (ibid., p. 202). Neither would Smith completely agree with Hume’s stress ‘that PERSONAL MERIT consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others’ (Hume, 1998 [1751], p. 145, emphasis in the original) in which the idea of utility ‘is a foundation of the chief part of morals’ (ibid., p. 117).31 In fact, for Smith ‘the sentiment of approbation always involves in it a sense of propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility’ (TMS IV.2.5, p. 188).32 This simple feature of his moral philosophy completely invalidates any attempt to describe Adam Smith as a forebear of utilitarianism. It is propriety, underpinned by the supposed impartial spectator and the virtue of self-command, which moves Smith away from classical utilitarianism. For Smith: In these and in all other cases of this kind, our admiration is not so much founded upon utility, as upon the unexpected, and on that account the great, the noble, and exalted propriety of such actions. (TMS IV.2.11, p. 192, emphasis added) Propriety has been narrowly understood within the sympathetic framework of moral approbation, or as a visible quality external to the agent, simply related to good manners, or gentlemanliness, ignoring its particular nature as a sense internal to the agent. But it is propriety, together with

30

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Utilitarianism places the focus on consequences, though Bentham was very aware of the importance of motivation. In fact, he wrote A Table of the Springs of Actions (1817), in which motives to action are determined by a desire for pleasure and an aversion of pain. But Smith would reject the idea of pleasure and pain as the sole motivational determinants. Not surprisingly, Bentham wrote that when he read Hume’s Treatise he ‘learned to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue’ (quoted in Darwall, 1995b, p. 60). Cf. ‘we approve of another’s man judgment, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality ... [t]he idea of the utility of all qualities of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not what first recommends them to our approbation’ (TMS I.i.4.4, p. 20).


the supposed impartial spectator and the fundamental and unique virtue of self-command, which illuminates a particular feature of Smith’s ethics. In a letter to Kant, his pupil and friend Marcus Herz wrote in 1771: ‘I have various comments to make about the Englishman Smith who, Herr Friedländer tells me, is your favorite’ (Kant, 1999, p. 130).33 It is not surprising, in my view, that Smith’s TMS attracted Kant’s attention. If it was Hume who awoke Kant from his ‘dogmatic slumber’ (Kant, 1997 [1783], p. 10) in speculative philosophy, perhaps Smith also influenced Kant’s practical philosophy. Yet the notion of Smith as a proto-Kantian is not original at all. For example, August Oncken’s Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant. Der Einklang und das Wechselverhältniss ihrer Lehren über Sitte, Staat und Wirthschaft (1877), without any textual evidence on which to rely upon,34 stressed the role of consciousness in Smith as pre-Kantian, and called attention to the similarities between some of Smith’s and Kant’s passages. Then Walther Eckstein’s thorough introduction to his 1926 German translation of the TMS considers ‘Oncken’s parallel rather forced’ (Fleischacker, 1991, p. 250),35 but provides some textual evidence, pointing out the letter from Herz just mentioned, and a reference to the impartial spectator in Kant’s Reflexionen (Eckstein, 2000 [1926], p. 23 and note 37; see also TMS intr., p. 31). But Eckstein leaves open the issue of Smith’s influence on Kant when he refers to the TMS as ‘a preliminary stage of the categorical imperative under the concept of “impartial spectator” ’ (ibid., 19), and moreover when he states that ‘Kant’s ethical writings unquestionably show much in common with Smith’s work’ (ibid., p. 23).36 Recently Samuel Fleischacker, providing additional textual evidence 33

34

35 36

Marcus Herz refers to the German translation that was based on the third edition of the TMS (1767), as it obviously pre-dates the WN, a work that Kant knew quite well through the influence of his friend Christian Jacob Krauss (see section 2.3.1, note 13). The standard German edition of Kant’s works, Kant’s Gessamelte Schriften, edited by the Royal Prussian (and later German) Academy of Sciences, began to be published in 1900. Fleischacker (1991, p. 254) also provides this evidence and argues further that when Walther Eckstein published his German translation of the TMS in 1926, the nineteenth volume of the Akademie Kant edition had not been published yet, so Eckstein could not refer to the textual evidence that Kant had read TMS that is given in some passages of his Reflexionen. Jacob Viner was also rather ironic towards Oncken’s work (cf. Viner, 1927, p. 201). Joseph Cropsey, in a lecture celebrating the WN’s bicentenary, also considers that ‘some of Smith’s understandings recommended themselves to Kant’ (1976, p. 155).


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(1991, pp. 251–2), has attempted to show that Smith was an important influence on Kant,37 and that, furthermore, we can better understand Kant’s Groundwork in the light of the TMS. Even more recently, Haakonssen (1996, pp. 148–53) dedicated an entire section to ‘Kantian themes in Smith’, adding some possible textual references, and persuasively calling our attention to some important similarities between Kant’s ethics and certain features of Smith’s moral philosophy.38 However, none of these approaches has underlined the character of the relationship of propriety and self-command in order to find a link between Smith’s TMS and Kant’s ethical position. Let me elaborate on this point. I have already argued that for Smith, moral action is not simply valued as such by its outcome, but also by the motive for which it was undertaken. In Kant’s practical philosophy, moral value is determined by the nature of the agent’s intention. Although the latter is a rather simplified version of a complex issue, the question must be understood in relation to the metaphysical problem of freedom, the keystone of practical reason (and also speculative reason).39 Kant’s solution to the antinomy of freedom’s causality, with the distinction between phenomenon (experience) and noumenon (things in themselves, beyond experience), underpins the moral law that determines correct behaviour. First he distinguishes maxims, which are subjective principles, from imperatives. The latter, which are objective, can either be hypothetical or categorical. The former are

37

38

39

Fleischacker (1991), though he raises some interesting and suggestive points, provoked an overreaction from Perreijn (1997). Later, Fleischacker (1999), making use of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, has further developed his views on Smith and Kant in a very suggestive way. It is interesting to note, that while Fleischacker (1991) claimed that understanding Smith will help us to understand Kant’s Groundwork, Knud Haakonssen believes that ‘[t]he point here is the modest one that Kant’s sporadic attention to Smith helps to highlight some peculiarly important aspects of the latter’s thinking’ (1996, p. 150), thus taking the opposite direction. In Kant’s first Critique the concept of freedom is defined negatively, as an intelligible cause; it is in his second Critique that it appears as positive freedom, as free will. The famous footnote in the Preface of Kant’s second Critique distinguishes freedom as the ratio essendi of the moral law, and the moral law as the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. The latter implies that we know we are free because we can act based on moral motives. Freedom then is a factum (a metaphysical one), as if ‘were there no freedom, the moral law would not be encountered at all in ourselves’ (Kant, 1996 [1788], p. 140). And as practical reason and moral experience are pre-assumptions in Kant’s ethical system, then the moral law is indistinctly related to freedom.


determined by the object of the will (empirical), but the latter prescribe independently of the object.40 This framework allows Kant to develop the thesis of the categorical imperative, assuming, therefore, that reason contains the determining ground of the will. The emergence of a sollen, as an unconditioned ought to, is the ground of the moral law that prescribes the free will to act morally, regardless the consequences. The predominant role of obligation in Kantian ethics, is already present in Smith’s TMS, as has been generally acknowledged. In fact, Smith adds to the sixth edition of TMS that ‘[t]he most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty’ (TMS VI.ii.3.1, p. 237), underlining the role of selfcommand and its link to moral obligation.41 Of course Kantian ethics are complex,42 but his simple view that ‘when moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which one sees, but those inner principles of actions that one does not see’ (Kant, 1996 [1785], pp. 61–2) clearly stresses the importance of motives. For Kant, morality relies upon the categorical imperative as a command in itself good, directing what ought to be done. His ‘Fundamental Law of Pure Practical Reason’, of acting only according to those maxims that

40

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In other words, a priori, understood in a Kantian sense as unconditioned and independent of experience. Not dependent on what Kant understands in his Groundwork as pathologische, that is, that depends upon senses. It is also worth mentioning that a maxim (through the test of the categorical imperative) can actually become a categorical imperative, but that a hypothetical imperative can never become a categorical imperative. James Otteson argues that TMS’s meta-argument can be viewed as a hypothetical imperative: if you want x, then you should do y (2002, pp. 236, 256). I believe this is an appropriate characterisation, if it takes into account the social context that leads to these general rules. Moreover, the concept of merit, which is part of the Christian tradition, and the idea of praiseworthiness, also represent some common features between Kant and Smith’s moral views. Kant’s moral philosophy is most accessible in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), while his second critique, Critique of Practical Reason (1788) is more theoretical. His Metaphysics of Morals (1797) is a difficult work for Kantian scholars, as it apparently assumes a more teleological view, emphasising the role of virtues, although it can be argued that it is not inconsistent with his general philosophical scheme. Some foundations of his practical philosophy are also found in his first Critique, but certainly the evolution from his magnum opus for speculative reason, to the Groundwork, and then to the second Critique, which attempts to solve all the shortcomings pinpointed by his critics who saw inner contradiction in his philosophical system, is strenuous and, as I just have mentioned, not eased by the appearance of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).


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can be consistently willed as a universal law,43 undoubtedly goes beyond what Smith would have imagined. This Kantian assumption implies that morality is founded on human rational will, in which men are not means, but rational beings that exist as ends by themselves. Here too, there is great affinity between the role of human dignity in Smith and in Kant. In that sense, Fleischacker (1999), proposing that Smith has an egalitarian vision of the world based on an egalitarian conception of judgement, has substantially deepened and expanded our knowledge of this and other possible connections. Relying on Kant’s third Critique, Samuel Fleischacker concludes that ‘a Kantian account of moral experience leads to the politics of Adam Smith’ (1999, p. 86). Furthermore, Fleischacker has advanced some of the most striking similarities arguing that ‘Smith deemphasizes the importance of consequences in evaluating right action’ (1999, pp. 123–4), as he underlines the role of rational deliberation acknowledging that for Smith ‘the Head has a substantial role in ethics’ (ibid., p. 125). Kant’s famous conclusion to his second Critique expresses admiration for ‘the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ (Kant, 1996 [1788], p. 269) and regarding the ‘moral within me’, he says that it begins ‘from my invisible self’ (ibid.). This metaphor of the invisible self resembles the supposed impartial spectator, the man within who has to convince the man without to act according to certain moral precepts, motivating him to act with propriety. In the same way that Kant would react against any form of utilitarianism, Smith had already grounded a similar argument in his TMS.44 For Kant, as for Smith, empirical principles such as utility, are unfit as the ground for morality. The instrumentalism inherent in utilitarianism, which considers people as means and not as ends in themselves, and which maximises the general welfare by simply aggregating the many, was what Smith would have considered as the ills of ‘the man of system’. 43

44

The Fundamental law of pure practical reason of Kant’s second Critique states: ‘So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving universal principle’ (Kant, 1996 [1788], p. 164). In the Groundwork there are different formulations that progress in five stages, from the ‘universal law’ and the ‘law of nature’, through ‘humanity as an end in itself’, then ‘autonomy’ and finally a ‘kingdom of ends’. ‘Smith and Kant dissent sharply from the utilitarianism that dominated eighteenth-century ethical theory’ (Fleischacker, 1999, p. 143). Kant’s distinction between the autonomy of the will (independent of the object faced by our will), and heteronomy of choice (in which the object determines the will), would place utilitarianism in the latter category.


While the extent of the influence of Smith’s TMS on Kant will always remain uncertain, it is clear that an adequate understanding of Smith’s triad of propriety, the supposed impartial spectator, and self-command, allows us to establish other possible links, expanding on what has been already discussed in this fascinating chapter of the history of ideas. Finally, I would stress once again that I am not arguing for a ‘Smithian Kantianism’. This would stretch the argument beyond my point, and it would seriously undermine the historical stance defended in this book, falling in the historiographic trap of applying ‘isms’ that are no more than mental constructions developed in other contexts. The textual evidence does not provide any conclusive suggestion that the TMS actually influenced Kant, nor that Smith could actually have foreseen Kant. The argument here is simply that Smith’s philosophical concept of propriety, and his emphasis on the ‘Sense of Duty’, introducing the supposed impartial spectator, could plausibly have influenced Kant. Indeed, there are some evident, fundamental and irrefutable differences. For Kant, reason is the basis of morality, while for Smith it is sentiments (though not devoid of deliberative reason). The former would emphasise the a priori character of the categorical imperative, prior and independent of experience, the latter the social nature of the moral rules, within the realm of experience. If Kant had been influenced by Smith’s impartial spectator, it would be possible to argue that the word ‘rational’ in Kant’s mention of an ‘impartial rational spectator’ (Kant, 1996 [1785], p. 49),45 in the first paragraph of the first chapter of his Groundwork, simply reflects their insurmountable difference. Smith categorically argued that ‘it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perception of right and wrong can be derived from reason’ (TMS VII.iii.2.7, p. 320) as ‘the general maxims of morality are formed ... from experience and induction’ (TMS VII.ii.2.6, p. 319). Yet the tension in Smith’s TMS between motivation and effects, reviving the former, leads me to conclude, in this game of historiographic precedence, that there are more grounds to consider Smith a protoKantian, than a proto-utilitarian in ethics.

4.5 A reinterpretation of the classical source of Smith’s ‘propriety’ In this final section, I will speculate about the origins of propriety, not for the sake of an antiquarian’s pastime, but in order to reinforce my argument about the importance and sense of propriety, and its relationship 45

Fleischacker (1991, p. 252) develops the same point.


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with duty, rebutting the generally accepted view on this point. It is well known that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Cicero was widely read. Smith continuously cites Cicero and in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres he is reported to have said that ‘[t]here is no character in antiquity with which we are better acquainted than with that of Cicero’ (LRBL, ii.235, p. 191). Indeed, his Lectures show an intimate knowledge of Cicero’s works.46 In addition, Hume, in his first Enquiry, reflects the favourable cultural setting when he says that the ‘fame of CICERO flourishes at present’ (Hume, 1993 [1748], p. 3, emphasis in the original).47 But among Cicero’s works, his masterpiece De Officiis was, in particular, extremely popular. It is not insignificant that Frederick the Great called De Officiis ‘the best work on morals that has been or can be written’, and that the influential Grotius followed Cicero by writing his De Iure Belli ac Pacis (1625) also in three books, and also quoting extensively from Cicero’s De Officiis. At first sight, as Smith explicitly refers to ‘propriety of decency’, it would appear that propriety for Smith is very close to Cicero’s concept of decorum. The latter is Cicero’s attempt to translate prépon,48 a Greek word that as decorum embodies both an aspect of moral fitness and external visibility. In seventeenth and eighteenth century discourse it reflects the character of the ‘English Gentleman’ that not only pertains to appearances, but also to a sense of proper behaviour.49 Regarding the latter, as propriety is linked to what is praiseworthy, decorum is also etymologically linked to dignitas.50 Both are ad intra and then ad extra, as

46

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In Smith’s library there are three different editions of Cicero’s complete works, plus a single edition of De Officiis and his Lettres (Mizuta, 1967, p. 81). Seneca, in contrast, was not especially popular. For example, the influential Lord Kames, in his Sketches of the History of Man (1778 [1773]), refers to Seneca as ‘a great corrupter of the Roman taste’ (ibid., 284). In the TMS Smith speaks of Seneca as ‘that great preacher of insensibility’ (TMS I.iii.I.13, p. 48). In his My Own Life, Hume recalls that during his youth ‘Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring’ (Hume, 1987 [1777], p. xxxiii), and he asserts that ‘Cicero was certainly one of the finest gentlemen of his age’ (ibid., p. 128). ‘The Greeks call it prépon; let us call it decorum’ (∏π appellant hoc Graeci, nos dicamus sane decorum) (Cic.Or, xx.70, see also De Officiis I.xxvii). Gloria Vivenza considers that prépon ‘is always connected with appearance, and it is something that is projected to the exterior’ (2002, p. 193). But moral fitness is not necessarily always manifest, nor is it exclusively related to appearances, as it also entails a sense of doing the right thing per se. The nouns decus and decor (hence decorum), as well as the adjective dignus (dignitas), are all derived from decet, which means, ‘appropriate conduct’.


the process goes from internal moral fitness to external visibility. But if Cicero is perhaps more concerned with the external nature of decorum, in terms of appearance as the good manners of a patrician, Smith’s emphasis, as I have attempted to show above, is with propriety as internal to the agent. Regardless of the social and political importance of politeness, gentlemanliness and good manners,51 Smith’s propriety does not simply mean Shaftesbury’s ‘politeness’, the social conventions of good manners. It also pertains to a moral aspect that is related to fulfilling one’s duties. However, Cicero’s decorum captures a sense of externality accompanied by an inner moral quality, emerging as the natural candidate for Smith’s propriety. Indeed, of those few Smithian scholars who have attempted to determine his classical sources and their influence on him, Athol Fitzgibbons considers that ‘Smith understood propriety in the sense of Cicero’s decorum’ (1995, p. 58), while according to Vincent Hope, ‘Cicero’s notion of decorum is not unlike Smith’s idea of propriety’ (1989, p. 107). Recently, Charles Griswold has asserted that ‘[t]he notion of propriety is a very old one. It seems roughly equivalent to what Cicero called, in a text Smith certainly knew, decorum, for which the Greek is, Cicero adds, prépon’ (1999, p. 183). Another commentator, in her notable contribution to uncovering Smith’s classical influences, has put forward the thesis that ‘Decorum ... does not correspond to propriety’ (Vivenza, 2002, p. 194). Stretching the sense of one particular passage of the TMS, she concludes that Smith relates propriety to the Aristotelian concept of mesótes (Vivenza, 1984, pp. 56–9).52 The passage in question reads ‘[t]he propriety of every passion 51

52

For example, Burrow (1988) stresses the concept of politeness developed by Whigs like Shaftesbury, Addison and Steele as an important virtue within the development of Whig political thought. Shaftesbury is another clear example of the ideal of politeness as has been argued by Klein (1986, 1994). Phillipson (1987, 1993) also draws some interesting connections between political thought and politeness, and in relation to Adddison and Steele’s Spectator, he coins the term ‘Spectatorial propriety’ (1993, p. 309), considering the language of propriety as an important political concept for the reformation of manners, and pointing out its neo Ciceronian origins, thereby implicitly linking propriety to decorum. I must make a methodological point regarding Gloria Vivenza’s position. In brief, I believe that she too readily dismisses the Stoics’ influence, and if she is prepared to use Diogenes Laertius book 10 when appropriate, it appears as if she does not consider book 7 to be a reliable source (Vivenza, just before quoting a passage from book 10, states that ‘Diogenes Laertius, an author to whom Smith himself makes reference and an important source of Epicurean thought’


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excited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves, the pitch which the spectator can go along with, must lie, it is evident, in a certain mediocrity’ (TMS I.ii.intro.1, p. 27). In my view, the Aristotelian sense of mediocrity in this passage is merely instrumental, serving only to explain propriety in its first stage definition, as the process necessary for attaining the concordance of sentiments. Moreover, in Gloria Vivenza’s Postcript to the very recent English translation of her book (Vivenza, 2002), she insists, rebutting Waszek (1984),53 that ‘Smith’s propriety is, rather, related to the medietas of Aristotelian origin’ (ibid., p. 191). But then she writes that ‘Smith ... declares that his propriety bears affinity to both Aristotle’s ‘habit of mediocrity’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12) and Plato’s ‘state of mind in which every faculty confines itself within its proper sphere’ (TMS VII.ii.1.11)’ (ibid., p. 192). In fact, the actual quote of Smith referring to Aristotle states that ‘[v]irtue, according to Aristotle, consists in the habit of mediocrity according to right reason’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12, p. 270), and as Vivenza is quite aware, propriety ‘[a]bove all it is not virtue’ (Vivenza, 2002, p. 192). It is true that at the end of that paragraph Smith finishes with a rather panegyric sentence to the effect that ‘[i]t is unnecessary to observe that this account of virtue corresponds too pretty exactly with what has been said above concerning the propriety and impropriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12, p. 271). But if propriety actually corresponds to the golden mean, why does Smith conclude, (Vivenza, 2002, p. 197), therefore why is Diogenes Laertius not also an important source of Stoicism?). For example, I believe she is wrong when she tries to ascribe oikeíosis to Aristotle or to the Peripatetics (see Vivenza, 2002, pp. 204–6). She is certainly right in saying that Max Pohlenz’s great authority is important for its connection with the Stoics, though textual evidence had also made this point clear to previous scholars (and maybe to Smith himself), but she is wrong when she says that ‘[s]cholars cannot agree either on the origin of oikeíosis (Peripatetic or Stoic) or on its character’ (ibid., p. 205). The concept and its philosophical conception are clearly Stoic, and there is much evidence of this not only in Hierocles (especially in his Elements of Ethics and the passages preserved in Stobaeus), but also, and more significantly, in Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertius and Galen. 53

It is interesting to note, that a careful scholar like Norbert Waszek also interprets the sense of Smith’s mediocrity simply as that, as the necessary level of virtue needed in order to gain sympathy, as ‘a “mediocre” conduct is quite sufficient’ (1984, p. 596). Laurence Berns (1994), though he is aware that ‘Smith was not an Aristotelian’ (ibid., p. 74), attempts to show that Smith ‘could be thought of as “working together” with Aristotle’ (ibid., p. 75). In his work he defends the same link between Smith’s passage and Aristotle’s mean (ibid., p. 78), but he wrongly, in my view, suggests a connection between Smith’s sympathy and Aristotle’s philantropia (ibid., pp. 72–4).


with respect to Plato, that the nature of virtue ‘consists, according to him, in that state of mind in which every faculty confines itself within its proper sphere without encroaching upon that of any other, and performs its proper office with that precise degree of strength and vigour which belongs to it. His account, it is evident, coincides in every respect with what we have said above concerning the propriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12, p. 270, emphasis added)? In what follows I would like to offer an alternative interpretation that has much to do with the sense of proper office.54 I believe these interpretations (propriety as decorum or mesótes), are both possible, in light of Smith’s references to ‘propriety as decency’ and ‘point of propriety’, respectively, (though I see more grounds for defending the former), but I want to propose a third concept of propriety that seems to me quite reasonable and superior to these previous accounts. Given the understanding of propriety put forward in this chapter, as a fundamental and distinctively Smithian philosophical concept that relates to one’s duties in society, my position is that Smith’s propriety is influenced by Cicero’s officium. Cicero chose the Latin word officium as the nearest equivalent for the Stoic technical term kathékon, or ‘appropriate action’.55 The Roman word officium refers to one’s duties in society. It reflects the citizen’s responsibilities to the res publica, and the father’s obligation towards his household. In summary it relates to the roles of man within the social 54

55

The perspicacious reader who remembers the discussions about vir virtutis discourse in Chapter 3, has probably already noticed that the proper office in the last quote is related to that ‘precise degree of strength and vigour which belongs to it’. Cicero, in De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum says ‘ “appropriate act” (for so I render the Greek kathékon)’ (officium (id enim appello )) (Cic.Fin, III.iv.20, 1997, p. 239). But in his De Officiis, he distinguishes more precisely: ‘between “mean” duty, so called, and “absolute” duty. Absolute duty we may, I presume, call “right”, for the Greeks call it , while the ordinary duty they call . And the meaning of those terms they fix thus: whatever is right they define as “absolute” duty, but “mean” duty, they say, is duty for the performance of which an adequate reason may be rendered’ (Cic.Off, I.iii.8, 1997, p. 11, cf. Cic.Off, III.ii.13–16, pp. 281–3). Norbert Waszek (1984) has duly pinpointed this distinction between perfectum officium and commune officium in order to establish that Smith inherits this Stoic perception of two levels of morality: proper conduct and perfect virtuous conduct, respectively. However, commune officium (kathékon), what is appropriate, is the foundation of any morally right action (katorthoma), in sum, of virtuous action (what Cicero defines as perfectum officium, cf. Cic.O I.iii.8; on this distinction see also Stobaeus’s Eclogae 2.85 and Diogenes Laertius VII.108).


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domain, implying a sense of responsibility, of literally ‘responding’ from your own position within your social setting. In this sense it is possible to argue, in support of my argument, that propriety for Smith involves a sense of officium, of doing what is right to be done. In fact, Smith explicitly links not only propriety to duty (see supra note 21), but also explicitly links officium to propriety. For him, the ‘practical morality of the Stoics’ consists in those ‘imperfect but attainable virtues’ that Smith defines as ‘proprieties, fitnesses, decent and becoming actions, for which a plausible or probable reason could be assigned, what Cicero expresses with the Latin word officia, and what Seneca refers to, more precisely in my opinion, as convenientia’ (TMS VII.ii.I.42, p. 291).56 Finally, it also noteworthy that this passage is found within a discussion of the Stoics, as kathékon or officium (or kathékonta – officia) is a fundamental concept for their moral philosophy.57 Certainly Smith, a learned classicist who had mastered Latin and Greek, as well as a keen reader of the Stoics and Cicero, was well aware of this concept and its relation to officium. In this sense, in my opinion, to act with propriety looks much more like Cicero’s officia than Cicero’s decorum or Aristotle’s mesótes. 56

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The last part of this passage might seem quite surprising, and even contradictory to what I defend, but is not inimical to my argument. On the contrary, it reinforces it. The Latin word convenientia, from convenio, is also a Ciceronian philosophical word that Cicero relates to ‘harmony’ or ‘concordance’. In De Officiis, it appears as ‘harmony with Nature’ (Cic.Off, I.xxviii.100, 1997, p. 103) and in De Finibus it directly relates to the Stoics’ idea of living in accordance with Nature, as Cicero translates the Greek homologia as convenientia (Cic.Fin, III.vi.21, 1997, p. 239). Seneca in his Epistulae Morales refers to this idea of convenientia as agreement: ‘For the underlying principle of virtue is conformity (convenientia)’ (Sen.EM, lxxiv.30, vol. 2, p. 133). But Seneca’s definition of convenientia is not instrumental, but foundational. If we compare Seneca’s statement to Smith’s idea of ‘the propriety of our own conduct, which constitutes the real essence of virtue’ (TMS VI.iii.18, p. 244), both, propriety and convenientia, are perfectly consistent. Moreover, in a period in which Seneca fell increasingly out of favour, this confirms Smith’s command of classical writers. Norbert Waszek, in his excellent investigation showing that Smith was well aware of the Stoics’ notion of two levels of morality – a common one attainable by the majority, and the admirable one reached by those few wise people – refers to the concept of kathékon as proper conduct, and indistinctly finds that ‘the generally attainable level of propriety, as opposed to the rare cases of perfect virtue can also be seen as echoing the special attention which the Roman Stoics paid to the medium kathekon, convenientia or commune officium’ (1984, p. 605). kathékon is also alternatively translated as a ‘proper function’, referring in general to living beings, and involving an action that accords with nature (cf. Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 365–8).


In summary, while decorum stresses the external role of the agent, officium underlies virtues in terms of obligations towards society. While propriety, within the framework of the supposed impartial spectator and the humanistic virtue of self-command, seems to share some features of Cicero’s decorum, it has been my aim to prove in this chapter that it is more likely that it was the concept of officium that shaped Smith’s philosophical concept of propriety. The recurrent idea that ‘[t]here is no virtue without propriety’ (TMS VII. Ii.1.50, p. 294), is grounded in a much more pervasive sense of duty. Therefore, the meaning of propriety as related to officia corresponds to an interpretation that supports my thesis that there are more grounds for defending a deontological stance in Smith’s TMS which is in clear apposition to his contemporaries who were turning towards classical utilitarianism.

4.6 Conclusions Jacob Viner once remarked that ‘[w]hen Smith revised his Theory of Moral Sentiments he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217). Although certainly there are some passages added to the sixth edition in which Smith misquotes some classical sources, this chapter implicitly argues that the late additions to the TMS not only reinforce Smith’s original claims, but also reveal his mature thoughts on moral issues. In particular, the elderly Smith stresses the nature of virtues and emphasises a more deontological position in which motivations add moral worth to the consequences. This emphasis reveals Smith to be a fascinating case in an epoch that was paving the road to classical utilitarianism. In this setting, his complex triad of propriety, self-command and supposed impartial spectator (motivation, virtue and conscience), is significant not only for being distinctively Smithian, but also for its philosophical implications. A proper understanding of what propriety is, underpinned by a discussion of another interpretation of what Smith might have meant by it with reference to its classical connections, sheds further light on the triad – motivation, virtue and conscience – this book attempts to develop. The sympathetic process, as the pillar of Smith’s moral system, is enhanced further by the virtue of self-command and the sense of propriety. This trilogy allows us to assess Smith’s broader aim by reading sympathy not only in terms of moral approbation, but also moral dispositions that imply duty as an important component of how to act. The role of an agent, acting with moral autonomy, and not determined by a particular felicitatis calculus, places Smith in a methodological position that differs from the neoclassical picture of the homo oeconomicus.


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Just as the TMS has ironically been overshadowed by the success of the Wealth of Nations, Smith’s philosophical concept of propriety has been eclipsed by the beneficial unintended consequences of the invisible hand. This has resulted in a great loss for economists and philosophers alike. Fortunately, the rapidly growing field of Smithian studies has revived interest in Smith’s moral philosophy, but in spite of this fact, the importance of propriety has received little attention. Its deontological facet poses a challenge, as the nexus between Smith’s ethics and economics presents an inexhaustible source of research. Amartya Sen complained that ‘the role of ethical considerations in human behaviour, particularly the use of behaviour norms [in Smith’s writings], have become relatively neglected’ brilliantly concluding that ‘it is precisely the narrowing of the broad Smithian view of human beings, in modern economies, that can be seen as one of the major deficiencies of contemporary economic theory’ (1987, 28, emphasis added). The thesis I have defended throughout this chapter certainly has implications for economics. An understanding of propriety as a fundamental philosophical concept that focuses upon the motives that generate actions, as an internal process of deliberation encompassed by the role of conscience and the command of one-self, gives pre-eminence to the individual as an end in itself, not as a means to an end. Classical utilitarianism would stress the latter in terms of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Respect for human beings, as diverse and unique individuals, but always considered as members of society, is a conception that contrasts with the homo oeconomicus of neoclassical economics, and is conspicuously absent in modern mainstream economics. A reassessment of the original ethical thought of the father of the science certainly encourages a sense of propriety for our discipline. One hopes that this motivation adds ‘lustre’ to the outcome, and it is not the outcome that determines or simply ignores the motivations.

5 Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues Concerning General Economic Equilibrium Theory

5.1 Introduction There is general consensus that in economics Adam Smith is, in the words of Jevons, the ‘father of the science’. In this setting it has regularly been argued that neoclassical and modern mainstream economics carry through the methodological impetus brought into the discipline by Smith. Moreover, economists conventionally take it for granted that Smith applied Newton’s method to political economy. Because Newton’s method is thought to be similar to that of modern mainstream economics, the association of Smith with Newton is taken to further bolster the claim that modern mainstream economics continues the Smithian tradition. Support for this commonly accepted view is gathered from Smith’s panegyric attitude to Newton’s conception of philosophy. This shared conviction among economists underpins some interpretations of the ‘invisible hand’ and of the intention behind the controversial chapter 7 of Book I of the WN, baptising Smith as a forerunner, if not the founder, of theories of general economic equilibrium (e.g. Robbins, 1962 [1932]; Schumpeter, 1994 [1954]; Arrow-Hahn, 1971; Jaffé, 1977; Hollander, 1973, 1987; Samuelson, 1977, 1992). As an offspring of the same tradition Walras, the architect of the ‘equilibrium system’, has been set alongside Newton, the discoverer of the ‘world system’ (Samuelson, 1952, p. 61). In this framework, Newton’s atomistic/mechanistic description of the celestial order provides evidence that Smith initiated the tradition of neoclassical and modern mainstream economics, having the same underlying ontological preconceptions that are 130

Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues 131

pervasive and fundamental in the development of general economic equilibrium theory since Walras, whose achievement represents ‘the peak of neoclassical economic’ (ibid.). This chapter will argue that this is wrong. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Newton was the intellectual hero, venerated by all the philosophes, and Smith was certainly no exception. However, whilst shared admiration does not necessarily imply a common methodology, I suggest not only that Smith was not a Newtonian in the commonly received sense, but also that Newton was not either. Specifically, I shall argue that Smith did not have an atomistic–mechanistic view of the world in the tradition of neoclassical and later modern mainstream economics, and that Newton did not simply conform to the axiomatic–deductive methodology fostered and adopted by ‘mechanical philosophy’. Mainstream economists have ignored this situation, relying on too narrow a reading of Newton. As a consequence, Adam Smith’s rich, complex and broadly philosophical approach has been overshadowed by a biased and obsolete positivistic interpretation of the Newtonian method. It will be helpful to my argument if I start, in Section 5.2 below, by considering Newton’s method and its impact. The image of Newton as the father of the ‘Age of Reason’ will be questioned. More emphatically, it will be argued that this inherited association of Newton with the axiomatic–deductive tradition is misleading. Newton’s analytic-synthetic method is broader, and his all-encompassing philosophical project, including theology and alchemy, reveals that their influence and his intentions were much more complex. I suggest that the positivistic interpretation of Newton’s method is a product of the French Enlightenment that paradoxically adopted a mechanical philosophy founded on the success of his Principia. In Section 5.3, I examine the nature and viability of the widely held view of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, that is, the idea that Adam Smith simply applied a particular mechanistic version of society that presupposed an atomistic view of human beings. This interpretation will be jettisoned; I show that Smith’s methodological position is radically different from this narrow neoclassical and mainstream misunderstanding of Newton’s methodology. In arguing my case I shall focus, in particular, on the popular version of Smith as a precursor of general economic equilibrium theory. Section 5.4 will contrast Walras’s idealistic position concerning pure economics with what I consider to be the realist Smithian view. Also, the controversial chapter 7 of Book I of the WN is reassessed in order to bring to an end the flawed but relatively common view of Smith as the founder or forebear of general equilibrium theory.


In Section 5.5, I suggest some similarities between Smith’s broad and interdisciplinary project and some recent developments in methodology and economics represented by critical realism (see, in particular, Lawson, 1997). Finally, in Section 5.6, I present a brief conclusion underlining the main issues at stake and their relevance for modern economics.

5.2 Was Newton a Newtonian? Before questioning whether, or in what sense, Smith is a Newtonian, let me ask the same question of Newton himself. The argument, in brief, is that Newton’s contribution can be viewed under two aspects: his method and his results. These have been confused by neoclassical and mainstream economists. The former is a combination of analysis and synthesis, terms I shall expand upon below. His discovery was a system of mechanics, which under certain conditions – but certain conditions only, namely those of a closed system – gives rise to event regularities facilitating the use of mathematics. Neoclassical and modern mainstream economists, following the tradition of the French Enlightenment thinkers, have mistakenly interpreted as Newton’s general method one particular case of his results. They have focused on Newton’s results as they pertain to a closed system with a production of event regularities, relying upon a narrow axiomatic–deductive methodology. Noticing the latter’s conduciveness to methods of mathematical modelling, they have supposed that reliance upon mathematics represents Newton’s a priori methodological orientation. This, though, is not correct. His method was that of analysis and synthesis, and primarily analysis in search of underlying causes. This is the true method of Newton, and it is the philosophical conception adopted by Smith. Thus the method of the modern mainstream is neither Smith’s nor Newton’s, but simply a procedure used in a particular case of Newton’s highly specific results that has been erroneously universalised. Let me first elaborate on Newton’s methodology and its setting. A characteristic feature of the Enlightenment in general was a confidence in the power of human reason, in which Newton epitomised the triumph of human intellectual capacity over nature. Alexander Pope’s intended epitaph for Newton (1730) is a clear reflection of this belief: Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! And all was light. However, during the last few decades, the image perpetuated by the Victorians of Newton as the father of the ‘Age of Reason’, and our


understanding of the nature of Newtonianism, have radically changed. John Maynard Keynes was quite original in challenging the received apotheosised image of Newton with his biography ‘Newton, the Man’ (Keynes, 1972). This essay was pathbreaking in anticipating a renewed interest in the life and character of Newton, and much speculation regarding certain previously omitted aspects of the same.1 Today, Stukeley’s devotional account of his hero and friend (Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, 1752), and Brewster’s classical biography (Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 1831), are to be taken cum grano salis. But regarding the nature of Newtonianism, Keynes, who in 1936 bought at Sotheby’s 120 lots of Newton’s papers and studied them, failed to realise the importance of Newton’s manuscripts when he declared that his ‘secret heresies and scholastic superstitions’ were ‘wholly devoid of scientific value’ (1972, p. 370).2 Although this view was widely accepted until recently, today the image of Newton as the father of modern science, thinking ‘on the lines of cold and untinctured reason’ (ibid., p. 363) is open to question, especially as more research is carried out on his writings about theology and alchemy. The last decades have witnessed a rapid growth in the ‘Newtonian industry’.3 It is clear that Newton not only pursued alchemical studies with great vigour, but also that his theological quest occupied a great part of his intellectual energies. If the public Newton was the Cambridge Lucasian Professor, the Master of the Mint and the President of the Royal Society, privately he was an Arian, a doctrine unacceptable to orthodox Anglicans4 and a devout alchemist.

1

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3

4

For example, Manuel’s iconoclastic Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (1968) offers a Freudian account of Newton’s life, although sometimes it is overspeculative. In my view, Westfall’s Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), is still the best and most objective biography of Newton. Andrade (1954), Hall (1992) and White (1998) are also worth reading. Keynes even declared that Newton’s manuscripts ‘have, beyond doubt, no substantial value’ (1972, p. 368, emphasis added). He was mistaken not only in academic, but also in economic terms: two years ago Cambridge University Library paid over £6 million for the Macclesfield Collection. However, ironically, in 1888 the University Library returned some of Newton’s manuscripts because they lacked scientific value. For a perceptive but perhaps outdated review of the ‘Newtonian industry’, see Westfall (1976). In his A Guide to Newton’s Principia, Cohen provides additional references (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 293–8). He also announces George Smith’s recently published Companion to Newton’s ‘Principia’. Arianism denied Trinitarianism, and it was specifically excluded from the Toleration Act of 1689, which offered religious freedom to all faiths, except Catholicism and any form of Unitarianism (which included Arianism).


The reception of Newton’s legacy during the eighteenth century was multifaceted, especially when we discuss what has commonly been labelled ‘Newtonianism’. It is widely believed that Newton synthesised, but also transformed, the mathematical rationalism developed by Descartes with the experimental emphasis in vogue in Great Britain after Francis Bacon. Although from a general perspective this is accurate, nevertheless ‘Newtonianism’ has many meanings depending on the setting.5 Nowadays, when we refer to Newton’s system we commonly mean his Principia (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687), and the Opticks (1704) essentially represents for the layman a piece of interest only to the historian of science. The former, written in ‘the mathematical way’, was extremely difficult to understand even for the educated. In fact, Newton made his Principia strenuous to read expressly to avoid ‘being baited by Smatterers in Mathematicks’ (quoted in Westfall, 1980, p. 459).6 But the Opticks, written in English by Newton rather than Latin,7 was then much more accessible to the general public. The impact of the Opticks, reaching a wider audience during the eighteenth century, perhaps exceeded that of his magnum opus. If celestial mechanics was the grand science, the subject of the Opticks was not only more spectacular, but also inherently speculative. Although the Opticks presents some important discoveries, it deals with experiments and hypothesis, not concluding with irrefutable propositions, like his Principia, but simply stating at the end thirty-one ‘queries’.8 But Newton’s Principia, founded on the three laws of motion,

5

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8

Schofield distinguishes Baconian, Leibnizean, Cartesian and Newtonian ‘Newtonianisms’, and argues that during the eighteenth century ‘it seems clear that Newton was not a Newtonian in any one of the many versions which can be identified’ (1978, p. 177). For a challenging and insightful account of these issues, see Buickerood (1995) and also the essays in Jones (1989). At the beginning of Book III ‘The System of the World’, Newton declares that he had ‘composed an earlier version of book 3 in popular form, so that it might be more widely read’ but that in order ‘to avoid lengthy disputations, I have translated the substance of the earlier version in a mathematical style, so that they may be read only by those who have first mastered the principles’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 793). The Opticks was published in 1704 a year after the death of Newton’s life-long rival Hooke (Newton had sworn not to publish it while Hooke was alive). A second edition in Latin was published in 1706, followed by a second English edition in 1717. The first English edition contains, at the end, 16 queries; the Latin edition increases the number by 7 new queries (numbered 25–31) and the second English edition adds 8 more queries (numbered 17–24).


establishes the law of universal gravity. Implications for the motion of many different kinds of observed phenomena are then drawn from it.9 This is the great achievement of Newton’s ‘experimental philosophy’, which consists in the method of analysis (method of resolution) and synthesis (method of composition)10 and is defended not only in the Principia, but also even more vehemently in his Opticks. In his famous General Scholium, appended to the end of the second edition of the Principia,11 Newton adds ‘[i]n this experimental philosophy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made general by induction’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 943). But probably the best expression of his analytic-synthetic method is given in the last query of his Opticks. There Newton clearly states that: Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction ... . Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them. (Newton, 1931 [1704], pp. 404–5) Analysis allows the philosopher to infer causes from phenomena, and synthesis to establish a (or some) principle(s) from which we can explain other phenomena. It is worth noting that Newton’s method was understood by the philosophes of the Scottish Enlightenment.12 For example, according to Maclaurin, a famous Scottish mathematician supported by Newton13

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The laws of: (1) inertia, (2) force and change in motion and (3) action and reaction, are in Book I. Newton acknowledged his debt to Galileo for the first two laws, and to Wren, Wallis, Huygens and Mariotte for the third. In Book III he states the law of universal attraction, and then applies it to the ‘system of the world’. Analysis and synthesis have a Greek origin, and resolution and composition are their counterparts of Latin origin. Principia’s first edition was published in 1687. The second, edited by Cotes, in 1713, and the third, edited by Pemberton, was published in 1726. The first complete English translation of Newton’s Principia was made by Andrew Motte, and published posthumously in 1729. A revised version by Florian Cajori was published in 1934. Recently Whitman and Cohen’s long awaited complete translation of Principia, with Cohen’s excellent A Guide to Newton’s Principia, was published in 1999. For Newton’s early influence in the Scottish Universities, see Cant (1982). Redman calls Maclaurin an ‘associate’ (1997, p. 106) of Newton and Drennon ‘a close friend of Newton’ (1933–34, p. 407). However Rupert Hall says categorically ‘they never met’ (1992, p. 367).


and author of the popular An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries (1748):14 [Sir Isaac Newton] proposed that, in our enquiries into nature, the methods of analysis and synthesis should be both employed in a proper order; that we should begin with phenomena, or effects, and from them investigate the powers or causes that operate in nature; that, from particular causes, we should proceed to the more general ones, till the argument end in the most general: this is the method of analysis. Being once possest of these causes, we should then descend in a contrary order; and from them, as established principles, explain all the phenomena that are their consequences, and prove our explications: and this is the synthesis ... the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition, or the synthesis. (Maclaurin, 1750 [1748], p. 9, original emphasis) This is a lucid expression of Newton’s analytic-synthetic method. Indeed, the law of universal gravitation, as a ‘power’ or ‘cause’ that operates in nature, is the cornerstone of Newton’s ‘system of the world’, from which all other natural phenomena are derived. The philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment assimilated this method as one of dissecting nature into its constituent parts, establishing a (or some) principle(s) from which phenomena could be explained. The fundamental role of the method of resolution or analysis was given its priority and precedence.15 Maclaurin is also clearly aware that whereas the Principia: describes the system of the world ... [Opticks] enquires into the more hidden parts of nature ... the subject is more nice and difficult ... . Hence it is what he has delivered in the first (though full capable of improvement) is more complete and finished in several respects; while his discoveries of the second sort are more astonishing. (Ibid., pp. 20–2) 14

15

I choose Maclaurin’s work not only because he was Scottish, and his book was probably read by Adam Smith, but also as I believe it is the best early explanation of Newton’s method. Pemberton, the editor of the Principia’s third edition, wrote A view of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1728), but it lacks Maclaurin’s clarity. Voltaire’s The Elements of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1738) is also deficient, as he did not have the necessary mathematical knowledge. As Wightman, the editor of EPS, acknowledges, in particular ‘Smith’s methodology would seem to conform to the requirements of the Newtonian method properly so called in that he used the techniques of analysis and synthesis in the appropriate order’ (EPS, intr., p. 12).


Certainly the curious nature of the Opticks fascinated the eighteenth century, but people were also well aware of the Principia’s irrefutable scientific success. But regarding the nature of Newton’s methodology, more recently Kuhn has observed that, although Newton: has seemed to support the further assertion that scientific research can and should be confined to the experimental pursuit of mathematical regularity ... . Careful examination of Newton’s less systematic published writings provides no evidence that Newton imposed upon himself so drastic a restriction upon scientific imagination. (1958, p. 45)16 Achieving ‘mathematical regularity’ was not Newton’s goal per se, nor a precondition of his method. It is worth emphasising that at the beginning of Book III of the Principia, ‘The System of the World’, Newton develops his Regulae Philosophandi (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 794–6) putting forward four rules for the study of natural philosophy. None of them mentions mathematics at all, and the fourth strongly stresses the role of induction.17 The emphasis on mathematical regularity was a consequence of his spectacular results that fostered synthesis, rather than of his actual methodology. The former has overshadowed the latter. The Principia’s success in creating a mathematical system of nature has determined a particular interpretation of Newton’s method, in which the results of his mathematical natural philosophy encouraged the method of synthesis, universalising this procedure as the scientific method par excellence. In a fragment on method that was most likely intended for the Opticks,18 Newton referred to the method of resolution and composition, adding that: he that expects success must resolve before he compounds. For the explication of Phaenomena are Problems much harder than those in Mathematicks. (McGuire, 1970, p. 185) 16

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Similarly Hall has recently argued that ‘though Newton did not assert hypotheses as truths, he framed them throughout his life, and indeed made them known to the world’ (1998, p. 58). Rule IV states that inductions ‘should be considered either exactly or very nearly true’ until new phenomena may make them ‘either more exact or liable to exceptions’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 796, emphasis added). I am indebted to Eric Schliesser for calling my attention to the significance of these last three words. Unfortunately, Newton suppressed the fragment. According to McGuire, in this fragment ‘Newton gives a more elaborate account of his methodology than is found in the later editions of the Opticks’ (1970, p. 179).


This passage is extremely important for my argument. Newton is not only responding to the dominant ‘mechanical philosophy’, a point that I elaborate below, but again reveals the fundamental aspect that has been ignored in the axiomatic–deductive interpretations of Newtonianism, that is, the priority of analysis or resolution. Furthermore, it carries a lesson. For one of the greatest mathematicians of all times considered the task of uncovering natural phenomena more difficult than the synthesis or composition that necessarily follows.19 Traditionally, the method of composition has prevailed over the method of resolution in modern interpretations of Newton, leading to a biased axiomatic–deductive interpretation of his methodology based on the Principia’s success. In my view, this phenomenon most probably started during the French Enlightenment. The ‘Age of Reason’, relying on Newton’s achievement, privileged composition, instigating a historical process that increasingly ignored the central role that resolution played in Newton’s great discoveries. The attention given to the role of reason, on deducing from already given principles, in explaining other phenomena, was detrimental to a rounded understanding of Newton’s actual methodology, ignoring the importance of creative thought. Undoubtedly imagination and creative power played a fundamental role in identifying celestial gravity with simple attraction, and in introducing dynamics into cosmology. But neither can Newton’s method of analysis simply be reduced, to use the famous legend, to the fall of an apple. From an ontological perspective, the Opticks presents a dialectical movement between the experimental-mathematical description of rays and colours, and the uncertain philosophical nature of light, and the Principia between the mathematico-deductive description of natural phenomena, and the uncertain philosophical nature of gravity. Indeed, universal attraction, although observable in nature, remained a mystery and a source of controversy for many philosophers. On the Continent it was objected that Newton’s concept of gravity was a mere ‘hypothesis’ analogous to the invisible causes that fascinated the Schoolmen.20 This 19

20

Although Newton developed, independently of Leibniz, ‘the calculus of fluxions’ – differential calculus – and his ‘method of flowing quantities, or fluents’ – integral calculus – he would refer to his mathematical pursuits as ‘divertissements’. Hypothesis is the Greek word for supposition. According to Koyré, ‘hypothesis’ became for Newton ‘toward the end of his life, one of those curious terms, such as "heresy", that we never apply to ourselves, but only to others’ (1965, p. 52). His aversion to the word ‘hypothesis’ definitely began in 1672, when he published The New Theory of Light and Colours. Hooke considered Newton’s theory only a


allegation, mainly fostered by Leibniz, infuriated Newton, who, loyal to his Christian but rather unorthodox beliefs, added to the second edition of the Principia (1713) the famous General Scholium. This begins by insisting that Descartes’s theory of vortices ought to be eliminated. Then Newton explains that: This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being ... He rules all things, not as the world soul, but as the lord of all. (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 940) Finally, Newton acknowledges that he has ‘not yet assigned a cause to gravity’ (ibid., p. 943). If the father of modern physics wanted ‘to treat of God from phenomena’ (ibid.) as part of natural philosophy, he also needed Him in his rebuttal of Leibniz’s attempt to reduce universal attraction to a mechanical cause. Newton repeatedly criticised ‘mechanical philosophy’, as he considered that mechanical principles were inadequate to explain all phenomena. His intellectual foes, Huygens, Hooke and Leibniz, followed the mechanical philosophy tradition that had been fostered by Descartes. For Descartes, as for Galileo, a force should be caused by a mechanism. Newton’s philosophy could not agree with the imposition of mechanical necessity, as a cause of force. Gravity, which is observable but without a known cause, is the paradigmatic example. In addition aware of the limits of a purely mechanical interpretation of nature, Newton denied that, ontologically, reality could be treated as a simple machine, complete and self-sufficient in itself.21 hypothesis and Huygens a ‘probable’ one. Newton’s reaction against the insistence upon this accusation is the reason for his General Scholium’s famous dictum hypothesis non fingo, and not the erroneously popular belief that in general he dismissed hypothesis (a belief that would certainly contradict his Opticks). Recently Hall, who earlier had declared that Newton was not an alchemist, has argued that ‘though Newton did not assert hypothesis as truths, he framed them throughout his life’ (Hall, 1998, p. 58). Although the famous phrase has been usually given as ‘I frame no hypothesis’, following Motte’s 1729 translation, it should be better translated as ‘I feign no hypothesis’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 943), as has been convincingly argued by Koyré (1965, p. 35), because feign implies falsehood. On this, see also Cohen’s A Guide to Newton’s Principia (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 275–6). 21

In a letter dated 1715, Leibniz complained that ‘[a]ccording to their [Newtonians’] Doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his Watch from Time to Time’ (Clarke, 1717, p. 5), reflecting the idea of a complete and selfsufficient world. It is important to point out that when Newton argued that


Mechanical laws do not explain all phenomena of reality. As Drennon put it, for Newton ultimately: the universe, in its true essence, is not a mechanism, for mechanical laws cannot account for its origin and sustained existence. (1933–34, p. 405) Newton was a realist in his search for explanatory phenomena. Although he might appear to be suggesting a theological explanation for the cause of gravity, he clearly asserts that in explaining the motions of the heavenly bodies ‘it is enough that gravity really exists’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 943). In fact, Koyré brilliantly argued that Newton found a new metaphysical approach to nature in which the classic cosmos disappears, giving birth to ‘an open, indefinite, and even infinite universe’ (1965, p. 7). Indeed, Newton, the father of the universal law of gravitation, was even open to the possibility ‘that there may be more attractive Powers’ (Newton, 1931 [1704], p. 376). Before his death he is reported to have said: I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. (Quoted in Westfall, 1980, p. 863) Newton believed in truth; he very successfully uncovered part of it, but he was aware that much more underlay the realm of actuality.22 He believed in an all-encompassing natural philosophy; his theological and alchemical interests were not simple leisure pursuits, but part of his scheme of thought.23 His project even suggests a general micro–macro move between his Opticks and the Principia, founded on the intuition

the cause of gravity could not be mechanical, he is implying that gravity cannot be simply attributable to or determined by mechanical cause, that is, matter and motion, which is at the core of Descartes’s theory of vortices. Koyré points out: ‘As for the “mechanical” hypothesis, that is, those of Descartes, Huygens and Leibniz, they have no place in experimental philosophy [Newtonian method] simply because they attempt to do something that cannot be done’ (1957, p. 230, original emphasis). 22

23

In the suppressed introduction to the Opticks Newton asserts that ‘[t]o explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty and to leave the rest for others that come after you then to explain all things without making sure of anything' (McGuire, 1970, p. 183). On alchemy’s importance to Newton’s system, Dobbs left us her wonderful The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (1975) and then Janus Faces of Genius: The Role


that ‘if Nature be most simple & fully consonant to herself she observes the same method in regulating the motions of smaller bodies which she doth in regulating those of the greater’ (quoted in Westfall, 1980, p. 521). In fact, modern interpretations of Newtonianism mostly rely upon the Principia’s stunning results, confining the complexity of his methodological orientation to mathematical modelling, ignoring the importance of analysis in seeking for underlying causes. A purely materialistic or mechanistic natural philosophy was utterly impossible for Newton. In particular, the Cartesio–Leibnizian reduction of natural phenomena to a pure, self-sustaining and self-perpetuating mechanism was against Newton’s philosophy, but ironically became the landmark of ‘Newtonianism’. As Koyré pointed out, one consequence of the Newton–Leibniz debate (especially through Clarke’s famous polemic with Leibniz between 1715 and 1716),24 was that: The force of attraction which, for Newton, was a proof of the insufficiency of pure mechanism, a demonstration of the existence of higher, non-mechanical powers, the manifestation of God’s presence and action in the world, ceased to play this role, and became a purely natural force, a property of matter, that enriched mechanism instead of supplanting it. (Koyré, 1957, p. 274) When we turn to the study of social phenomena, there is one passage of Newton’s Opticks that perhaps adumbrated an ambitious Enlightenment of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (1991); see also Figala (1977, 1992 [1984]). McGuire and Rattansi, based on the ‘classical’ Scholia, give a fascinating analysis of the influence of prisca sapientia in Newton (see also White, 1998), concluding that ‘the heart of Newton’s philosophy of nature, the world of forces and active principles, lay categorically beyond the systems of the Opticks and the Principia’ (McGuire and Rattansi, 1995 [1966], p. 108). Nowadays there is no doubt that alchemy, theology (for references see Verlet (1996, p. 337, note 20)) and the traditions of ancient sages and philosophers, played a role shaping Newton’s conception of natural philosophy. However, the extent of its influence is still a matter of debate. In A Guide to Newton’s Principia, Cohen provides an excellent account of this issue (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 56–64), arguing that certain concepts of Newton’s natural philosophy are closely intertwined with his general concerns in alchemy, ancient wisdom and theology. 24

Samuel Clarke, an intimate friend of Newton, represented the philosophical views of his master replying to Leibniz’s famous five letters in a polemic that finished with the latter’s death, in 1716. Clarke published Leibniz’s letters and his replies in 1717 as A Collection of Papers which passed between the learned late Mr. Leibniz and Dr. Clarke, in the years 1715 and 1716. Relating to the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Religion.


undertaking. In query 31, the final paragraph of the Opticks, Newton remarked: And if natural Philosophy in all its Parts, by pursuing this Method, shall at length be perfected, the Bounds of Moral Philosophy will be also enlarged. (Newton, 1931 [1704], p. 405) This suggestion was taken seriously at the time. The belief that Newton’s ‘experimental philosophy’ could be applied to social phenomena was commonplace amongst the eighteenth-century intelligentsia, initiating a longstanding intellectual tradition (see Myers, 1983). The idea of a universal order that could be explained from the simple principle of gravitation was a discovery that fascinated the minds of the period. As Newton had discovered the laws governing natural phenomena, it was the task of moral philosophers to unveil the social realm. Therefore the methodological move from the celestial bodies to human society, based on what has been labelled the ‘principle of design’, could not wait any longer. Hume’s project to develop a ‘science of human nature’, or the ‘science of man’, was a clear example of this pursuit.25 With no barriers between the different branches of knowledge, the problem was not whether the Newtonian method could be transferred to the social realm, but how this new generation of ‘social scientists’ would attain this goal. The overwhelming success of Newtonian natural philosophy made it practically inevitable that the social sciences would try to conform to an empirico-deductive pseudo-Newtonian pattern. But it was the spectacular nature of Newton’s results that dominated this process, not the method used in achieving those results. This focus on results rather than on method is mainly a consequence of the paradoxical fact that the intellectuals of the French Enlightenment retained the Cartesio–Leibnizian precepts of ‘mechanical philosophy’, but underpinned by Newton’s successful discoveries. It was Condorcet, a friend and close collaborator of the Physiocrat Turgot, who later formulated his project of mathématique sociale. It was Laplace who answered, when asked by Napoleon about the place of God in his cosmological system, ‘I do not need that hypothesis’.

25

In the Introduction to his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume refers explicitly to the ‘application of experimental philosophy to moral subjects’ (Hume 2000 [1739–40], p. 4) and in his An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume compares his attempt to ‘Newton’s chief rule of philosophizing’ (Hume 1998 [1751], p. 98), certainly referring to Newton’s four rules, in the beginning of Book III of Principia (cf. Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 794–6).


In political economy, the Physiocrats followed this pseudo-Newtonian tradition, which was later adopted and adapted by Walras and played an important part in the subsequent development of general economic equilibrium theory. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Smith in particular, are different in the respect that their project was supported by an unmistakably distinctive philosophical approach (see Dow, 1987).26 Certainly, the views shared by Montesquieu, Diderot, d’Alembert, Helvétius, Condorcet and d’Holbach were different from those shared by their Scottish counterparts such as Smith, Hume and Ferguson, although there are clear mutual influences. The role of ‘natural history’ as an account of progress from the ‘early and rude state’ to ‘polished society’ is fundamental for the Scottish philosophers. Smith’s four stages theory is a way to understand the successive steps from the hunting stage, pastoral life and agriculture towards commercial society. This was the objective of natural history, and no wonder why the Scots were fascinated with the American natives. Yet the general search for first principles was encompassed within a larger project: the spring of social science. I have already questioned the widely accepted positivistic version of Newton that has been taken for granted by the main proponents of the marginal revolution and by mainstream economists alike.27 To put it 26

27

I believe that the character of the Scottish Enlightenment emerged from a unique and challenging atmosphere. After the parliaments of Scotland and England passed the Act of Union in 1707, for various reasons a provincial feeling among the Scottish intellectual community sprang up. A kind of ‘keeping up with the English’ feeling spread. This influenced the quality of their education. In addition, if the Scots would refer to the British after the Union, the English would still distinguish between them and the Scottish. Smith’s protests that in Oxford ‘the great part of the publick professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching’ (WN V.i.f.8, p. 761) is not only a consequence of personal bitterness, but also reflects a well founded belief. Smith’s point against Oxbridge was that ‘[t]he great fault which I find with Oxford and Cambridge, is that Boys sent tither instead of being Governed, become Governors of the Colleges, and that Birth and Fortune there are more respected than Literary Merit’ (Corr., p. 37). Smith’s opinion that the Scottish Universities were ‘the best seminaries of learning that are to be found anywhere in Europe’ (Corr., p. 173) was generally accepted. They had an outstanding reputation in Europe. Cohen states categorically that ‘Newton was not a positivist’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 279), arguing that Ernst Mach’s influential The Science of Mechanics; A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development had set out a biased interpretation of Newton (cf. Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 277). Mach considered that ‘[a]ll that has been accomplished in mechanics ... has been a deductive, formal,


mildly, Newton was neither sympathetic to the mechanistic view of the world, nor did he unconditionally endorse an axiomatic–deductive approach to reality. Rather, his central method was primarily oriented to uncovering causes, not to tracing the consequences of event regularities given initial conditions. Now it is time to turn our attention to Adam Smith, the ‘father of our science’.

5.3 Smithian Newtonianism 5.3.1 Some common views of Newton’s influence Between 1752 and the beginning of 1764 Adam Smith was Professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University. His lectures on this subject, as reported by his student and friend John Millar, basically comprised theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy or ‘expediency’ (EPS, pp. 274–5). This classification reveals the humanistic character of his project and reminds us of the noble origins of the discipline of economics.28 Indeed, an important feature of the Scottish Enlightenment in particular, and of the Enlightenment in general, was that the intellectual atmosphere was intensely multidisciplinary.29 The classical breakdown of philosophy into logic, moral philosophy and natural philosophy was still applied, but only meant that Scottish men of letters were simply philo-sophes in its wide etymological sense. Certainly ‘[t]he highest

and mathematical development on the basis of Newton’s laws’ (Mach, 1960 [1893], p. 226; note that, if we replace ‘mechanics’ by ‘economics’, this has a curious relationship to the current state of our discipline; see also his interesting section ‘The economy of sciences’, ibid., pp. 577–95). Incidentally, the mathematician Karl Menger, son of Carl Menger, wrote the introduction to the sixth American edition, and it was in his famous colloquium that Wald and von Neumann presented in 1934 and 1937, respectively, important papers for the development of general economic equilibrium theory (see Weintraub, 1983, pp. 5–15). 28

29

It was Marshall who, before retiring in 1908, finally won the battle to establish economics as an independent subject of study. But the ‘moral philosophy tradition’ of economics remained in Cambridge, with Keynes writing to Harrod in 1938 ‘I want to emphasise strongly the point about economics being a moral science’ (1973, p. 300). This feature of the Enlightenment, and the role of reason, is evident when Kant, in his An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, replies with Horace’s motto ‘Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! Is thus the motto of enlightenment’ (Kant, 1996 [1784], p. 17, emphasis in the original). Sapere aude literally means ‘dare to be wise’ or ‘dare to learn’.


compliment a Scottish scholar could receive was that he commanded a knowledge of wide-ranging subjects’ (Redman, 1993, p. 221; 1997, p. 110). Knowledge, without bounds, was part of a systematic inquiry to discover some simple philosophical principles governing all kinds of phenomena. It is therefore not surprising that Smith wrote about metaphysics, natural history, ethics, political economy, astronomy, rhetoric, jurisprudence,30 had a perfect command of Greek and Latin and was also interested in mathematics and physics. It has become almost commonplace to label Smith as Newtonian, a ‘system-builder’ (Skinner, 1976) who not only found inspiration in the father of modern physics, but also relied heavily on his method. In the general introduction to the WN’s Glasgow edition, the editors consider that ‘Smith sought to explain complex problems in terms of a small number of basic principles, and each conforms to the requirements of the Newtonian method in the broad sense of the term’ (WN, intr., p. 4). Skinner also believes that Smith’s economics ‘was originally conceived in the image of Newtonian physics’ (1979, p. 110). For Mark Blaug, the pivotal role of sympathy in TMS and that of self-interest in the WN ‘must be regarded as deliberate attempts by Smith to apply this Newtonian method first to ethics and then to economics’ (1992 [1980], p. 52).31 Few scholars, to my knowledge, have assumed a different position.32 But the problem is not whether Smith was or not a Newtonian, but what the actual nature of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ is. We have already seen that the epithet ‘Newtonian’ raises complex issues, and I have demonstrated that the positivistic interpretation of Newtonianism is not only biased, but also flawed. In this section we shall see that the answer to the question ‘How did Newton actually influence Smith?’ is also not straightforward. In particular, there is a widespread view that: Adam Smith took Newton’s conception of nature as a law-bound system of matter in motion as his model when he represented society as 30

31

32

Before his death, Smith ordered his executors to burn 16 folios that presumably contained part of his ambitious project of a treatise on jurisprudence. Soon after, Blaug adds that Smith ‘had a naïve view of what constituted Newton’s method’ (1992 [1980], p. 53), which is very disputable. I would rather agree with Cohen, who thinks that ‘Smith was well educated in Newtonian science’ (1994, p. 66). Phyllis Deane cautiously declares ‘[h]ow far Smith did apply a Newtonian scientific method to his inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations is debatable’ (1989, p. 61), and Deborah Redman, whose work has been very influential for this chapter, regardless of some points of disagreement,


a collection of individuals pursuing their self-interest in an economic order governed by the laws of supply and demand. (Hetherington, 1983, p. 498) And also that Smith’s methodology ‘presupposed the view that society is a compound of independent individuals, i.e. an aggregate of Robinson Crusoes’ (Freudenthal, 1981, p. 135). Moreover, Smith has come to be known as a precursor of Walrasian general equilibrium theory, because: both authors [Smith and Walras] looked to Newtonian celestial mechanics as a model for their vision of social science. (Jaffé, 1977, p. 19) I shall refute this mechanistic and atomistic view that, for Smith, individuals are no more than self-interested atoms that interact in society.33 And I shall question the interpretation of Smith as a forerunner of general equilibrium theory.34 But before I do so, it is useful to analyse some clues Smith gives about his methodological position. 5.3.2 Smith’s methodological stance and some misinterpretations Smith not only refers to ‘the great work of Sir Isaac Newton’ (TMS, III.2.2, p. 124), but also acknowledges numerous times his admiration for Newton’s philosophy.35 He is reported to have lectured that ‘the Newtonian method is undoubtedly the most Philosophical, and in every science whether of Moralls or Naturall philosophy’ (LRBL, p. 146), restating

argues that ‘persisting today in labeling Smith’s method Newtonian would be deceptive’ (1993, p. 225). 33

34

35

The literature on the generalised view that self-interest is the foundation of Smith’s economics is enormous, but I think the quotation that best reflects my point here is Stigler’s comment that the WN is ‘a stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest’ (Stigler, 1982, p. 136). Also interesting is Stigler’s claim, at the bicentenary conference of the publication of the WN, that ‘Adam Smith is alive and well living in Chicago’ (Skinner, 1988, p. 2), though it must be acknowledged that during 2001–02 five PhD Dissertations related to Smith were submitted at the University of Chicago. Winch convincingly argues against those who still want to view Smith as a precursor of general equilibrium theory, but he believes that ‘[w]hat Smith praised as "Newtonian method" fits his own work as well as that of general equilibrium theorists’ (1997, p. 399). For example: ‘[t]he superior genius and sagacity of Sir Isaac Newton, therefore, made the most happy, and, we may now say, the greatest and most admirable improvement that was ever made in philosophy’ (EPS, p. 98).


Newton’s suggestion of his method of natural philosophy as being adequate to moral philosophy. Although the view that natural philosophy constituted a model for the development of moral philosophy was widely accepted, in my opinion Adam Smith did not unconditionally support it. In fact, he was aware that the complexity of human phenomena, of which political economy was a part, could not be simply reduced to a mechanistic analogue of the natural realm. For Smith, human affairs cannot be reduced to a mathematical-deductive method in order to emulate Newton’s success in his Principia. Smith did not view man as an isolated atom but, following the ‘civic humanistic tradition’ (Pocock, 1975, 1983, 1985), as a zoˆ on politikón. In my view, he has too readily been assimilated to the natural jurisprudential tradition, neglecting the evidence that he is thinking within a more ‘humanist’ tradition (see Chapter 3). The latter implies a broader view of human beings as members of society, as human beings situated in an economic/societal position.36 For example, his reaction against the ‘man of system’ constitutes clear evidence of his view of human beings as members of society, and not as isolated atoms. Using the metaphor of individuals as pieces upon a chess-board, the ‘man of system’ who intends to control individuals as mere pieces forgets that ‘in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own’ (TMS, VI.ii.2.17, p. 234). But this movement is not uniform, neither it is the result of homogeneous human natures. It is the member of society moving autonomously, as an internally structured and complex human being who lives in an open and changing society. That is why no one can control human affairs. In corroboration of this point, Smith is continuously aware of the ineluctable ‘unintended consequences’ that are pervasive in reality. Therefore, to restrict Adam Smith to a mechanistic-empiricist-positivist view of human beings is to ignore his humanistic legacy. Another example of the social nature of human beings is when, referring to the fundamental role of the impartial spectator, Smith imagines an isolated man: Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own 36

Lawson has underlined the nature of social conflict in Smith’s WN as proof of his non-atomistic view of human beings (1994, pp. 528–33). On Smith and different aspects of civic humanism, as it is clear in chapter 3, I am indebted to some influential essays in Hont and Ignatieff (1983) and to Winch (1978, 1996, 2002) who, although cautious and even critical at times, is influenced by this historical approach.


species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at, and with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can present them to his view. Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. (TMS III.I.3, p. 110) This passage constitutes clear proof of the social nature of human beings that underlies Smith’s system. In his early essay ‘The Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of Astronomy’ – ‘the pearl of the collection’, according to Schumpeter (1994 [1954], p. 182) – Smith hints at his methodological position.37 Before investigating the different stages of astronomical discoveries, he explains how psychological principles direct scientific endeavour. Surprise (‘what is unexpected’), wonder (‘what is new and singular’) and admiration (‘what is great and beautiful’) correspond to the different and successive mental stages of our ‘philosophical enquiries’. Surprise is ‘[t]he violent and sudden change produced upon the mind, when an emotion of any kind is brought suddenly upon it’ (EPS, p. 35). Wonder is ‘that uncertainty and anxious curiosity excited by its singular appearance, and by its dissimilitude with all the objects he had hitherto observed’ (EPS, p. 40). The sentiment of surprise exalts the novelty of wonder, ‘the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy’ (EPS, p. 51). Finally, admiration is attained with the discovery of ‘the real chains which Nature makes use of to bind together her several operations’ (EPS, p. 105). Curiosity, intellectual dissatisfaction and scientific success that will soothe the mind, represent these three states of the mind. The philosophical move underlying Smith’s methodology is that these ‘sentiments’ (surprise, wonder and admiration) must lead to uncovering the ‘nature and causes’ of natural and social phenomena. Therefore this particular psychological development of science entails not only an aesthetic view, but also a methodological position that must not be 37

I use ‘hinting at’ advisedly as this essay was written before 1758 (see EPS, p. 103), and perhaps much earlier, while Smith was studying in Oxford. However, this does not mean that the History of Astronomy represents simply a juvenile work. Its importance is evident, as Smith did not include it amongst those essays that were burned just before his death. Moreover, it seems that he cared about this piece, because in 1773, when Smith was ill, and Hume was his literary executor, Smith mentions this essay as publishable (see Corr., p. 168).


exclusively constructed by looking to reason (Descartes), and certainly not to hidden causes (Scholastics), but by surveying reality in its broad realm. Experience, induction and also introspection play a relevant role in this process. Smith defines philosophy recurrently ‘as the science of the connecting principles of nature’ that ‘endeavours to introduce order into the chaos of jarring and discordant appearances’ (EPS, pp. 45–6, emphasis added). Moreover, its aim is to ‘lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature’ (EPS, p. 51, emphasis added). Smith’s philosophy, following Newton, gives priority to the method of resolution, that is, to uncovering the real structures underlying phenomena, as the task of the philosopher is finally to reveal these ’concealed connections’. One particular feature of Newton’s natural philosophy, completely different from Smith’s moral philosophy, is that the Principia, and to a lesser extent the Opticks, are highly mathematical. In the Preface to the Principia’s first edition, Newton declared ‘it has seemed best in this treatise to concentrate on mathematics as it relates to natural philosophy’ (Newton, 1999 [1686], p. 381), and certainly he went very far in this relation.38 However, Smith is very cautious, and rather sceptical about the use of mathematics in moral philosophy. He explicitly declares, ‘the utility of those sciences [the higher parts of mathematics], either to the individual or the public, is not very obvious’ (TMS, IV.2.7, p. 189). In a letter regarding Webster’s compilation of Scottish population figures for a pension scheme, Smith declares: You know that I have little faith in Political Arithmetic and this story does not contribute to mend my opinion of it. (Corr., p. 288) Again, Smith declares in his WN: ‘I have no great faith in political arithmetic’ (WN, IV.v.b.30, p. 534). His method in economics (and a fortiori in ethics),39 with the exception of some simple arithmetical operations such as averages, is not mathematical at all.

38

39

Cohen (1980) argues that the uniqueness of Newton’s revolution was the creation of a ‘mathematical’ system of nature. He labels the ‘Newtonian style’ as an unmatched stage of scientific progress, as Newton applied geometry, algebra, fluxions, limit procedures and infinite series to natural phenomena. In his A Guide to Newton’s Principia, he summarises this position (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 148–55). For example, ‘the never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson’ (Corr., p. 309) would occasionally resort to ‘applying mathematical calculation to moral subjects’ (Hutcheson, 1726 [1725], p. 194). See especially An Inquiry into the Original of our


Jevons’s attempt to treat economics as a ‘Calculus of Pleasure and Pain’ that ‘must be mathematical science in matter if not in language’ (Jevons, 1965 [1871], p. vii) is an important feature of the so-called marginal revolution that has been exceedingly influential in modern mainstream economics. Smith, in contrast to the general emphasis on mathematics that characterises neoclassical economics, which has been taken even further by modern mainstream economics, was sceptical about the use of mathematics in the social sciences.40 But for Jevons, even Adam Smith ‘the father of the science, as he is often considered ... is thoroughly mathematical’ (ibid., p. xxii). Indeed, celebrating the centennial of the publication of the WN, Jevons emphasised that: a hundred years ago it was very wise of Adam Smith to attempt no subdivision, but to expound his mathematical theory (for I hold that his reasoning was really mathematical in nature) in conjunction with concrete applications and historical illustrations. (Jevons, 1905, pp. 200–1) It seems no mere coincidence that almost a century later, for the WN’s bicentenary, Samuelson briefly endeavours a vindication of Smith, but this time ‘to raise his stature as an economic theorist’ (Samuelson, 1977, p. 42). Apparently his well-known dictum, ‘equations are sentences, pure and simple’ (Samuelson, 1952, p. 59), not only establishes a necessary relation between mathematics and language, but also a sufficient one, as Samuelson states that: Smithian functions, never before written down explicitly in quite this way, are concave and first-degree-homogeneous. (Ibid., p. 48) Adam Smith must be looking forward to the year 2076! These misinterpretations have fostered the generally accepted view of a peculiar ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, not only restricting Newton’s method to just its mathematical and deductivist parts, but also confining

Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1726 [1725], pp. 182–90) and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passion with Illustrations upon Moral Sense (1728, pp. 34–40). 40

Smith’s position probably reflects the Scottish reaction against abstract mathematics and their preference for geometry (Olson, 1971), which, by the way, is very ‘Newtonian’. Redman (1997, pp. 250–3) defends the thesis that Smith was not an opponent of statistics, but only that he was simply reacting against a lot of guessing. However, she endorses the view that Smith was against the use of mathematics in political economy.


Smith’s broad philosophical project to the narrowness of mainstream economics’ emphasis on axiomatic–deductive models. Indeed, one consequence of this ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ is to make Adam Smith a forerunner of general equilibrium theory. Chapter 7 ‘Of the natural and market Price of Commodities’ of Book I of the WN has been routinely considered as the foundation of general equilibrium, and the ‘invisible hand’ is the popular metaphor used to explain this idealised order. For example Schumpeter, not an admirer of Smith, considers Walras’s general equilibrium as the ‘Magna Charta of economic theory’ (Schumpeter, 1994 [1954], p. 968), and repeatedly complains about Smith’s lack of originality. But Schumpeter praises the: rudimentary equilibrium theory of Chapter 7, by far the best piece of economic theory turned out by A. Smith. (Ibid., p. 189) Similarly, Lionel Robbins eulogises the achievement of the WN which is ‘in harmony with the most refined apparatus of the modern School of Lausanne’ (1962 [1932], p. 69). Samuel Hollander, applying our modern knowledge of general equilibrium to an understanding of Smith’s price mechanism, refers to ‘the remarkable chapter’ (1973, p. 117). Later he argues that ‘still a price-theoretic orientation to the Wealth of Nations’ has not been contradicted (Hollander, 1987, p. 61), concluding that chapter 7 ‘contains an embryonic account of general equilibrium theory’ (ibid., p. 65). And Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn, in their first chapter, written by Arrow, consider the invisible hand as ‘a poetic expression’ and ascribe Smith as ‘a creator of general equilibrium theory’ (1971, p. 2).41 The expression ‘invisible hand’ occurs three times in Smith's writings, in his essay in EPS, ‘The History of Astronomy’, in the TMS and also the bestknown version in the WN. Its first appearance is definitely ironic, reacting, as usual, against ‘the poison of enthusiasm and superstition’. Smith refers to the origin of polytheism: ‘fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters’ (EPS, p. 49, emphasis added). In the TMS he mentions the ‘natural selfishness and rapacity’ of rich people who ‘are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life’ (TMS, IV.I.10, pp. 184–5). Not in terms of distribution, 41

Kerr (1993) rebuts this neoclassical interpretation of Smith simply in terms of the market mechanism, proposing a framework for understanding his theory as one of endogenous technical change and growth.


but when analysing the restraints upon importation, does Smith in the WN refer explicitly to the beneficial consequences of promoting selfinterest, as people are ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention’ (WN, IV.ii.9, p. 456). There has been a vast industry interpreting the invisible hand. Recently Grampp (2000) has detected 10 possible interpretations for Smith’s metaphor (including his own),42 but, the version that relates it to general equilibrium is probably, as we have already suggested, the most popular and widely accepted among mainstream economists. Paul Samuelson, embodying the view of economic theorists, follows Schumpeter’s insight, claiming that ‘these partial equilibrium relations are well-determined by Smith’s relations of general equilibrium’ as with ‘the INVISIBLE HAND doctrine, self-interest, under perfect competition, can organize a society’s production efficiently’ (Samuelson, 1977, p. 47, original emphasis). Elsewhere, he praises openly ‘the genius of Smith’s formulation of a general equilibrium model’ (Samuelson, 1992, p. 5). Before analysing the famous chapter 7 to see whether it is somehow a precursor of Walrasian general equilibrium, and thus confirming this generally accepted interpretation, I shall comment briefly on Walras’s methodological position.43 This is necessary to reveal a fundamental and curiously neglected methodological difference between the architect of general equilibrium and its foremost forerunner. In addition, this contrast will shed light upon Smith’s methodology, showing that the view of Smith as a precursor of general equilibrium theory is simply instrumental to the neoclassical economics project.

5.4 Walras versus Smith 5.4.1 The Walrasian methodology of economics In his Elements of Pure Economics or The Theory of Social Wealth, Walras states in the Preface to the fourth edition (1900) that ‘[i]t is already perfectly clear that economics, like astronomy and mechanics, is both an empirical

42

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Warren Samuels is working in a project on the invisible hand, and he has already detected 48 different senses for Smith’s metaphor. I shall concentrate exclusively on Walras not only because he is the father of general equilibrium theory, but also because his methodological position permeates the modern development of general economic equilibrium theory, in which the latter’s emphasis on existence surpasses even the former in terms of its detachment from reality. However, a caveat must apply: we must not ‘confuse Walras with the present day Walrasians’ (Morishima, 1977, p. 5).


and a rational science’ (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 47), foreshadowing his concluding remark that in ‘[t]he twentieth century ... mathematical economics will rank with the mathematical sciences of astronomy and mechanics; and on that day justice will be done to our work’ (ibid., p. 48). It appears that even as we have entered the twenty-first century, Walras’s aspiration still dominates our discipline. Walras complains that Smith’s definition of political economy is inadequate,44 arguing that ‘[t]he primary concern of the economist is not to provide a plentiful revenue for the people or to supply the State with an adequate income, but to pursue and master purely scientific truths’ (ibid., p. 52, emphasis added). Emphasising the is and ought distinction, Walras states that pure economics is as scientific as natural science, a clear expression of the character of the Newtonian revolution applied to the social realm. What happens in reality or what is normative is a different issue: What ought to be from the point of view of material well-being is the concern of applied science or art; while what ought to be from the point of view of justice is the concern of moral science or ethics. (Ibid., p. 60) Therefore, in the ought to realm, we have applied economics (category of relations between persons and things: industry) and ethics (category of relations between persons and persons: institutions).45 In conclusion, Walras posits a threefold classification of political economy as a social science into pure, applied and social economics (ibid., pp. 60–4). Science, or pure economics, differs from art and ethics in that it deals with natural phenomena, not with human phenomena. Regarding human phenomena, Walras distinguishes between art (applied economics) and ethics (social economics). They differ, since the former category comprises the relations between persons and things, and the 44

45

Jaffé suggests that ‘it is doubtful that Walras ever read the Wealth of Nations attentively’ (ibid., p. 26), and attributes Walras’s neglect of Smith as a predecessor of his theory of general equilibrium to his ‘fanatical anglophobia’ (1977, p. 31). This distinction is part of the partially unfinished project of Walras’s second book, Elements of Applied Economics of the Theory of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Commercial Production of Wealth, and his third book, Elements of Social Economics or The Theory of Distribution of Wealth via Property and Taxation. Two papers on these issues were published in 1898 and 1896 (Études d’économie politique appliquée and Études d’économie sociale, respectively).


latter category comprises the relations between persons. Walras’s classification is dissected in the following table:

Pure economics Applied economics Social economics

Domain

Criteria

Object

Generic phenomena

Science Art

Truth Useful

Ethics

Good

Universals Material well-being Justice

Value in exchange Industry or production of wealth Property or distribution of wealth

I refer deliberately to Walras’s object of pure economics as ‘universals’ in order to underline his explicit, but neglected, Platonic view of science: A truth long ago demonstrated by the Platonic philosophy is that science does not study corporeal entities but universals of which these entities are manifestations. (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 61) Also, in a letter he declares: I am an idealist. I believe ideas reshape the world after their own image ... I am swimming against the current of my century. Facts are now the fashion. (Quoted in Jaffé, 1980, pp. 532–3, note 14) Walras not only has a Platonic view of science in itself, but the leap from pure economics to applied economics is done in a Platonic way.46 As economists we should proceed by reaching the world of ideas, and then, like the philosopher-king, we should descend to our worldly reality. In his own words: the pure science of economics should then abstract and define idealtype concepts in terms of which it carries on its reasoning. The return to reality should not take place until the science is completed and then only with a view to practical applications. (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 71) Moreover, pure economics represented by ‘the theory of value in exchange is really a branch of mathematics’ (ibid., p. 70), and it ‘must 46

Pokorny (1978) rightly underlines the Platonic nature of Walrasian economics, to which Smith was clearly opposed, as their main and insurmountable difference. Unfortunately this philosophical feature of Walras has been generally ignored.


precede applied economics; and this pure theory of economics is a science which resembles the physico-mathematical sciences in every respect’ (ibid., p. 71). If Newton, observing the attraction between bodies, could infer the law of gravity, Walras’s intention, after contemplating the phenomenon of exchange, was to derive an analogous general equilibrium theory.47 This conflation of pure economics with mechanics was a natural consequence of the ‘mechanical philosophy’ tradition, which, since the French Enlightenment, and especially among the Economistes, adopted Newton’s success as its scientific archetype. The application of mathematics to social phenomena, as one fundamental characteristic of the so-called marginal revolution, is an offspring of this tradition.48 Not surprisingly, Walras wrote that ‘the natural economic mechanism is, within certain limits, a self-moving and self-regulating mechanism’ (quoted in Ingrao and Israel, 1990, p. 386). This reduction of social phenomena to mathematics evolved with Pareto until Debreu finally made the crucial step: the theory’s axiomatisation, the culmination of Walras’s Platonic ideal. For Walras, ideas not only precede but also surpass reality,49 or, in other words, pure economics has a ubiquitous priority over practical and ethical issues. Jaffé (1980) summed up this argument: It is clear that Walras had no liking for realism as such. In fact, he vehemently denounced it in all its manifestations: in art and in literature as well as in philosophy, science and economics. (Ibid., p. 532)

47

48

49

It is well known that Walras developed his general equilibrium theory with the image of the equilibrium of mechanical forces in his mind, inspired by Poinsot’s 1803 treatise Eléments de statique. Cohen argues that the social sciences have failed in their attempt to emulate the Newtonian sciences. He even claims, against those who would like to see general equilibrium theory as Newtonian, that ‘[o]ne cannot even make a mechanical model of the Newtonian system. In the Newtonian system ... there is no equilibrium’ (1994, p. 61). I agree with Walker (1984) who challenges Jaffé’s interpretation of Walrasian general equilibrium as normative. The view of Walras’s methodology as ‘realistic utopia’ (Jaffé, 1980, p. 533) is disputable, at least in its modern versions. See Lawson (1989, p. 73, note 2) for a brief but insightful account of how contemporary general equilibrium theory has become more idealised. For a perceptive treatment of the intellectual development of general economic equilibrium theory Ingrao and Israel (1990) still provide, in my view, the best account. Weintraub (1983) presents an interesting account of the modern development of competitive equilibrium.


5.4.2 Smith’s controversial chapter 7 of book I In Chapter 7, ‘Of the natural and market Price of Commodities’, of Book I of the WN, Adam Smith succinctly develops what has been commonly considered as the foundations of general equilibrium theory. He refers to the natural (ordinary or average) rates of wages, profit and rent, which define the natural price of commodities. This natural price differs from the market (or actual) price that is determined by effective demand. Smith explains how a decrease in the quantity supplied triggers competition among consumers, thereby increasing prices, and how an increase in the ‘quantity brought to the market’ forces suppliers to lower prices. And, as a conclusion, we have the following influential passage: The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. Different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below. But whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this center of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards it. (WN, I.vii.15, p. 75, emphasis added) The use of the word gravitating and the idea of a center of repose have been commonly accepted as additional evidence of Newton’s influence.50 Furthermore, Smith twice in this chapter refers to his system of ‘perfect liberty’, suggesting a perfectly competitive market, a harmonious order constituted by crypto-atomistic consumers and producers. This has been fundamental to interpreting Smith as a precursor of general equilibrium theory, and of the theorems of welfare economics. But after a couple of pages discussing some facts about price volatility and how fluctuations affect rent, wages and profits, Smith continues: But although the market price of every particular commodity is in this manner continually gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural price, yet sometimes particular accidents, sometimes natural causes, and sometimes particular regulations of police, may, in many commodities, keep up the market price, for a long time together, a good deal above natural price. (WN, I.vii.20, p. 77, emphasis added)

50

Redman’s view that ‘[i]n Smith’s day invoking Newton’s name and borrowing his terminology was a commonly used rhetorical device’ (Redman, 1993, p. 225) is quite relevant. For the intellectually widespread use of this rhetoric and its philosophical significance, see especially Myers (1983).


It is noteworthy that in this passage Smith carefully adds after gravitating, ‘if one may say so’, underlining its metaphorical character. Certainly, the tone of this second passage is different, but the basic economic idea of a tendency, in its vernacular sense, remains. But Smith then immediately explores the three reasons why market prices can exceed natural prices. Thus his attempt is to explain the causes of deviations in natural price, to discover the nature of these ‘different’ and ‘particular’ accidents, not to reduce these phenomena to a final state. To conclude that Smith had a view of prices as teleologically ‘gravitating’ towards an equilibrium in which individuals behave as isolated atoms motivated simply by self-interest – and thus a clear indication of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ – is a conclusion that has to be laid to rest. The universal law of gravitation, as I have already stressed, was fundamental during the Enlightenment. It was the cornerstone of scientific success, and its terminology was widely used. Smith was no exception,51 as most intellectuals not only relied on Newton’s success, but also borrowed directly from his rhetoric. But is Smith’s realistic account of economic phenomena paving the way for an ontologically atomistic-mechanistic general equilibrium theory? My answer is emphatically negative. First of all, we know that general equilibrium theory, since Walras’s early contributions, has become increasingly mathematical, basically emulating the results of what Cohen (1980) terms the Principia’s ‘Newtonian style’. But we have already argued that Smith opposed the use of sophisticated mathematics in political economy. Second, unconditional faith in a rational order, characterised by harmony, stability, balance or equilibrium, was a particularly French phenomenon, pervasive in Lavoisier, Laplace, Condillac, Lagrange, Condorcet and particularly in the Physiocrats. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Smith in particular, did not consider that social phenomena could be reduced simply to such an assumption. Indeed, Smith used the word equilibrium only once in the WN, when criticising the doctrine of the balance of trade (WN, IV.iii.c.2, p. 489). The word equilibrium, that had been previously been introduced into the language of political economy by the Physiocrats,52 the real forebears of general economic

51

52

Cohen not only affirms that Smith understood Newton better than did Montesquieu and Carey, but also shows that Smith’s notion of prices is closer to the real Newtonian system (1994, pp. 65–6). Rothschild points out that ‘Turgot and Condorcet use the word “équilibre” fairly frequently in their economic writings’ (2001, p. 312, note 147). Indeed, Turgot might be considered a closer forerunner of general economic equilibrium


equilibrium theory, does not appear in other relevant passages that might suggest a relationship with general equilibrium theory. Moreover, regarding Smith’s teleological view of the market, he is considering a process, not a final state. Blaug has expressed this view bluntly: The effort in modern textbooks to enlist Adam Smith in support of what is now known as the ‘fundamental theorems of welfare economics’ is a historical travesty of major proportions. For one thing, Smith’s conception of competition was ... a process conception, not an end-state conception. (Blaug, 1997 [1962], p. 60)53 And third, the development of general economic equilibrium theory has produced progressively more idealised models, inspired by the Walrasian Platonistic picture of pure economics,54 and increasingly removed from reality. If the Walrasian tradition of pure economics, and especially its contemporary mainstream inheritors, are highly idealist, Smith’s political economy is definitely realist. These three points are intertwined. Smith not only belonged to a tradition that reacted against the metaphysics of Plato (third point), but also against the Cartesian rationalism that influenced mechanical philosophy (first and second points). He evidently shared Newton’s apprehension about reducing all phenomena to mechanical causes. This is ontologically fundamental. Mechanical reductionism applied to economics demands the use of sophisticated mathematics to explain the harmony of market forces within an idealised general equilibrium model.

theory. I am indebted to Jochen Runde for pointing out that not mentioning equilibrium does not necessarily imply not believing in it. However, I still believe that the point, although far from conclusive, is important to my argument, and to me the possibility that Smith might have consciously avoided the use of the word ‘equilibrium’ seems perfectly plausible. 53

54

For example Mas-Collel et al.’s popular Microeconomic Theory reads: ‘The first fundamental theorem of welfare economies states conditions under which any price equilibrium with transfers, and in particular any Walrasian equilibrium, is a Pareto optimum. For competitive market economics, it provides a formal and very general confirmation of Adam Smith’s asserted “invisible hand” property of the market’ (Mas-Collel et al., 1995, p. 549; see also pp. 327 and 524). Walras’s project is perhaps the most radical precursor of the conditions Lawson attributes to what today would be termed as ‘economic theory’ or ‘pure theory’ (Lawson, 1997, pp. 86–7). Certainly, this idealised mathematical pure economics project has become archetypal for mainstream economists with their emphasis on formalistic deductivist models.


In conclusion, this reductionism presupposes a closed system, an assumption that is at the core of mechanical philosophy and at the heart of mainstream economics, especially in relation to general equilibrium theory. The conviction, held by mainstream economists, that social phenomena can be treated mechanically, and individuals atomistically, has been wrongly ascribed to something that might be called ‘Smithian Newtonianism’. The latter is a doubly spurious interpretation of Newton and Smith that has pervaded neoclassical and mainstream economics and underlies the development of modern economic general equilibrium theories. If mainstream economists have simply relegated Newtonianism to forces in equilibrium, neglecting Newton’s method of resolution, this mechanical order, in their view, influenced Smith’s conception of the market mechanism. Moreover, economic theorists share the widespread interpretation that Smith’s conception of market forces has been enhanced by an atomistic conception of human beings. This mechanistic-atomistic reading of Smith has been used to make him the ‘father of the science’, but only of the science of neoclassical and mainstream economics.

5.5 Some possible methodological connections with critical realism Smith’s general attempt to uncover the nature of political economy, and in particular to illuminate the ‘different accidents’ (WN, I.vii.15, p. 75) of the market mechanism, cannot be considered either a philosophical, or a theoretical, predecessor of general equilibrium theory. If the theories of general economic equilibrium presuppose a closed system, Smith’s realism in political economy cannot be confined to the narrowness of this project. Indeed, ‘Adam Smith’s portrayal of the economy is hardly reducible simply and unambiguously to a system of spontaneous harmonious order’ (Lawson, 1994, p. 531). I shall now briefly emphasise some similarities between Smith’s philosophical position and the project recently systematised as critical realism. I argue that a proper interpretation of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, a serious assessment of what Smith does share with Newton, reveals his project to be closer to that of critical realism than to the axiomatic–deductive programme embraced by modern mainstream economists. The intuition that we live in an open system in which tendencies are ‘transfactual’, that is, they are (or are in play) irrespective of what happens (the actual outcome that emerges), is implicit in Smith’s general attempt to uncover the ‘nature and causes’ of the market mechanism. I maintain not only that


critical realism sheds further light on our understanding of Smith, but also that critical realism can find in the ‘father of the science’ an eminent ally for arguing against the mainstream insistence on axiomatic–deductive models. The idea of celestial order, strengthened by the ontology of mechanical philosophy, proved to be extremely influential for the development of economics. Tony Lawson has argued of the celestial closure associated with Newtonian mechanics that: it is precisely its spectacular nature that accounts for some part of the general failure from Laplace onwards to realize that the situation is relatively uncommon, to appreciate that the celestial closure is far from being indicative of the phenomenal situation that can be expected to prevail more or less everywhere. (1997, pp. 29–30) Smith’s aim was not the realisation of a theoretical model of the market mechanism from which a conjunction of events can be deduced. Neither was he the traditional empiricist confining his philosophical mind exclusively to the empirical and actual domains of reality. His ambitious intellectual pursuit was to uncover the real structures underlying social and moral phenomena, and the aim of chapter 7 of the WN is to unpack the ‘nature and the causes’ of the market. The mainstream project of general economic equilibrium, in particular, deviates substantially from Smith’s intention. If prices potentially tend to a natural price, Smith never reduces the potentiality of the price mechanism to an actuality defined in a closed system. In general, Smith’s political economy does not presuppose a deductivist view of the world as a set of theories erected upon the event regularity conception of laws. Critical realism poses the concept of tendency as fundamental to its scientific project. In its broader sense, tendencies are potentialities that may not be actualised because we live in an open system (ibid., pp. 22–3, and passim). They belong to the real or ‘deep’ domain of underlying structures, powers and mechanisms that do or may ‘exist’, regardless of being identified. Tendencies are non-empirical; they are rather ‘transfactual’. They can either be manifest, as in Newton’s explanation of the movement of planets, or underlying observable phenomena, like gravity. It is the latter that reveals the real stability. Even planetary motion may be disrupted, say by an undetected massive meteoroid (ibid., pp. 29–30). This is a common and important feature of tendencies that has been routinely ignored within modern mainstream economics. Although Smith is


using ‘tending towards’ in a vernacular sense, his elucidation of the price mechanism, encompassed within his methodological position, is an attempt to reveal the ‘real’ causes underlying the phenomena, which is the primary object of social science. Therefore his emphasis on uncovering ‘the particular accidents ... natural causes, and ... particular regulations of police’ (WN, I.vii.20, p. 77) does not necessarily imply a ubiquitous and all-encompassing closed system. Tendencies, simply viewed as manifest strict event regularities, miss the ‘real’ but not necessarily actualised nature of most social phenomena. This failure is represented by an unreal ‘decentralized economy motivated by self-interest and guided by price signals’ (Arrow and Hahn, 1971, pp. vi–vii), disguised as a clear, simple and abstract, but closed mathematical model. Uncovering the nature of the market mechanism phenomenon was part of Smith’s intention. Looking for the causes was his scientific motto. In this sense his aim was to reveal the ‘nature and causes’ underlying social phenomena. Furthermore, Smith’s project, as an interdisciplinary endeavour seeking to uncover the real causes behind social phenomena, is not compatible with the currently dominant idealised neoclassical and mainstream economics. It forms part of an open system, not only in terms of its evident but neglected multidisciplinary aim, but also in its methodological stance. Newton’s analytic-synthetic method emphasises the precedence of the method of resolution over the method of composition, underlining his assessment that the major difficulties are in the former, and not in the synthetic and mathematical deductions that necessarily follow. Smith adopted the spirit of Newton’s method, but he does not favour induction, and neither does he favour deduction. Both, Newton and Smith react against reducing phenomena to mechanical causes, sharing in common a philosophical project, in Smith’s words, to ‘lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature’ (EPS, p. 51). Critical realism has defended a retroductive mode of inference, which is neither deduction, nor induction. Its aim is also to reveal the ‘concealed connections’, that is, to uncover the mechanisms that exist at a deeper level. Retroduction, as a mode of inference, involves a dialectical movement that attempts to identify the factors responsible for phenomena, and not simply to generalise them. It appears to me clear that critical realism as a philosophical position, and retroduction, as a primary method of uncovering the causes of phenomena, is closer to Smith, and also to Newton, than is the restrictive mainstream economists’ emphasis on axiomatic–deductive models.


Smith’s methodological stance regarding ‘surprise, wonder and admiration’ (see supra Section 5.3.2), which has a longstanding philosophical pedigree, is also similar to that of modern day critical realism: theoretical explanatory enquiry is likely to be initiated or further stimulated where contrastive demi-regs occasion a sense of surprise, doubt or inconsistency, either between the observed phenomenon and a set of prior beliefs, or between competing explanations of it, and so forth. (Lawson, 1997, p. 211) It is certainly ‘surprise’ and the sense of doubt occasioned by ‘wonder’ that play a central role for philosophy, triggering a process of uncertainty that finally transforms our understanding into the illumination of reality. Also, Smith’s definition of philosophy as aiming to ‘lay open the concealed connections’ clearly reflects his conception of the nature of reality as not always actualised. Therefore we can infer that Smith’s philosophical position presupposes existence, while acknowledging that it is usually concealed. In addition, the idea of change, as inherently embedded in social life, and the evidence of ‘unintended consequences’ are fundamental to Adam Smith and fully shared by the project of critical realism, with its criticism of mainstream models that attempt to control reality as if human beings were uniform molecules in a laboratory.

5.6 Conclusions The popular and biased version of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ that I have attempted to expose has fostered a mechanistic reduction of social phenomena, and an atomistic view of human beings. Indeed, Newton’s Principia inspired a succession of Principles (Bentham, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Jevons and Marshall, to name the most influential), but Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with its suggestive and original title, definitely inspired but did not necessarily lead to the neoclassical project. The question that must be asked is, what happened to the real ‘Smithian Newtonianism’? Regarding its neglect, I believe there is a shared responsibility between what might be called an enlightened mechanical reductionism of social phenomena and an atomistic philosophical utilitarianism.55 In this context, the emphasis 55

‘It was this view of individuals as members of society, rather than isolated atoms, which provided the basic principles underlying Scottish political economy, differentiating it from formal utilitarianism’ (Dow, 1987, p. 341). Veblen


on measuring, presupposing atomistic behaviour in a closed system, represents the twilight of the Scottish political economy tradition. In particular, as I have argued above, Walras’s methodological approach in pure economics, as the foundation of general economic equilibrium theory, is the historical predecessor par excellence of what Lawson (1997) has defined as the ubiquity of spontaneous closed systems that characterise deductivism in modern economics. Walras’s explicit reliance upon Plato’s ideals clearly contrasts with the realist view of phenomena, which prevailed during the Scottish Enlightenment, and was fully endorsed by Smith. The Walrasian legacy of pure economics, as a particular version of Newtonianism applied to economics, ignores the fundamental feature that individuals are internally structured and inherently complex, and that we act in an open and changing world. Faith in reducing the complexities of economic behaviour to a mathematical model, inspired by mechanical philosophy, is simply inconsistent with Smith’s broader project. The Scottish political economy tradition, represented by Adam Smith, has been increasingly marginalised in contemporary economics (Dow, 1987). Even worse, Smith has been unjustly confined to the tight quarters of mainstream economics. He became the father of a highly deductivist science: pure economic theorising. He has been praised as the founder of general equilibrium theory, a Walrasian offspring whose spirit could hardly be more contrary to Smith’s philosophical position. Were he alive today, Smith would certainly lament the divorce of economics and ethics, epitomised by the hackneyed fact/value distinction. He would regret that currently mathematical axioms or assumptions not evident in themselves have replaced familiar principles. He would also complain that mathematics has become the method of economics. It is not without relevance that the often quoted but rarely read WN was written for the general public, not for the expert mathematician. Political economy was a broad and interdisciplinary subject within moral philosophy. Its realism and practical insight in tackling policy matters are lacking in today’s mainstream economics. Such straightforward characteristics are not only shared by critical realists and the majority of historians of economic thought, but are at the core of their project. Unfortunately, the original aim of Smith’s broad philosophical inquiry has been ignored, leading to diverse, and usually defends the same thesis: ‘[a]fter Adam Smith’s day, economics fell into profane hands ... it was the undevout utilitarians that became the spokesmen of the science’ (Veblen, 1933 [1899–1900], p. 130).


opposing versions of the legacy of ‘the father of the science’. The voice of critical realism is a healthy call for a more ‘realistic’ approach to our discipline, and Adam Smith’s enduring whisper embodies a vigorous tradition of political economy that has been overshadowed by somewhat naïve if influential interpretations.

6 Conclusions

Mark Blaug (2001), in his recent ‘No History of Ideas, Please, We’re Economists’, after questioning the growing interest in our ‘not vocationally useful’ field, distinguishes between ‘rational reconstructions’ and ‘historical reconstructions’. As texts must be reconstructed, the question is how to do it. There are obvious risks in following a rational reconstruction, as the last chapter has shown in the particular case of Smith, Newton and general economic equilibrium theory, but historical reconstructions are not only inherently difficult, but also riskier. In my opinion, the challenge for historians of economic thought resides precisely in overcoming the inevitable difficulties of this enterprise and avoiding, whenever possible, the risks involved in too readily interpreting our masters with the eyes of today. As Blaug is aware, in contrast with rational reconstructions, historical reconstructions: which involve accounting for the ideas of past thinkers in terms that these thinkers and their contemporary followers would have accepted as a correct description of what they intended to say, are very difficult to carry out. They require careful reading not only of the texts of the economists that one is studying, but also of the previous generation of thinkers in order to understand the context in which the economists in question were writing. Historical reconstructions require us to travel backwards in time, to drive the intellectual vehicle of economics by looking in the rearview mirror. (Blaug, 2001, p. 151, emphasis added) The previous chapters have attempted to reconstruct some of the central components of Smith’s thought by emphasising this particular 165


historical stance. As has been argued in the introduction, Quentin Skinner’s methodology combined with an ontological approach, are the foundations that underpin this book. Mark Blaug, an authority in our discipline, fosters a similar methodology, warning historians of economic thought about the temptation of using mainstream methodology to adapt what our intellectual forebears have said.1 We learn from the past, but we cannot only use it to explain the present, nor can we interpret it simply from the present. As I have repeatedly stressed throughout this book, Smith’s scholarship is growing. Blaug also points out that ‘Smith has turned out to be one of the subtlest and most complex thinkers in the whole of history of economic thought. The flood of books and articles on various aspects of his writings have been nothing short of amazing and we are sorely in need of a new stock-taking’ (ibid., p. 158). If these chapters play some part on this new ‘stock-taking’, one hopes that at least the methodological approach proposed in this book can contribute to the debate on how the history of economic thought should be done.2 Over 75 years ago, Jacob Viner, declared that ‘Smith was the great eclectic’ (Viner, 1927, p. 199, emphasis in the original). He was right. But only if we take the meaning of that word in its proper sense, and without any pejorative connotation. The Greek ekléktikos derives from eklégein, to select, to choose from what is best.3 Smith’s reliance on the classics is a good example of his eclecticism, an eclecticism that he masterfully combined with his own system. Smith’s concept of sympathy is a paradigmatic example. He improved on Hutcheson and Hume by developing the concept further. Sympathy is underpinned by the nature of the inner impartial spectator and the concept of propriety. It bears close relationship to the role of virtues, in particular the nature of selfcommand that I attempted to uncover in Chapter 3. Moreover, how Smith understood Newton, and how he combined his philosophy of science with his own epistemology, is just another example of Smith’s eclecticism. It is actually this eclecticism that many economists have

1

2

3

Margaret Schabas has recently reminded us that ‘[t]he more the past economic ideas are treated in their own right, rather than as precursors to present theory, the better’ (2002, p. 220). Some scholars have made an important effort to create the annual Adam Smith Review, and, apropos, the topic of the symposium for the first issue will be ‘Contexts of Interpretation’. Incidentally, for Chrysippus ekléktikos also meant ‘capable of exercising moral choice’ (cf. Liddell and Scott, 1996, p. 512).

Conclusions 167

failed to acknowledge while interpreting Smith’s Newtonianism and its relationship with general economic equilibrium theory. Adam Smith will continue to be a subtle and complex thinker. This has, with justice, granted him the title of the father of our discipline, a discipline that must not forget the real meaning and intention of what its most eminent forebear said.

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Index admiration in scientific endeavour 148, 162 Age of Reason 131–2, 138 alchemy 133, 140 d’Alembert, Jean le Rond 17, 143 Ambrose of Milan 73 amiable virtues 110 analytic-synthetic method 135–6, 161 Aquinas, Thomas 73–5, 95 Aristotle 47, 72, 81–6 passim, 90–7 passim, 111, 125 Arrow, Kenneth 151, 161 astronomy 148 Augustine of Hippo 73–4 axiomatic-deductive methodology 131–2, 138, 151, 160–1 Bacon, Francis 134 beneficence 11, 57, 77, 85, 92–6, 106–7 benevolence 70–1 Bentham, Jeremy 114–16, 162 Blaug, Mark 145, 158, 165–6 Bonar, James 35–6 Brentano, Lujo 29–30 Brewster, D. 133 Brown, Vivienne 4, 43, 78, 94 Buccleuch, Duke of 17 Buckle, Henry Thomas 15–16, 31–4, 39, 45–6 cameralism 21, 24 Campbell, Thomas D. 115 Cannan, Edwin 10, 34, 36 cardinal virtues 71–5, 78, 83 categorical imperative 118, 120, 122 Cato 76 Christianity 113 Cicero 12, 50, 60, 70–3 passim, 86, 89–91, 98, 123–8 civic humanism 11, 40, 57–63 passim, 67–9, 86, 92, 96, 111, 147

Clarke, Samuel 141 classical economics 25–6 Cohen, I. Bernard 157 composition, method of 161 Condillac, Etienne de 157 Condorcet, Jean 8, 142–3, 157 conscience 104–5, 129 consequentialism 52, 58, 84, 86, 95, 107, 113 corruption 113 courage, virtue of 58, 60, 69–73, 108 critical realism 5, 14, 132, 159–64 Cropsey, Joseph 69–70 decorum (Cicero) 123–8 passim deism 37–8 Delatour, Albert 33 Democritus 71 Derrida, Jacques 4 Descartes, René 134, 149 Dickey, Laurence 16, 40 Diderot, Denis 143 distributive justice 94–5 division of labour 68–9 Drennon, H. 140 Dupuy, Jean-Pierre 42 duty, sense of 112–13, 122–4, 127–8 Eckstein, Walther 39, 46, 118 eclecticism 166–7 economics, pure theory of 154–5, 158, 163 egalitarianism 121 egoism 28 Enlightenment, the see French Enlightenment; Scottish Enlightenment Epicureanism 87, 90, 94–5, 116 Epicurus 47 ethics 10–12, 52–4, 57, 70, 89, 98, 112, 118–21, 129, 145, 153, 163 Evensky, Jerry 41 ‘experimental philosophy’ 135, 142 183

184 Index Feder, Johann Georg Heinrich 20 Ferguson, Adam 64, 66, 100, 143 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 21, 23 Fitzgibbons, Athol 70, 124 Fleischacker, Samuel 8, 46, 54, 115, 118–21 Fontaine, Phillippe 49 fortitude, virtue of 73–5, 95, 111 Foucault, Michel 4 Frederick the Great 123 French Enlightenment 131–2, 138, 142, 155 French Revolution 22, 27 Freudenthal, Gideon 146 Galbraith, John K. 19 Garve, Christian 21 general economic equilibrium theory 13–14, 130–1, 143, 146, 151–63 passim, 167 German Historical School 9, 20–9, 35, 38, 46 ‘Older’ and ‘Younger’ 26–7, 29 German nationalism 21 Glossop, Ronald J. 114 Grampp, William D. 152 gravitation, law of 140, 142, 157 Griswold, Charles 7–8, 41–2, 52, 71, 124 Grotius, Hugo 91–4, 115, 123 Haakonssen, Knud 8, 10, 40, 44, 54, 63, 71, 85, 92, 119 Hahn, Frank 151, 161 Harcourt, Geoff 42–3 hedonism 116 Heilbroner, Robert L. 40 Helvétius 17, 29–30, 143 hermeneutics 4, 7, 41–2 Herz, Marcus 118 Hetherington, Norriss S. 146 Hierocles 41, 93 Hildebrand, Bruno 22, 27–8 historical reconstruction 165 history of ideas 1–6, 9, 122, 165–6 Hobbes, Thomas 48–9, 98 d’Holbach, Paul H.D. 17, 143 Hollander, Samuel 151 Hont, Istvan 92

Hope, Vincent 70, 104, 124 human nature 46–7, 52, 55, 88–9 science of 142 Hume, David 9, 17–18, 31, 46, 49, 64, 66, 98, 100, 114–18 passim, 123, 142–3, 166 Hutcheson, Francis 63–4, 75, 98, 100, 102, 114, 117, 166 Hutchison, Terence 39 idealism 30, 154 Ignatieff, Michael 92 imagination, faculty of 48 ‘impartial spectator’ concept 110–22 passim, 128, 147 imperatives (Kant) 119–20 industrialisation 26 ‘invisible hand’ metaphor 13, 37, 56, 129, 130, 151–2 ‘invisible self’ metaphor 121 Jaeger, Werner 83 Jaffé, William 146, 155 Jevons, William S. 130, 150, 162 Johnson, Samuel 99 Journal of Economic Literature 39 justice 11, 57–8, 70–7, 85–6, 91–6, 106–7 Kant, Immanuel 6, 8, 12, 53, 56, 98, 114–15, 118–22 Keynes, John Maynard 133 Khalil, Elias 46 Knies, Karl 28–30 Koyré, Alexandre 140–1 Kraus, Christian Jacob 22 Lagrange, Joseph 157 laissez faire doctrine 15, 20–6 passim, 36 Lange, Friedrich Albert 34, 38, 42 Laplace, Pierre Simon 142, 157, 160 Lawson, Tony 160–3, 159 Leibniz, Gottfried 141–2 List, Friedrich 24 Locke, John 92, 99 Lueder, August Ferdinand 22 Macfie, Alec A. 10–11, 16, 39, 45–6, 53–4, 115

Index Machiavelli, Niccolò 3, 60, 63, 69 MacIntyre, Alasdair 82 Mackenzie, Henry 83 Maclaurin, Colin 135–6 Malthus, Thomas 162 Manchester School 24 manly virtues 59–61, 68–9, 76–8, 96 market mechanism 159–61 Marshall, Alfred 162 Martin, Marie 114 materialism 30 mathématique sociale 142 merit in relation to propriety 103, 108–9 Mill, John Stuart 162 Millar, John 16–17, 30 Montesquieu, Baron de 143 moral approbation 105–10, 117, 128 moral autonomy 52–5, 83, 93, 128 moral duties 113 moral judgement 16, 45–6, 51–5, 104, 107–8 morality: different levels of 87 general rules of 112–13 social nature of 114, 122 Morrow, Glenn R. 36–8, 55 Müller, Adam Heinrich 23, 29–30 natural jurisprudence 57–8, 64, 147 natural law theory 91–2, 115 natural order of things 37 ‘natural price’ concept 156–7, 160 Nelson, Eric 67 neoclassical economics 132 Newton, Sir Isaac 13–14, 37, 130–40 passim, 146–7, 161, 166 Opticks 134–5, 138, 140–2, 149 Principia 134–41, 147, 149, 157, 162 Newtonianism 132–4, 138, 141, 145 Smithian 150–1, 156–9, 162–3, 167 Nieli, Russell 40–1 officium, sense of 126–8 Oncken, August 35, 38–9, 118 ontology 5, 7, 138, 166 Otteson, James 8, 16, 43–4, 54, 71 Pack, Spencer 16, 32 Pareto, Vilfredo 155

185

patriotism 62–3 Peil, Jean 7 Philip of Macedon 66 Physiocrats 29, 142–3, 157 Plato and Platonic philosophy 47, 58, 71–3, 81–7 passim, 92–7 passim, 111, 125–6, 154–5, 158, 163 Playfair, William 17 Plutarch 60, 72, 80 Pocock, John G.A. 58–9, 64, 69 ‘political arithmetic’ 149 political economy 25–8, 44, 58, 96, 153, 158–60, 163–4 Pope, Alexander 132 positivism 13, 131, 143, 145 ‘principle of design’ 142 propriety, concept of 11–13, 53–6, 58, 77, 82–8 passim, 95, 97–101, 114–29 as grounds for sympathy 101–5 and moral obligation 105–10 prudence, 11, 57–8, 70–7, 80, 84–91, 96, 106–7 superior and inferior 87 Rae, John 35–6 Raphael, David D. 10–11, 16, 39, 45–6, 53–4, 115 Rawls, John 114, 116 realism 14, 158–9, 164; see also critical realism Recktenwald, Horst C. 39 Redman, Deborah A. 145 Reid, Thomas 33, 42, 48, 100 ‘Renaissance man’ 60–1 resolution, method of 149, 159 retroduction 161 retrospection 2 Ricardo, David 162 Robbins, Lionel 151 Roscher, Wilhelm 25 Rosen, Fred 115 Rothschild, Emma 8, 108, 114–15 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 28 Samuelson, Paul 150, 152 Sandbach, Francis H. 79–80 Sartorius, Georg 22 Schmoller, Gustav von 27

186 Index Schumpeter, Joseph A. 148, 151–2 Scottish Enlightenment 5, 13, 57, 135–6, 143, 157, 163 self-command, virtue of 11–13, 53, 57–60, 70–1, 76–88, 93–6, 101, 105–22 passim, 128–9, 166 self-interest, doctrine of 9–10, 15, 19–20, 28, 32–45 passim, 53–6, 88, 96, 146, 152 self-love 112–13 Sen, Amartya 56, 129 Seneca 127 Skarzyn´ski, Witold von 29–33, 39, 45 Skinner, Andrew S. 33, 39, 145 Skinner, Quentin 4–6, 59, 61, 166 Smith, Adam: French connection theory about 28 influence of 2; and liberalism 2–3, 38 life and work of 16–19 literature on 7–8, 39–44, 114 methodological stance of 146–52 range of interests 2 religious beliefs 37–8 The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) 1–2, 8–12, 15–20, 29–46, 51–7, 69, 76–8, 84–90, 94–124, 128–9, 145, 151 The Wealth of Nations (WN) 1–2, 10, 13, 15–23, 29–45 passim, 61, 65, 68, 78, 88, 96, 129–31, 145, 149–52, 156–9, 162–3 Smith Problem 9–10, 15–17, 20, 28–46, 53–5 current debate on 39–45 Smithianismus 24 social science 142–3, 161 Socrates 71, 73, 81, 86 ‘spheres of intimacy’ 40–1 standing armies, debate on 11, 57, 61–9, 78, 95 Stein, Karl von 23 Stephen, Sir Leslie 15–16, 32–8 passim, 42 Stewart, Dugald 17, 30, 34 Stigler, George 19, 88 Stobaeus 89 Stoic philosophers 8, 11, 37, 41, 47, 50, 58, 70–81 passim, 86–95 passim, 127

Stukeley, William 133 surprise in scientific endeavour 148, 162 sympathetic process 51–4, 92, 97, 107, 110–15 passim, 128 sympathy: concept of 8–13, 15–16, 20, 31–56 passim, 114, 166 direct and indirect 103, 109 synthesis in scientific method 135–8 Teichgraeber, Richard 16, 36, 40 temperance, virtue of 58, 70–8 passim, 90 textual interpretation 4 theology 133 University of Göttingen 21–2, 27 utilitarianism 12, 51, 53, 55, 98, 113–17, 121–2, 128–9, 162 Veblen, Thorstein 114 Viner, Jacob 36–8, 128, 166 vir virtutis tradition 57–61, 68, 75–8, 95 Virgil 99 virtue ethics 96 virtues, theory of 11–12, 20, 36, 53, 56–61, 69–96, 125–8, 166 Vivenza, Gloria 8, 71, 87–8, 124–5 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 17 Walras, Leòn 14, 130–1, 143, 146, 151–8 passim, 163 Waszek, Norbert 70, 87, 125 Webster, Alexander 149 Werhane, Patricia 42, 53, 90, 94 Winch, Donald 39–40 wisdom 71–4 passim, 80, 86 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 4, 7 Witzum, Amos 43 wonder in scientific endeavour 148, 162 Xenophon 81 Young, Jeffrey 44, 53–4 Zeno 71–2, 75, 80, 89, 97, 111

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