Speaker
Description
Debates about Adam Smith’s thoughts on inequality, political factionalism, and religious sectarianism have been rekindled vividly in recent years. This paper aims at uniting these discussions through an analysis of the different effects that vertical – across different social ranks – and horizontal – across the same ‘orders of people’ – social distancing have on the moral education of human beings. To this end, I propose to expand the naturalist perspective that Smith presents in the Theory of Moral Sentiments as an exegetical tool to reinterpret his policy proposals in the Wealth of Nations. First, I explain Smith’s thesis that humans naturally develop ‘rules of morality’ to regulate social order and increase their chances of preservation. Then I present the necessary conditions for moral disciplining to occur. I conclude that the further away from the 'bulk of mankind', whether at the bottom or at the top, and the more one's encounters with strangers are restricted by tribalistic animosities, the fewer are the circumstances that encourage moral discipline, understood as the capacity for 'self-command'. In both cases, the less moral discipline implies worse moral judgment. People who grow up isolated do not receive the education 'instituted by nature', being more reckless and less self-aware of committing injustices, thus becoming the greatest potential menaces for the stability of a political community. I claim that the problem becomes more acute in Commercial Societies due to the working conditions to which most people are subject. Unable to naturally learn the 'virtues' required for the stability of their modern State, factious and sectarian horizontal distances reinforce the conversion of vertical distances into sources of domination, preventing the principles of the ‘System of Natural Liberty’ from being applied in policies aiming to shield the law from the undue influence of the rich.
| Organization | University College Dublin |
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