"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Adam Smith: ethics and markets
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January 18, 2007
Adam Smith is more interesting than his neo-liberal or free marketeer interpreters have made out. Their Smith is the theoriest of free markets. However, as Edward W. Younkins argues, Smith links morality and markets in his two books, the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS,1759) and the Wealth of Nations (WN,1776). Younkins says:
There is no discontinuity between the Smith of TMS and the Smith of WN – there are not two Adam Smiths. WN fits into the moral framework of TMS. There is a logical flow from Smith's moral philosophy to his jurisprudence and political economy. Exchange is shown to occur within the moral framework of his first book. TMS provides the foundational concepts of human nature and morality upon which the ideas of WN rest. Smith's two books provide a systematic and essentially unified whole in which moral and economic ideas are coordinated and integrated. Both are integral parts of his vision of man and society. The commercial man of WN and the benevolent man of TMS are not two different men.
The neoliberals are concerned with the Wealth of Nations and ignore the Theory of Moral Sentiments as their concern is about the economy and not civil society. They are not concerned with Smith's account of the process by which individuals adopt moral standards through which they judge actions by others and themselves; a process whereby individuals can overcome the selfish impulses of the commercial realm by recognizing that there is more to life than economics and politics and that men possess more than self-regarding sentiments. So how do we understand Smith's ethics?
Over at Club Troppo Don Arthur says that Smith bases his ethics on empathy and emotion:
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments he argued that moral judgment relied on our ability to imagine ourselves in another person’s place. As Eamonn Butler puts it, "morality is the product of our nature, not our reason". Of course Smith acknowledged that reason had a place in generating general rules of conduct– but the ability to empathise came first. Without empathy we wouldn’t know which rules were right and which were wrong.
Though Smith does start from innate sentiments (feelings or emotions) as the basis of moral judgment he makes the shift to virtue. Younkins says:
Smith delineates two levels of virtues. His lower or commercial virtues are self-interested ones and include prudence, justice, industry, frugality, constancy, and so on. Another set of virtues, the primary or nobler virtues, includes benevolence, generosity, gratitude, compassion, kindness, pity, friendship, love, etc. According to Smith, the four principal virtues in a person's life are justice, prudence, benevolence, and self-command. It is through the exercise of self-command, Smith's cardinal virtue, that a man can rein in his selfish impulses, regulate his conduct, and indulge benevolence. Self-command involves the ability to control one's feelings, to restrain one's passion for his own interests, and to enhance his feelings for others.
Virtue links us back to classical Greek ethics whilst his view that the most virtuous of men govern themselves by self-command, connects with Stoicism.
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