The International Adam Smith Society conference is an annual gathering of Smith scholars from around the world. The conference provides the opportunity to meet new and old friends, discuss ideas, and develop research for publication.
The 2025 conference will be held March 28-30, 2025 at University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, in collaboration with the Marie Curie project "Rethinking Exchange" of the Department of Economics of the University of Salento.
Chairperson: Douglas Den Uyl (Liberty Fund)
Adam Smith explores the dynamics– real and ideal – of human interaction. When people interact, they take on different social roles: they are agents, beneficiaries or victims of agents, or bystanders and spectators. Smith is famous for his account of spectators as moral judges. These judges rely on sympathy; their sympathy is directed towards people’s responsive sentiments.
Smith distinguishes between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ sympathy. The former is directed at the responsive sentiments of people affected by an agent’s action, the latter is directed at the agent whose action has affected other people.
Why does it make sense for a spectator to rely on sympathy when directing her or his attention to an agent? What does this move this reveal about Smith’s conception of rational agency? As I will argue, Smith sees human beings first and foremost as beings who are sensitive and vulnerable to what happens to them and especially to what other human beings do to them. While he does not deny that humans are rational agents, the essential human condition, according to him, is one of vulnerability. Humans share many vulnerabilities with non-humans. But underpinning Smith account of spectator sympathy is his recognition of moral vulnerability as the essential element of what it means to be human.
The process of mutual sympathy generates amiable virtues and awful virtues in spectators and agents, respectively. Moreover, in social interaction, these virtues provoke reactions of love and respect. These are the two attitudes required for what I call “sympathetic individualism,” which I propose as Smithean social ideal and which harmonizes respect for the dignity of each individual and the active promotion of their good.
Abstract
Over two centuries have passed since Adam Smith’s seminal works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WN), were introduced to the world, yet his theorization on social progress and human development remains incredibly timeless and pertinent. Among the various forms that this discussion can take, one of the central points of concern relates to the dynamics of social contexts and their interference in individual choices. In the modern world, extreme poverty and scarcity, driven partially by wars and pandemics, are contexts that continue to challenge human progress and societal stability. Such a concern had already been foreseen by Smith when he stated that “no society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable” (WN I.viii.36,96; see also WN I.i, 9; TMS II.ii.3.2, 86).
Contemporarily, OXFAM’s 2022 data indicates that about 263 million people are currently living below the poverty line. Such is the situation in developing countries like Brazil and the vast majority of Latin American nations, where circumstances marked by scarcity, inequality, and poverty have increased citizens’ vulnerability. This leads us to theorize about two points. From one perspective, these extreme contexts impact the moral perception of agents and tend to corrupt the moral sentiments of individuals (TMS I.iii.3,62). As a result, they can provoke feelings of injustice and resentment, and even selfish behaviors. This occurs because circumstances like these complicate ethical decision-making and intensify self-interest, impacting the development of the inner impartial spectator and moral judgment. In this way, these contexts have an impact on agents’ emotions as well as their capacity for rationality and the development of agency.
In contrast, challenging contexts, such as poverty and inequality, in liberal societies tend to create tension between the non-interventionist nature of the liberal state (WN IV.ix,51) and the promotion of human progress (WN IV.ix, 63). On either side of the coin, people suffer from interference in this context. The discussion in this paper explores how these issues directly impact theses on human progress and commercial society, which leads us to address Smith’s theories on social, moral, and economic problems in developing societies.
This paper aims to understand how the context of inequality and vulnerability – referred to here as a challenging context - can impact the moral development of individuals through the lens of Smith’s moral theory. To achieve this, we will explore how preserving the integrity of individuals’ moral sentiments can promote human development and societal stability. Furthermore, this paper examines the political tension between the liberal state and human progress, questioning whether the state can promote human development without compromising its laissez-faire stance.
Keywords: Human Progress, Moral Sentiments, Poverty, Liberal State.
Carl Schmitt famously argued that politics is grounded in the friend-enemy distinction. In doing so, he was building upon a Hobbesian legacy that frames (the potential for) conflict and enmity as the primordial conditions of human association. In this tradition, political society is primarily a safeguard, a necessary construct where humans gather to protect themselves from one another, leaving limited room for positive social bonds.
Adam Smith expounds a profoundly different picture of human association. In Smith's view, the natural state of human interaction is not one of strife or antagonism but rather one of largely peaceful connections, supported by “fellow-feeling”. It is sympathy – an innate responsiveness to others’ emotions – that grounds social cohesion and drives moral order.
This view places Smith within a classical tradition that can be traced back to Aristotle, in which civic friendship – a collective goodwill rooted in shared virtues and aligned moral objectives – rather than enmity, is seen as the ontological foundation of political life.
Central to both thinkers is the notion that human sociability emerges through our capacity for communication. Aristotle famously argues that humans are distinctively political animals precisely because we are speaking animals. Politics is inherently rooted in this communicative capacity. Similarly, Smith believes that communication is born out of an inherent desire to connect emotionally with others: sympathy, the capacity to “change places in fancy” with others, enabling us to feel a “fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.” This shared emotional resonance serves as the bedrock of social cohesion and moral understanding, fostering not only instrumental bonds but genuine human connection.
Smith’s perspective stands in opposition to early liberal thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, who foreground self-interest and rivalry. Instead, his stress on sympathy as the cornerstone of human society aligns him closely with classical political thought, where politics is seen not merely as a contract for survival but as a social enterprise rooted in shared human sociality.
We thus argue that Smith’s emphasis on sympathy as the basis of human society offers a distinctive bridge between classical notions of community and early liberal thought, offering an alternative to the conflict-centred views that came to define much of early modern political theory.
The original “Adam Smith Problem” has rightly been dismissed by contemporary scholars as a red herring spurred by facile interpretations of Smith’s philosophy, especially his account of self-love in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.* Still, the connection between Smith’s two great works remains an enduring subject of interest. This paper ventures new answers about this connection through an analysis of one of the central subjects of the Wealth of Nations, the commercial man. Smith’s arguments in WN depend on a theory of human nature, a key feature of which is the original desire to better one’s own condition (II.iii.28). Hence the seeming egoist backbone of this text. However, this principle of human nature is only one among many used to explain why and how people engage in commerce as well as why and how this commerce succeeds or fails. Most important for the purposes of this paper, WN begins by attributing the division of labor to a different principle of human nature, the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” (I.ii.1), or what Smith sometimes describes as “the principle to persuade” (see e.g., LJ(B) 221). And although Smith argues that this propensity must interlock with human selfishness to drive the division of labor because reliably successful exchange depends upon a savvy “regard” for the private interests of others (I.ii.2), Smith pointedly does not reduce this propensity to self-interest. Instead, Smith posits the propensity to persuade as either a distinct original principle or as the necessary consequence of reason and speech (I.ii.2). How interesting, then, that Smith examines this same propensity at the end of TMS, only now under a different inflection, as the natural concern for social fidelity. “The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading” Smith writes, “seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires” (VII.iv.25). Moreover, Smith marshals this principle to help explain why and how people engage in society as well as why and how society succeeds or fails. This paper investigates this parallel between WN and TMS, with the goal of fleshing out the connections between Smith’s conceptions of commercial and moral life. The result will be, first, to reinforce the consistency in Smith’s account of human nature across these two works. And second, to illuminate and emphasize a crucial but often under-appreciated objective of both works, namely, to explain not simply why and how societies form, but why and how they persist.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is often assumed to advocate the doux-commerce thesis, suggesting that commerce could lead to international peace. Smith's cosmopolitanism was considered to be at odds with earlier political economists, known as mercantilists. Smith himself criticized what he called the "mercantile system." Unlike the later categorization of mercantilism, Smith’s own notion of the "mercantile system" was not necessarily analyzed purely in terms of economic theory. He denounced this system because of its political consequences, which he argued could lead to isolationism. Smith's political inclinations distorted the articulation of his economic theories. We can understand his concessions to the economic aspects of mercantile system.
Recently there has been a revival of interest in the apparent inconsistency between Smith’s conjectural stadial model and the various historical cases of social stagnation, and even retrograde order, as presented in his works. Most scholars tend to adopt an ‘either-or’ approach, suggesting that we must either discard the stadial model or acknowledge Smith’s theoretical incongruence. This paper, however, argues that both the conjectural history and the counter-narratives are integral to his theory of economic growth. It's noteworthy that even though the historical data Smith provides often contradict his stadial model, the four stages are presented as a linear and sequential narrative, rather than a classification lacking a temporal dimension. Although the order can be inverted, the more advanced stage can only be achieved by progressing through the earlier, ‘ruder’ stages. Commerce, for instance, cannot be established without the foundation of agriculture, and agriculture itself cannot emerge where shepherding economy has not yet been invented. Moreover, the mutual reinforcement between urban and rural sectors is vital for a robust modern economy. Based on this linear conjectural model, Smith builds a normative benchmark for real-world scenarios. Significantly, he applies this model to diagnose economic stagnation and ‘unnatural order’, whose causes may stem from the limitations of natural conditions in primitive stages or from oppressive social institutions in more advanced economies, including systems of primogeniture, entail, and slavery. I will revisit Smith’s much debated concept of ‘unnatural and retrograde order’, aiming to demonstrate that its general principle is not in conflict with the stadial theory. In fact, for Smith, both the ‘unnatural and retrograde order’ and the case of the North American colonial economy should be assessed through the lens of the ‘natural progress of opulence’. Henceforth the former becomes much more precarious than the latter. So far as Smith had already tried to resolve the tension between the theoretical-progressive model and the ‘slow progress of opulence’ in ‘every nation’ in his Glasgow lectures on jurisprudence, I contend that he does not see the apparent inconsistency as a problem, but as an opportunity to critique social institutions.
Smith does not conceive of a “state of nature” as such, which societies exit in the course of development. Rather, as Michel Foucault noted, society, for Smith and his Scottish contemporaries, is a “historical-natural constant”. In Smith’s descriptive account of societies, much emphasis, too, is placed on the naturalness of certain kinds of institutions – institutions of government, for example, given certain relations of subsistence and property. Smith’s account of societies and their development is thus, as many have noted, naturalistic. Yet, at the same time, Smith does sometimes refer to a nature beyond or outside the realm of the social, whilst societies themselves can develop in “unnatural” ways. In light of today’s ecological crisis, critical environmental thought has emphasized the need to reassess dominant assumptions about the relationship between nature and society, frequently seeking to locate the origins of supposedly problematic dualisms in Enlightenment thought. Against the background of these debates, this paper reassesses the way Smith conceives of the relationship between the natural and the social, exploring both the descriptive and the normative work done by the concept of nature.
In this paper, I contrast Smith’s description of the condition and character of native American peoples with his view of the progress made by European settler colonies in the Americas. In doing so, I intend to show that there is a tension between, on the one hand, the recognition of the crimes committed by the European conquerors against pre-Columbian populations and, on the other hand, the acknowledgment of the civilizational superiority of the new and prosperous settler colonies vis-à-vis the native, “miserable and helpless” societies of the Americas. Although Smith condemns the genocide and enslavement of native peoples, he cannot help but recognize the great and rapid progress brought about by European colonization of the New World, in contrast to the alleged misery, lack of civilization, and stagnation of the native populations. I argue that this tension stems, on the one hand, from the inherent logic of the four stages theory and, on the other, from Smith’s sympathy for the European settlers and his discontent with European colonial policy.
This paper reassesses the controversially “narrow” (or “thin”) views of justice in David Hume and Adam Smith, evaluates their differences, and defends them against objections arising from contemporary concerns for social justice. Despite lingering textual polysemy, Hume infamously narrows justice down to the functional role of respecting property, promises, and contracts – let us call this the Propertarian Conception - while Smith broadens this to harmful actions, especially against person, property, and reputation. I suggest ways of reconciling their differences while sharpening their contributions. Hume and Smith offer compelling, mutually reinforcing reasons to think that “mere justice” should be conceived (at least in the beginning) narrowly, to account for the simple, negative, grammar-like rules of basic social coordination. I rely on contemporary complexity theory to show that the narrow demands of Humean and Smithean justice are well-suited to facilitate a realm of social coordination under the triple duress of social dynamism, diversity, and complexity. Importantly, accepting this insight is compatible with pluralistic efforts to expand the domain of social justice, as long as such expansions are carefully built on top of, or out of, the “mere justice” foundation. Thus, even proponents of social, distributive, or relational egalitarian justice who care about the “non-ideal” circumstances of social life (among whom I count myself) should incorporate robust concern for narrow justice into their overall package.
In his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam Smith advances a unique version of the natural right to punish, what he calls the “right to exact punishment.” On the usual construal, the natural right to punish is held equally by all and consists in a permission to physically inflict punishments. Smith’s right to exact punishment, by contrast, consists in a special claim of victims to demand or forgive the punishment of their offender, a punishment that the offender owes to his victims. In this paper, I show how Smith’s right to exact punishment accounts for two central duties of legal punishment – the duty of offenders to suffer punishment and the duty of the state to prosecute offenses. In so doing, I overcome two prima facie objections. (1) How can victims be owed their offender’s duty to suffer punishment when that punishment rests on their resentment, as Smith believes? (2) If victims are owed punishments for crimes suffered, then why are these crimes prosecuted by the state, but not by victims? To respond to these objections, I rely on Theory of Moral Sentiments to show how a morally warranted resentment aims at the security of victims’ equal dignity. Resentment is a basis for the right to an offender’s punishment since, when demanded on a morally warranted resentment, punishment secures the dignity of victims. I further show how, for Smith, offenders forfeits their immunity to punishment by the commission of their crimes, allowing for the security of victims’ dignity to additionally serve as a basis for offenders’ duty to suffer punishment. This duty is owed to victims in virtue of the fact that wrong suffered by the offender’s crime persists until he is either punished by their demands, or forgiven by the same. Next, I show how the state’s duty to prosecute rests on a natural right of third parties to help victims demand punishment. I reject a natural duty of third parties to help victims demand punishment: as legal duties to rescue and to report crimes make clear, it is seldom the case that third parties acquire a duty to help victims. Yet the state’s duty to prosecute can rest on a right to help victims since, for Smith, the state has a more general duty to ensure justice in society. Accounting for the state’s prosecutorial powers in this way preserves Smith’s forceful rejection of a consensual transfer of rights from individuals to the state.
The paper I’m proposing for the 2025 conference in Lecce continues the work I presented at the St Andrews conference on the connections among sovereignty, justice, and the passion of resentment in TMS. I have been interested in the way that Smith’s division of the impartial spectator into an ideal and an empirical principle of virtue allows for social and political critique when one relies on the voice within to sanction action against injustice--retaliation. Smith says the natural gratification of resentment accomplishes all the political goals of punishment, and when one acts in accord with the natural principles of justice, one can issue “sentences” that are, in principle, laws. Yet, this same identification of virtue with what we could call moral autonomy also has potentially destabilizing political implications that could, perhaps, enable the wise and the virtuous to “new model the constitution” in a revolution. Hence the virtuous person in TMS must both become and not become the impartial spectator. They must both remain indifferent to public norms and opinions, possibly beyond accountability to others, and yet a moral being is an accountable being for Smith, who makes sure (especially in the 1790 edition) that one always feels insecure, doubtful, potentially self-deceived and ignorant of one’s essential moral character—even if one knows oneself to be innocent. Hence, while corruption distances propriety from virtue, they must all the same cohere for Smith.
My aim in this paper is to think through what seems to me a striking, but unremarked, connection between Melville’s short story Billy Budd, set in 1797 during the Napoleonic Wars, and the political significance of resentment, especially in relation to Billy’s innocence with regard to the charge of rebellion. We know that Melville had some familiarity with the Wealth of Nations—enough to satirize it in his early novel Redburn, where the eponymous sailor-hero begins to read Smith’s treatise chapter-by-chapter but, finding that it was as “dry as crackers and cheese” and the “very leaves smelt of saw-dust,” he wraps his jacket around it and uses it as a pillow. I have found no evidence that Melville read TMS and had its discussion of resentment, justice, and innocence in mind when he wrote Billy Budd, but I plan to argue that Melville addresses precisely these issues so prominent in Smith’s treatise. Melville even uses the term resentment as Smith does to describe an offense against one’s dignity and worth that is considered an injustice (even “slavish”)—as, for instance, when the duplicitous master-of-arms Claggart falsely accuses the sailor Billy of organizing a mutiny because “he resents his impressment,” although Billy stutters, and strikes a blow, in “resentful eagerness” to rebut the accusation. In fact, the worry aboard ship of a mutiny is a worry about the “contagious fever” of revolutionary sympathy, sympathy with the resentment of those who have suffered injustice. I will discuss Hannah Arendt’s endorsement of the execution of Billy as a representative of a “natural, absolute innocence” that “can only act violently,” as well as Smith’s comment that “There is no greater tormentor of the human breast than violent resentment which cannot be gratified. An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer.” My goal is to read the story as Melville’s political dramatization of the natural gratification of resentment by the innocent as a response to TMS. Innocence is a touchstone in both texts for complex questions of justice and the moral authority of sovereign power.
The precocious Smithian essay on the “History of Astronomy", part of the posthumously published Essays on Philosophical Subjects, provides a list of intellectual sentiments focusing on the often overlooked difference between wonder, surprise, and admiration but, oddly, not curiosity - each of them contend for the early modern equivalents of the ancient Greek θαυμάζειν. Surprisingly Smith scholars rarely turn to curiosity. However Smith pays due attention curiosity.. Alongside intellectual sentiments, curiosity can be superstitious (“anxious”) insofar as rude modes of explanation are evoked. In its refined form, it is tied up to the emergence of philosophical, post-mythological ways of thinking. In this paper I first review the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, an unjustly neglected text, for a genealogy of the styles of writing regarding unrefined intellectual sentiments (curiosity, wonder, surprise and admiration) in LRBL XIX-XX in tandem with the above mentioned analysis in the History of Astronomy. In both texts, the Humean legacy of curiosity in the Treatise, the first Enquiry and the Natural history of Religion looms large.
Secondly I examine the function of wonder and curiosity in Giambattista Vico’s complex project that seemingly contradicts the Smithian approach in many ways including the emphasis laid on mythology in history. In this second part of the paper I argue that Adam Smith’s and Vico’s projects can be fruitfully set next to each other as complementary parts of an Enlightenment project regarding intellectual sentiments.
In Vico’s Scienza nuova, curiosity is an hybrid force leading to a Baconian progressive science but also, under the form of “pure curiosity” to a self-absorbed, obsessive pleasure of knowledge for the knowledge that develops throughout all the stages of the stadial history of human mind. (divine, heroic, human) Simultaneously open to unprecedented forms of inquiry and depended on divine providence, curiosity is a desire of an inquisitive human nature craving for knowledge. In Vico’s thought, the hybrid status of curiosity, that can take the form of either a moderate or a Promethean, “hubristic” desire to inquiry, mobilizes scientific endeavors but it can easily veer off course and generate the naïve, self-deceit both of vulgar wisdom and academic arrogance. While providence plays a key role in Vico’s stadia history, it is helpful to parallel this account with Adam Smith’s account of stadial history that apparently turns the emphasis on socio-economic factors and excludes providence. In splitting curiosity into unrefined and refined though, Adam Smith ascribes some autonomy to this intellectual sentiment alongside socio-economic factors throughout the progress of human civilization.
This paper offers a new perspective on the importance of Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that the text’s rarely noted (and still untranslated) “Avertissement” should revise our understanding of the work in two ways. First, Grouchy notes that her appended Letters on Sympathy will “trace the line between the two schools of French and Scottish philosophy”. This clarifies their otherwise curious relationship to Smith. While the Letters have traditionally been read as mere commentary on TMS, such readings overlook Grouchy’s efforts to synthesize Smithian themes with the work of Condillac and Rousseau. I suggest that by ignoring her wider aims, we miss much of the originality in Grouchy’s radical politics of sympathy. Second, the “Avertissement” praises Smith’s political economy for being “liberal”, offering one of the earliest French uses of the term in this context. I conclude that Grouchy’s volume emerges as both a crucial conduit for Smith’s liberal system into France and an enduring resource for sentimentalist political thought.
The aim of the Italian economist Francesco Ferrara was the academic and social affirmation of a political economy that would show people the right path for material and civil progress. The latter was conceived as the conquest of ever more and greater freedom for the individual, in the belief that only freedom could guarantee advancement. Among the various initiatives that Ferrara undertook to institutionalize economics in Italy during the Risorgimento, the Biblioteca dell’Economista (BE) was the most successful and of the highest value due to its scientific completeness and divulgation. With his collection and translation of foreign literature, which he presented critically in the prefaces to volumes, the editor not only succeeded in constructing, refining and disseminating a doctrinal paradigm, but also in developing a language of political economy that resulted comprehensible and attractive to a large audience. Bearing in mind that in his life attempt to institutionalize the economic science of progress and liberty, Ferrara expressed and indicated through rhetoric and new terms what liberty and progress were.
The study analyses how Adam Smith inspired the “language of liberty” of Ferrara, both fixing the theoretical meaning of the key terms of political economy lexicon and building an effective and persuasive discourse to spread and affirm a liberal view of society. The paper focuses on the extended and in-depth reading of Smith’s work by Francesco Ferrara -from his youth until his tenure in the University of Turin- and examines prefaces and translation of the BE. The results will provide a complete overview -from an economic and linguistic standpoint- of the language of liberty developed by Ferrara, showing Smith’s ideological, theoretical and lexical influences on him.
As stated in the title, the paper reflects upon the importance of taste in David Hume and, particularly, Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy.
The paper starts by summarizing the importance of Aesthetics within the Scottish Enlightenment. Following the philosophy of Lord Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, the paper posits that 18th century Scotland lived a platonic twist, where the good emerged as something altogether beautiful and attractive, distinct from any «epicurean» calculation.
Next, the paper examines the idea of taste in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in order to connect both works with the author’s reflections on the «delicacy of taste» in his Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion as well as his Of the Standard of Taste. The paper concludes that the figure of the «critic», as posited in the latter essay, concerned Hume’s Moral Philosophy and thus points out how he/she (i.e., the said «critic») must guide the taste of the rest (i.e., the majority) of the people.
The paper then shows how Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments inherited the connection between the beautiful and the good, while partaking of the idea of «moral criticism» (TMS III.i.5; see also TMS VII.iv.6). The paper draws attention to the neglected figure of the «man of taste» (also, the «great leader in science and taste») as he/she who “lead[s] and direct[s] our own [sentiments]” (TMS I.i.IV.3). The paper therefore deduces, following Griswold (1999), that The Theory of Moral Sentiments took moral education to be, ultimately, an aesthetic education. In this sense, the paper inquires into the connection between the idea of «science» and the beauty of utility, clarifying how, among other things, real beauty came with a correct understanding of the true means of achieving private, and public, happiness.
This paper aims to present a forgotten episode in the history of aesthetics by a study of Adam Smith’s aesthetic thought in relation to his moral philosophy. I address two historical problems. The first is with the gap in Smith scholarship. Smith was practically non-existent in standard accounts of British aesthetic history, but literature and fine arts were a long-meditated project for Smith. Before Smith’s death, he destroyed sixteen volumes of manuscripts, which contained his unfinished composition of philosophical history of literature and jurisprudence. This conspicuous gap in Smith’s oeuvre should not be treated as merely an unfortunate loss of record, but an indication of inherent tension and difficulty within Smith’s intellectual project. The paper thus explores this difficulty by tracing Smith’s intellectual development, particularly through his treatment of his own texts. The second problem concerns the historical understanding of aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain, where the technical term was not used. To properly understand the historical making of the discipline, one must consider the history of anti- aesthetics as well as the history of its silent expression. Standard accounts of the history of aesthetics, which consider taste as the primary eighteenth century discussion, do not apply well to Adam Smith. In Smith, I outline a project of “aesthetic political economy,” the government of an interactive social space of judgement. This is built upon Smith’s extremely expansive interpretation of beauty and utility, as a fundamental historical force in the unconscious that both drives social progress and leads to moral corruption. By exploring different aspects of the inherent problematique underneath this project, I make a speculation on Smith’s inner struggles toward the end of his life that points to his unease with the position of an omniscient theorist.
Adam Smith allows us to think about the Industrial Revolution from a different perspective: not only as a driven by a technological change that transformed and dynamized production, but as a consequence of the sophistication of taste. New forms of consumption, associated with the principles of the human mind, can explain the Industrial Revolution from a consumption point of view.
Hume, Wollstonecraft and Smith stand united in regarding modesty as a real virtue, one important for both the individual and society. They differ of course in the details. I present the details of the three accounts to find areas of agreement, and discuss the implications of the differences between them. My main aim will be to argue that combined, their views show us that modesty remains an important virtue, one worth championing, for precisely the main reason identified by these three thinkers: real modesty enhances our respect for others while preserving our sense of our own dignity. This view contrasts considerably with contemporary philosophical accounts of modesty.
Hume introduces modesty as a virtue whose basis lies in convention (along with other rules of good breeding), one we establish to offset the opposition of men’s pride and to facilitate sociability in conversation and other social interactions. While Hume argues that modesty may be little more than a “fair façade,” disguising the person’s sense of pride, I will argue here that enacting modest behavior cultivates our respect for others, and through a return of the esteem of others, enhances and renders more virtuous our sense of pride.
Wollstonecraft acknowledges the role of modesty in tamping down divisive displays of arrogance, but her main concern is to offer an argument to make a non-sexed modesty available to women to whom it is otherwise denied. Modesty requires the exercise of the intellect (in the liberal arts, politics, and good reasoning in general), and a sense of autonomy in cultivating a virtuous character. We find important ties between Wollstonecraft and Hume in distinguishing modesty from humility, which both regard as a vice; and in Wollstonecraft’s argument that modesty is not only compatible with but stands as the foundation of an acute consciousness of one’s own dignity. Interestingly, Wollstonecraft argues that modesty also entails regard for the sanctity of one’s body, a move designed to elevate the dignity of women’s status.
For Smith, the person who conforms his character and conduct to an ideal standard of exact propriety and perfection positions himself to become wise and virtuous. Because the ideal is not achievable, yet continues to provide a motive to virtue, his whole mind and conduct “is stamped with the character of real modesty.” Aligning his view to that of Hume and Wollstonecraft on the tie between modesty and respect, Smith argues that the modest person has a sense of and esteems the real merit of others. Smith situates his argument for modesty as a real virtue in the context of achieving the mean state of the principle of self-estimation, which can be too low or, more typically, too high. Smith agrees with Hume that excessive self-esteem undermines sociability. While he may seem to differ from Hume in regarding modesty as a consciously acquired virtue requiring the “slow, gradual and progressive work” of the internal demi-god or impartial spectator, I argue that Hume’s and Smith’s account of the influence of social mirroring on self-reflection brings their views closer together.
For all three philosophers, the virtue of modesty is an important achievement that can occur at a societal level as well as an individual one. In regarding the cultivation of modesty as an achievement, they point to the dangers of a society with stark divisions between the arrogant and entitled on the one hand, and the humiliated and scorned on the other. Wollstonecraft in particular reminds us that the persistence of social markers such as gender and race underscores an ever-present threat of extreme inequality. Together, Hume, Wollstonecraft and Smith show us that the cultivation of a genuine modesty enhances a shared sense of the dignity of humanity.
As perceptive as Adam Smith was examining the society around him, he seems to have surprisingly little to say about women in the economic and in the private life. In the Wealth of Nations he dismisses women's work, both the wide range of domestic work and the laboring outside of home. In the Lectures of Jurisprudence women do have a role in the presentation of emergence and significance of the marriage institution. However, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments things get interesting. While talking of women as subjects of sympathy Smith argues that women are not as capable of self-regulation as men but are more impulsive and irrational in controlling their feelings and making their judgements. So according to Smith women might have a handicap in reaching the impartial spectator and so becoming better persons. At this point it is intriguing to have a look at Mary Wollstonecraft's assessment about women at her time. She does not give them high grades at all, but she does give some thoroughly thought and well justified reasons for the state of women. Women lack the possibility to educate themselves and the means to be independent and self-sufficient, while they, nevertheless, possess the mental capacity to improve themselves and the world around them. Smith too, talks in length about education, the importance of learning for instance self-control. Education to become a better person is exactly what Wollstonecraft is arguing for, too. Women need to have the possibilities to educate themselves and they will be able to be the good persons they have the potential to be, both in private and public life. Wollstonecraft imagined a future woman who is independent both in public and private sphere, while Smith's imagination may have failed him at this matter. Both of them agree that becoming a successful ethical agent requires some education and training.
This paper proposes to reassess Smith’s historical analysis of the condition of women and slaves in LJ. Unfortunately, these sections have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Under the earliest form of marriage discussed by Smith, polygamy, ‘the wife is intirely the slave of the husband, and has no more interest in his affairs than any other slave’ (Smith, LJA, p. 160). In shepherding societies, women therefore occupied the same rank as slaves. Smith thought the development of the respective condition of women and slaves diverged significantly after this point. Whereas the condition of women improved drastically and they held a rank in the family similar to their husbands in Rome, slaves were treated worse as society progressed: Romans, Smith claimed, ‘would feed their fish with the bodies of their slaves’ (Smith, LJA, p. 184). Intriguingly, the increasing opulence of society (in this case, Rome) was the reason both for the improvement of the condition of women and the drastic worsening of the treatment of slaves. This paper will reflect on Smith’s reasons for why one marginalised group (women) benefitted from socio-economic development, whereas another marginalised group (slaves) did not. Shedding light on this matter brings Smith closer to Montesquieu, for whom the condition of women was important marker for society at large, and who also discussed the impact of economic inequality on the treatment of slaves.
From the very first pages of his Traité d'économie politique, Jean-Baptiste Say, holder of the first chair of political economy in France, set about interpreting and disseminating the ideas of Adam Smith, which he had learnt about at an early age and which had inspired him to study political economy. Say praised Smith's wisdom in explaining production in agriculture and manufacturing, but criticised his treatment of trade and distribution (pp. 38-9). At the same time, he appreciated the subtlety of his historical analysis, but concluded that Smith's great merit lay in his criticism of earlier writers, especially the mercantilists and physiocrats, while his pars construens had some drawbacks, such as lack of clarity or incomplete analysis. In this way, Say made his own contribution to the development and completion of what Smith had begun, namely the study of how wealth is created, distributed and destroyed.
We can thus see that Say intended to continue along the path laid out by Smith, beginning with appreciation and criticism. In our paper, we show that Say radically departed from Smith on some issues, such as the theory of value and demand, while on other issues, such as income distribution and the protection of the weaker classes, he followed Smith's basic lines, even if he hardly quoted him. Say's positions on economic policy, freedom of trade and the "minimal state" were close to Smith's, but had facets that can be clarified by comparing the two authors. We come to the conclusion that Smith's thinking exerted a significant influence on the development of Say's liberalism. The French author's works, published at a time when Bentham's utilitarian theory was gaining ground, expressed a liberal thought in which Smith's influence remained absolutely relevant.
The “prudent man” characterises the Smithian model of capitalism. An economic system characterised by the ‘prudent’ behaviour of the entrepreneur, in which the risk assessment of economic enterprise seems to be subordinated to social rules. Smith is well aware that “human
nature” is complex and, because of the contradictory “passions” that determine it, is not given in its characters once and for all. He is also well aware of its plasticity, which makes variations in behaviour possible depending on circumstances and the social environment. However, as an Enlightenment man, he is convinced that man (as a social animal) always ends up adopting a rational attitude that incorporates socially and ethically acceptable goals. From his oeuvre as a whole, one can deduce Smith's conviction that economic activity has no internal mechanisms of self-regulation, if one disregards the level of profit that can be acquired. Therefore, the rules of the game depend on a difficult (but possible) balance between economic and socially responsible action.
The second part of the story is told by Marx (whom we will not consider here) and by M. Weber and Sombart, who seem to take up, through their socio-economic analysis, the questions that Smith poses, above all, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. How is it that “men brought up in a hard school of life”, with “strictly bourgeois views and principles”, attentive to the value of life and supported by strict ethical and religious principles, have produced a rapacious economic system, characterised exclusively by the pursuit of “unscrupulous gain and unrestrained by any inner rules”. In 1913, Sombart assumes that in Fruhkapitalismus, the economic system is centred on a “prudent” type of
entrepreneur, attentive to the needs of workers and consumers. Once again, the problem becomes one of explaining how we got from that capitalism to the current predatory economic system. According to Sombart and Weber, in the transitional phase, when the “spirit of capitalism” had not yet fully established itself, it was tied to the ethical and religious assumptions of the old socio-economic system. When, fully developed, it got rid of “the old supports”, it was only oriented by
the pursuit of profit (manifesting a priority of the economy over society), endangering the social balance and that of the natural environment.
In the famous passage of the butcher, the brewer and the baker, after having pointed out that one can obtain one’s subsistence not from “benevolence”, but from the interest of others, Smith maintains that only beggars depend on the “benevolence of their fellow citizens”. However, he adds that, to be precise, even they must resort to the market.
Both beggars and domestic animals, such as dogs, try to arouse the benevolence of others to obtain advantages, and this places them in a relationship of hierarchical dependence with respect to their benefactors/masters. Furthermore, in the LJ, Smith observes that the gift, both in ancient and feudal societies and market societies, symbolized relationships of subordination. This makes it possible to discuss how Smith contrasted the market system, in which ideally persuasion and bargaining prevail, with (private and social) relationships of subordination that, based on benevolence-charity or on “command”, do not resort to those strategies that are necessary to identify a mutually advantageous exchange.
The eighteenth century was a period of intense geopolitical conflict and frequent wars, yet it also witnessed an unprecedented surge in trade, particularly colonial trade among the major empires. Within this dynamic context, Adam Smith formulated his inquiry into the wealth of nations. Scholars of Smith have often examined his perspectives on the interplay between trade and war. On one side, he is regarded as a precursor to the liberal tradition in international relations, suggesting that trade fosters peace, aligning with the doux commerce thesis (Modelski 1972; Coulomb 1998; Gartzke and Li 2003; Hill 2009). Conversely, he is also viewed as a skeptic of expanding international trade, wary of the mercantilist ethos that pervades commercial societies (Wyatt-Walter 1996; Paganelli and Schumacher 2019).
This study shifts the focus from the binary question of whether trade promotes peace or conflict. Instead, it examines Smith’s views on foreign trade amid wartime conditions. To address this, I analyze Smith’s stance on the Laws of Nations, with particular attention to his views on neutral trade following the First League of Armed Neutrality during the American Revolutionary War. This perspective, previously unexplored in the secondary literature, sheds light on Smith’s thinking regarding two core objectives of any nation: prosperity and defense, with the latter as the foremost duty within his system of natural liberty.
Ultimately, this analysis reveals Smith’s nuanced stance, situated at the crossroads of realism or neo-mercantilist traditions in international relations and the principles espoused by the early advocates of free trade (predating Richard Cobden) in the nineteenth century.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is considered by many to be a foundational work for classical economics. Recent scholarship claims Smith’s other book, Theory of Moral Sentiments deserves a similar stature for behavioral economics. This paper considers the claim by examining Smith’s use of the endowment effect in his conceptualization of three pillars of his moral system: justice, prudence and beneficence. While writings such as Ashraf, Camerer, and Loewenstein (2005) and Zamir (2010) provide a cursory discussion of Smith’s usage the endowment effect, this paper provides the specific model underlying Smith’s analysis. For Smith, the violation of a person’s perceived endowment creates a loss and constitutes injury. Injuries that create justified resentment are considered injustices. Similar violations that result in foregone gains rather than losses of perceived endowments create disappointment but not resentment and as such do not constitute real injury in Smith’s moral framework. Without injury Smith’s “active principles” are not invoked and no moral action occurs. Support for this conceptual framework is also shown to appear in Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence as illustrated by three examples herein. This compilation of evidence for the endowment effect supports the notion that Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments may deserve similar stature for behavioral economics as his Wealth of Nations has for classical economics.
Adam Smith, the Author of The Wealth of Nations: Our Visionary yet Observant Contemporary
Our contention here is that Adam Smith provides us with a rare case of being both an observant scholar of ‘here and now’ and an insightful ‘visionary’ of the processes unfolding in the longue durée. It is this latter attribute that makes him our contemporary after a quarter millennium. Because of the disciplinary specialization that has progressed beyond its natural limits, economists now shy away from many of the greater problems that Smith faced head on in his time. Thanks to then underdeveloped disciplinary specialization, Smith could perform extraordinarily well in two would-be disparate fields such as moral philosophy and economics. This paper focuses on the observational power and visionary insights we find in Smith’s Wealth of Nations that deserve attention and reconsideration. This can help explain the ‘paradox’ about Smith,’ i.e., he was more or less equal to several leading economists of his time in terms of analytical achievement, yet was retrospectively recognized as the father of economics, as also noted by Joseph Schumpeter in History of Economic Analysis. We believe observational acuity and panoramic vision are among the factors that made what we would rather characterize as the ‘Smithian difference’. To give a good idea of what we will focus on, we list below three examples that our paper will cover at length as representative now of three different fields of vision.
We start with the most classic example of ‘division of labor.’ Pivotal for Wealth of Nations was this concept as Smith used it as his gate of entry via Book I and particularly its first three chapters. He placed greater importance on its centrality in his theoretical construct than any economist before or after him. In late 19th century, ‘division of labor’ was shifted from the domain of economics to that of sociology, as the two disciplines were consolidated as conflicting neighbors. Smith foresaw the prospects of division of labor; the very success of the phenomenon in real life reshaped in return the intellectual arena divided up into academic disciplines. Smith observed what was under way in the pin factory, an exceptional one among the many manufactories of his day, where the unusual was coming up to full blossom, and recognized its importance for the coming era. More than that, he made this concept the organizing principle of his analytical apparatus. On the other hand, he missed with a narrow margin the Industrial Revolution just around the corner. But this is beside the point. What counts here is his penchant for selective observation that made him superior to his contemporaries. This observation concerned the borderland, i.e., the twilight zone overlooked by his contemporaries. The explosive consequences of this underlying fault line would soon reshape the disciplinary configuration of modern social sciences. Furthermore, it would demolish the intellectual landscape that made the Smithian viewpoint possible in the first place.
Our second example is from the 7th Chapter of Book IV, to do with political economy and world history with a long-view. Smith performed even better when it came to identifying the implications for the American colonies and New York of the shift of economic center of gravity from Britain to the New World: “The distance of America from the seat of government, besides, the natives of that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long continuance. Such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population and improvement, that in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of American might exceed that of British taxation. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contribute most to the general defense and support of the whole.” This was only to be noticed, and independently of Smith’s pointer, when New York actually replaced London as the capital of world capitalism in the twentieth century. It was given a systemic interpretation and explanation by large-scale, long-term analysts of the caliber of Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, to whom Smith was no stranger. Smith’s superior performance in this respect was due to his strong footing in political economy as well as history. If he appeared as a visionary at first sight, it was because he was a learned one, with a solid basis in the yet-undifferentiated domain of classical knowledge.
Our third example is most relevant in our epoch characterized by financial capitalism. It comes from the 2nd Chapter on ‘Money’ of Book II. It demonstrates that Smith was a good observer of the potential instability of the banking sector, and the calculus the economic agents pursue when faced with risk and uncertainty: “The house is crazy, says a weary traveler to himself, and will not stand very long; but it is a chance if it falls to-night, and I will venture, therefore, to sleep in it to-night.” This leads our discussion to the exploration of the most contemporary and fashionable microeconomic yet finance-related theme, to do with probabilistic economic behavior under conditions of calculable risk and radical uncertainty. Whereas our first example has occasionally been noted by historians and scholars, the second and third have so far gone unnoticed. This paper purports to subject all three types to a systematic treatment, only to suggest by so doing how Smith could lend himself to a new interpretation in the 21st century.
I discuss how Adam Smith’s moral theory explains the rise and fall of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and corporate governance (ESG) as the gold standard for sustainable and responsible business practices. First, I explain how the rising popularity of ESG challenged the economic theory of the firm based on narrow self-interest and shareholder primacy. Second, I present Adam Smith’s moral theory based on shared values and social norms and argue that it formed the moral foundation for his political economy. Third, I explain how his moral theory explains both the rising popularity of ESG in the modern economy and its eventual backlash and fall. Absent Smith’s moral foundation and economic sensibility, ESG has gone from a set of ethical guidelines promoted by the United Nations to an iron fist of excessive regulations that threatens free-market economies and individual flourishing. I conclude by discussing how Adam Smith’s moral theory provides a responsible path forward based on a renewed emphasis on shared values, innovation, and long-term value creation.
This chapter explores the meaning of agency for artificial intelligence (AI) and raises questions about human-AI interaction, particularly focusing on social chatbots. Using Adam Smith's theory of sympathy as a framework, we explore how the absence of fundamental emotions like sympathy hampers machines' ability to understand and ethically respond to certain situations, thereby questioning their ability to serve as moral agents comparable to humans. Moreover, we examine the practical repercussions on human-machine relations, highlighting how these emotional limitations could undermine the essence and depth of human friendships. We will delve into a discussion on how AI systems shape our social behaviors by introducing new forms of interaction that blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds. Particularly, the experience with so-called AI social chatbots that emulates human relationships of friendship and love may suggest a deeper kind of relationships with them. For instance, chatbot friends are like human friends, but they are not human or simple machines like our coffee maker or an automated car. This generates a phenomenon of anthropomorphization of this AI that alters our view on the original meaning of social engagement, acknowledging it as a non-human agent that significantly influences our behavior and expectations within relationships. Our initial step is to explore the possibility of AI agency and whether any sense of agency exists within them. We argue that there is an emotional lapse (Barbosa & Costa, 2023) in AI systems that poses a challenge as to whether AI can truly develop a sense of agency that meets social engagement requirements. According to Legaspi et al. (2022, p. 40), “the sense of agency (SoA) is the subjective experience that one initiates and controls one’s own actions and through them the external world.” Despite advancements in this field, a significant challenge persists in translating the deeply human and subjective experience of Sense of Agency (SoA) into computational models that can genuinely relate to humans. We seek to determine the practicality of creating AI systems that transcend simple interaction or emulation, truly operating under a sense of agency.
Once this is established, we will discuss the practical implications of these shortcomings in social human-machine interactions, with a particular focus on their influence on friendships. So far, it is important to determine how the absence of these relational social phenomena in human-AI interactions may compromise genuine interpersonal connections due to its distinct nature from what is a genuine human relationship. This represents a break from the notion of sympathetic engagement that Smith presents in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which may interfere with socio-economic relations among individuals. Contemporary societies have experienced a significant increase in loneliness and social isolation of individuals – expressed in the figure of hikikomori in Japan and South Korea –, clearly indicating changes in social behavior and aspects of social psychology. We will explore how the concept of friendship, traditionally characterized in human-human interaction as a special concern for another person (see Annis, 1987), can be applied to human-AI interactions. We will explore this phenomenon from Smith's perspective, which calls for friendship as "the best and most comfortable of all social enjoyments." (TMS VI.iii.15) For that, it will take in considerations factors such as the asymmetrical nature of human-AI interplay and how it can reinforce human-human social isolation in societies When AI is a key component of an environment, psychological and cognitive alterations such as changes in social dependency and emotional depression can occur. This situation is often exacerbated by the shallow nature of AI interactions, which may lead individuals to favor these over deeper human connections, thereby further reinforcing social isolation. This integration of AI into daily life could indicate the emergence of an unprecedented form of human relationship or interaction.
What kind of endorsement is involved in a judgment that an emotion is an “appropriate” response to what it is about? In answering this question, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson (2000) warned moral philosophers not to conflate two distinct forms of endorsement or assessment: the moral propriety of an emotion on the one hand, and its fittingness (representational accuracy) on the other hand. They argued that anyone who infers directly from claims about the moral appropriateness of an emotion to conclusions about the representational accuracy of that emotion would be committing “the moralistic fallacy”: he is failing to see that a moral reason for or against feeling an emotion is irrelevant—that it is “the wrong kind of reason”—to determining its fit. For example, one might infer that because it would be morally wrong to be amused by a racist or a sexist joke, that the joke is therefore not funny. It is clear that there is something amiss in this example.
My aim in this paper is to examine whether Smith commits the moralistic fallacy. Smith argues that “the precise or distinct measure by which this fitness or propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of” can only be found in “the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator” (TMS VII.ii.1.49). The interchangeability of “fitness” and “propriety” might suggest that Smith did commit the moralistic fallacy: he infers directly from claims about the moral appropriateness of an emotion to conclusions about the representational accuracy of that emotion. Indeed, on the one hand, Smith presents the impartial spectator as the standpoint that makes the objects of their sentiments of approval and disapproval merit that approval or disapproval. The appropriateness here is distinctly moral in the sense that the impartial spectator (a) makes us realize that our perspective is “but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it” (TMS II.ii.2.1 & III.3.4), and (b) allows us to correct our perception both of our own interests and of the interests of others, since we come to view all interests but “from the place and with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connexion with either [us or others], and who judges with impartiality between us” (TMS III.3.3). On the other hand, Smith repeatedly talks of feelings being “suitable to their objects,” The worry is that Smith believed that feelings are “suitable to their objects” precisely because of their moral appropriateness, thus committing the moralistic fallacy.
I build on a suggestion made by Vida Yao (2023) and argue that Smith can avoid the moralistic fallacy by showing that the appropriateness inherent to the impartial spectator is partly constituted by emotional accuracy: to judge something as appropriate is, among other things, for one’s emotions to be accurately responsive to the relevant features of the situation. In other words, the person who adopts the standpoint of the impartial spectator and acts in morally appropriate ways is the person who has accurate emotions. Thus, there is no conflation of moral and epistemic assessment, as the assessment is moral and epistemic. In order for this account to work, I argue that Smith’s moral theory must be viewed as somewhat similar to an Aristotelian virtue theory, for the Aristotelian can avail himself of a broader understanding of ethics, in which a virtuous person is appropriately related, and emotionally attuned, to goodness in all of its forms. I show that there is a way to understand Smith’s moral theory in these terms through a version of the doctrine of the mean, which is endorsed by Smith (VII.ii.1.12). I build on Broadie (2010) and argue that, in the context of attempting to attain mutual sympathy (TMS I.i.2.1-6), the process of seeking a mean between undesirable extremes starts to take shape: a compromise is reached between the spectator and the person principally concerned by which each modifies the intensity of his own sentiment in the direction of the intensity of the sentiment that the other has. I further argue that the structure of this sympathetic process is ultimately incorporated into the standpoint of the impartial spectator.
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to analyze the modern theory of institutions and its vital role in the development, prosperity and proper functioning of nations through the theoretical principles of Adam Smith. Taking the Smithian spontaneous order as a starting point, the epistemic and philosophical foundations that lead to the differentiation between extractive and inclusive institutions and their effects on society will be explained, then concluding with an argument in favor of spontaneous institutionality as a driving force for social progress or failure and, therefore, as a determining factor in the wealth of nations.
With time, Hayek viewed Smith ever more positively. Accordingly, Smith plays a huge role in The Fatal Conceit, Hayek's last book. But given the doubts around The Fatal Conceit, can we rely on this material? My paper offers Hayek's interpretation of Smith based on reliably Hayek's material that he wrote as by-products of The Fatal Conceit book project. He wrote several dozen articles along the way and uses Smith particularly in "Überschätzte Vernunft/The Overrated Reason" (1982/2013), "The Origins and Effects of our Morals: a Problem for Science" (1984), "The Rules of Morality are not the Conclusions of our Reason" (1984), "The Moral Imperative of the Market" (1985), "Die Freie Marktwirtschaft und ihre Moralische Grundlagen" (1985), "The Austrian School" (1985). In these articles, Hayek uses Smith to demonstrate that The Fatal Conceit should have been a book on Ethics, and in this, how ignorant we are towards the emergence of moral order. Somewhat anachronistically, Hayek grants Smith with a theory of spontaneous generation of morals, spontaneous being in the absence of rational construction. Morals come about as a product of religious evolution, says Hayek, referring to Smith. The late Hayek considers Smith a precursor to various evolutionary complex phenomena, not only of morals, but also of system science, autopoiesis, cybernetics, and, last but not least, economics. Even if Hayek stemmed from the marginal-utility-based Austrian school, which criticized Smithian classical political economy and its value theory, he credits Smith with the theory of spontaneous order of economy based on the division of knowledge among individuals. Paradoxically, he closes his 1985 article Austrian School with a laudation of Smith and his invisible hand, criticizing some aspects of the Austrian school with the help of Smith.
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.
Adam Smith has often been hailed as the patron saint of capitalism, while Karl Marx universally acknowledged as its sharpest critics. Much of the ideological battle has been fought around the issue of social justice. The distribution of wealth, however, is heavily influenced by the contours of the monetary regime. How Smith and Marx understood money, and its relationship to capital, production, and justice, however, has rarely been examined.
For Smith, capital includes both the productive resources employed in the real economy, as well as the circulating money that represents them. This duality of capital enables Smith to downplay the importance of money and credit, as he confidently believed that the monetary representation of capital is a passive signifier that invariably follows the productive resource. The market, therefore, was perceived to be a natural hedge against the potential dangers of finance. In Smith’s analytical framework, how capital is managed and employed in the real economy is the central concern of political economy, while the monetary ownership of capital becomes a conceptually separate and ultimately inconsequential issue.
This opens the door for a scenario where a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of the few does not alter how capitals are actually employed, hence does not appear problematic to Smith. Smith’s theory of money and capital allows him to completely bypass the revolutionary message of Marx. On the other hand, Marx was equally dismissive of money, which he saw as a capitalistic commodity that cannot be wilfully manipulated. Achieving social justice required the abolition of money as an institution altogether. Tracing the intellectual genealogy of money and capital from Smith to Marx can provide timely and invaluable resources for reflections on distributive justice in modern finance capitalism.
A common sense of liberal aspiration imputes in Adam Smith's work, more precisely within The Wealth of Nations, a relationship between human nature as an essential substrate for the emergence of capitalism. Which consonates with a deduction focused on the selfish aspect and the human propensity to exchange, as general trends that would guide the process. However, human nature is open to a greater range of facets, linked to the moral aspects arising from sympathy, as presented within The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Needing a mediation to establish an effective connection between the human essence and social economic development. In the same sense, the way in which there is social cohesion in capitalism, expressed by the idea of the invisible hand, does not necessarily imply harmony. This question takes on greater hues in the face of the way in which social classes are presented, starting from the perspective of antagonistic demands that do not form a common set of ideas of social progress and well-being. In this way, there is “a leap of faith” between the issues of human nature, the historical formation of classes and the social cohesion present in capitalism. In this way, the present work seeks to reflect and present the limits of the influence that human nature has on the formation of capitalism within the work of Adam Smith, having as a mediating factor his particular view of social classes.
This paper aims at showing that (i) contemporary Post Keynesian theory is largely based on Smith’s theorem of the division of labour and that (ii) this approach proves very useful for interpreting current macroeconomic dynamics. Accordingly, this paper provides an actualization of Smith’s thought, focusing on Myrdal and Kaldor’s contributions and on the use of their analyses to interpret the path of regional divergences in Italy.
On the methodological plane, both Myrdal’s and Kaldor’s contributions are based on the theory of circular ccumulative causation (CCC). Circular cumulative causation indicates a mechanism where if event A happens this gives rise to a number of further events B which – depending on A – produce feedback effects on event A. Therefore, A is both the cause and the effect of B. Mydal used this approach initially for the analysis of labour market discrimination and then for the study of regional divergences. This idea can be used for many applications, implying that social dynamics do not develop in equilibrium conditions. In this theoretical framework, instability is conceived as the key feature of the functioning of deregulated market economies. Myrdal shows that a deregulated market economy tends to spontaneously produce increasing regional divergences and that these are self-fulfilling. Regional divergences, in the light of Kaldor’s theory of growth, are also induced, via restrictive fiscal policies and their effects on the “size of the market” and, therefore, on the path of labour productivity, via the operation of increasing returns. It is also interesting to observe that both Myrdal and Kaldor, based on Smith, pointed out that the increase of real wages stimulates labour productivity increases, both because of workers’ better nutrition and motivation, and because of the incentive for firms to innovate.
This theoretical framework is used here in order to show that increasing regional divergences in Italy are partly the spontaneous outcome of a deregulated market economy to produce disequilibrium and are partly induced by restrictive fiscal policy combined with wage moderation. In both cases, the Smithian idea that the size of the market affects the division of labour and that this, in turn, determines the dynamics of labour productivity remains confirmed.
References
Myrdal, G. (1957a). Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions. London: London: General Duckworth & Co.
Myrdal, G. (1957b). Rich land and poor: The road to world prosperity. London.
Myrdal, G. (1959). Economic theory of underdeveloped regions. London: University Paperback
Kaldor, N. (1957). A model of economic growth, “The Economic Journal”, vol.67, n.268, December pp.591-624.
Kaldor, N. (1972), The irrelevance of equilibrium economics, “The Economic Journal”, vol.82, n.328, December, pp.1237-1255.
Kaldor, N. (1981a). A Keynesian perspective on money, “Lloyds Bank Review”, 1981, in Kaldor, 1989.
Kaldor, N (1981b). The role of increasing returns, technical progress and cumulative causation in the theory of international trade and economic growth, “Economie Appliqueé”, n.4, in Kaldor, 1898,
Kaldor, N. (1989). Further essays on economic theory and policy, Duckworth, London, edited by F.Targetti and A.P. Trirlwall.
Adam Smith is famously difficult to pin down when it comes to his views on religion. One reason for this is the absence of any student notes on that part of his moral philosophy lectures that covered natural religion. This paper attempts to re- construct an outline of what Smith may have covered in these lectures by examining the circumstantial evidence available to us. The paper examines the structure of similar moral philosophy courses by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Ferguson and combines this with findings from recent work on Smith’s Library and the Books and Borrowing Project surveying Scottish library records including Smith and the books he signed out for students. By combining this material we may identify a broad outline of the sort of material that Smith taught under the heading of natural religion.
In the Wealth of Nations, Smith points out that because of the expansion of the division of labour, “Every man (…) becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society” (L. I, c. 4). The understanding and implications of these ideas about the merchant’s job and the idea of “commercial society” has had, among Smith's scholars, different approaches. Recently, J. Regan has posed an interesting challenge around this topic. Using digital tools, he pointed out that although Smith’s thought is usually related with the idea of “commercial society”, he uses this expression very few times in his entire works. In this paper I will revisit the question of the importance of the idea of “commercial society” focussing on the concept of “merchants”, and trying to put Smith’s thought in dialogue with other intellectual traditions, and in a special way, with the Franciscan scholastic tradition. In the 13th century, these theologians challenged the traditional opinion about the merchant´s work; later, Grotius, Pufendorf and Heineccius developed some of their thesis. In my presentation, I will use a textual approach to analyse this connection between these Scholastic authors and Grotius’s, Pufendorf’s, Heineccius’ and finally with Smith’s texts. Inspired by the ideas of Oakeshott, who suggested that intellectual life should be conceived as a “conversation”, I would like to show that Smith's ideas about the merchant’s job and his idea of “Commercial Society” could be better understood if it is conceived as part of a larger and older “conversation” around these topics. As I will try to show, if we look at this textual tradition we can argue that maybe Smith was not rejecting but developing in an original way some ideas that posed by this Scholastic tradition were continued by Grotius, Pufendorf and Heineccius.
Chapter XIII of John Rae’s Life of Adam Smith recounts many of the most salient events and encounters during the middle phase of Adam Smith’s Grand Tour--specifically, the time between Smith’s departure from Toulouse (about October 1765) and his arrival in Paris a few months later (at the end of January or beginning of February 1766). Although Rae devotes only 2000 words to this part of Smith’s life and travels, subsequent scholarship has failed to surpass Rae’s findings. Biographers have rightly attached great importance to Smith’s meeting with Voltaire at a time when the Calas affair was still very much alive, but during his sojourn in Geneva, which has been described by some scholars as an English enclave at the time, Smith met other notable historical figures, including Charles Bonnet; Georges‐Louis Le Sage; Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl Stanhope; Dr Theodore Tronchin; as well as Marie Louise Nicole de La Rochefoucauld, the duchesse d'Enville. By all accounts, the duchesse d'Enville would continue to play a role in Smith’s life during his subsequent sojourn in Paris and later years, perhaps even prompting Smith to make some significant alterations to the sixth edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Part 1 of this article presents the circumstances of Smith’s arrival from Toulouse to Geneva. Part 2 exposes the English microcosm in Geneva and how Smith’s networking in Toulouse and Occitania prepared his arrival. Part 3 stresses the consequences of the sojourn, both for the last phase of Smith’s Grand Tour in Paris as well as for his long lasting relationships he formed in Geneva.
This presentation explores Vilfredo Pareto's relationship with Adam Smith and how the former engaged with, criticized, and built upon Smith’s ideas in his own economic theories. In Mosca (2018) I aimed to demonstrate the Italian marginalists’ desire to be seen as continuing the classical tradition, with their stated theoretical goal being to translate the classical theories into more rigorous terms to strengthen their foundations. In particular, I analyzed their conception of dynamic competition. McLure (2022) concentrated on Pareto and his interpretation of classical political economy, particularly in relation to the concepts of “surplus, value and the cost of production”. In this presentation, I focus exclusively on Pareto’s references to Adam Smith. The topics addressed by Pareto and analyzed in this presentation include: Adam Smith as the founder of economic liberalism, the initiator of the scientific approach to economics, and the starting point of a progressive evolution of the discipline. At the same time, I show that Pareto criticized Smith’s labor theory of value, as well as some of his statements on applied economics, while contextualizing them within Adam Smith’s historical period.
The distinctive feature of Adam Smith’s analysis on the progress of wealth is to incorporate a clear vision on equality, namely the association of the progressive state with an increase in per-capita income.
After illustrating Smith's perspective, the study will analyze how development economists approached the issue of income and wealth distribution in relation to their concept of progress.
It is commonly held that post-World War II development economics focused primarily on enhancing production capacity without considering distributional implications. The purpose of this study is to validate this thesis by means of analysing five recognized development economists: Walt W. Rostow, Simon Kuznets, William Arthur Lewis, Albert Hirschman, and Ester Boserup.
The findings of the investigation will enable us to compare various perspectives on the relationship between economic development concepts and the improvement of income and wealth distribution.
In 2020, the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group proposed the removal of a series of monuments dedicated to distinguished Scottish personalities who allegedly supported colonialism and slavery. At first, Adam Smith was included in the list because of his alleged proposal “to moderate slavery and improve its profitability with wages”.
Actually, Smith was a well-known opponent of both colonialism and slave labour on plantations. He considered the slave labour was at the root of two negative aspects: the low level of labour productivity and the higher production costs of exotic goods, the high price of which was charged to consumers in the mother country.
Nowadays, albeit in different forms, slavery is still a widespread phenomenon in agriculture. If Smith, today, would confirm the continuing low productivity of slave labour, he would probably update his thoughts on the definition of ‘exotic’ goods and the high level of their prices. In the globalised economy, even though so-called exotic goods have become usual consumer goods, their systems of production are often based on the use of slave labour. The intensive exploitation of this type of labour, the avoidance of safety and security measures for workers, on the one hand, and the circumvention of environmental and community constraints, on the other, allow production costs to be kept low, triggering unfair forms of competition.
This research offers a novel interpretation of Smith's theory on the division of labour by examining its intricate relationship with his conceptualisation of 'services'. Whilst scholarly attention has traditionally focused on Smith's treatment of the societal division of labour, this research illuminates the theoretical significance of his analysis of manufacturing division of labour as presented in The Wealth of Nations. The study distinguishes between two historical forms of labour division in workshops: division by trade and division by process. The former, characteristic of guild economies, represents a horizontal segregation aimed at market monopolisation, whilst the latter exemplifies the scientific disintegration of production processes for enhanced productivity—a hallmark of industrial capitalism.
Through careful analysis of Smith's writings, this research demonstrates how his distinction between productive and unproductive labour parallels these different forms of labour division. Services, associated with division by trade, are categorised under unproductive labour, whereas work under the process-oriented division contributes to national wealth accumulation. This previously unexplored connection provides fresh insights into Smith's theories of value and accumulation, whilst offering historical context for his observations on emerging capitalist production methods.
The research employs historical examples, such as the distinction between joiners and carpenters, to illustrate how division by trade served primarily to segment consumer markets rather than enhance production efficiency. This contrasts sharply with the process-oriented division of labour that Smith identified as crucial for productivity growth and wealth creation. The paper's findings contribute significantly to both Smithian scholarship and labour studies by illuminating how Smith's theoretical framework captured the transition from guild-based to industrial production systems. This interpretation not only enhances our understanding of Smith's economic thought but also provides historical grounding for contemporary analyses of capitalist labour control mechanisms.
In Chapter II, Book II, Wealth of Nations, Smith develops the distinction between the ‘gross’ and ‘neat’ revenue of a country. Taking the rent of an individual estate as the point of reference, Smith generalizes the distinction between gross and net, migrating from the sphere of an individual estate into that of a whole country. The ‘value of the annual produce’ of any country also holds the distinction between gross and net revenue.
The generalization essayed in Chapter II is representative of Smith’s efforts of transiting from categories presented in the individual realm – the revenue of an individual, the value of a commodity... – into aggregative categories, such as the revenue of a country. The problem is how to align the two spheres, the individual and the collective, preserving the meaning of Smith's original ‘revenues’ – wages, profit and rent – and preserving Smith’s approach to surplus. In other words, how to compare categories such as surplus and value, presented in Book I in the realm of individual commodities, with their aggregative counterparts. It must be added that Smith is in Book II, Chapter II, presenting money as a ‘particular Branch of the general Stock of the Society...’; that is, digressing on money. In other words, the net versus gross distinction is instrumental to the development of Smith’s view of money and of his overall criticism of the ‘mercantile system’. Does the monetary backdrop of the gross versus net disjunctive affect its consistency?
Taking the distinction between ‘gross’ and ‘neat’ revenue as the point of departure, the paper will try an approach to Smith’s aggregative methods. I think this approach will also enlighten the reappraisal of some controversial Wealth of Nations’ categories and concepts, such as value, produce, revenue.
The position of modern economic theory towards the analysis of competition carried out by Adam Smith in Chapter VII of the Wealth of Nations is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, Smith’s analysis of competition is generally regarded as one of his fundamental contributions, not only to our more general view of the functioning of a market economy, but also to economic analysis in the strict sense. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an approach in economic theory that denies what Smith argues in that chapter about the tendency of the “quantity brought to market” of commodities to adjust to their “effectual demand” via the transfer of productive capacity from one sector of the economic system to another. Yet, if we exclude the approach that follows Sraffa (1960), the fundamental conclusions that Smith drew from his analysis ― namely (a) the distinction between “market prices” and “natural prices”, these being understood as the prices that guarantee a uniform rate of profit, and (b) the need for economic analysis to concentrate on the determination of the latter ― are fundamentally absent from more recent economic theory. The aim of the paper is to provide a map of how more or less recent economic thought deals with Smith’s analysis of competition. Particular attention is paid to the way in which different approaches attempt to reconcile the high esteem in which Smith’s analysis is held with the neglect of the conclusions he drew from it.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith contends that sympathy (the similarity of sentiments) provides the basis for moral judgment. However, Smith specifies a signal obstacle to sympathy, the “peculiar” relations that affect some persons but not others (TMS I.i.4.1). Those without such relations are indifferent (impartial): they easily agree in their sentiments because they lack peculiar relations to some object, circumstance, or person. This presentation focuses on peculiar relations, how they become partial, and how they affect moral perception. First, if a peculiar relation excites some passion in a spectator, then is it the passion that poses the obstacle to sympathy or is it that the spectator overestimates (unduly weighs) the passion because it is his? Smith’s account is not unambiguous, but he seems to suggest that it is because of the first-person perspective that we tend to allocate undue weight to our passions. Second, it will be argued that this first-person perspective is, for Smith, prone to a certain kind of partiality: self-love. Human self-love is not the only kind of partiality (or moral failing) that might exist, but it is for Smith the chief moral problem. Third, self-love affects the first-person perspective so that one’s overall perception of a situation is distinct from that of indifferent spectators. One way in which self-love affects perception is via the misrepresentation of circumstances, objects, or persons. It is obvious that the impartial spectator must overcome the partial one, but it is less plain, perhaps, to recognize how, for Smith, moral perception is clarity of perception.
In Book III of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith speaks of duty, "the only principle by which the bulk of mankind are capable of directing their actions." But although duties are to be "regarded" as fixed "rules of justice," and even "regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity," Smith's analysis shows that duties in fact arise as an abstractions from ordinary moral experience: they are "founded upon experiences of what, in particular instances," the natural operations of sympathy reveal to us. Strictly speaking, Smith's moral law is not a law at all: moral duty does not legislate so much as describe or indicate proper conduct in most cases.
Immanuel Kant--who is said to have referred to "der Engländer Smith" as his "Liebling" writer on moral passions--attempts to address this defect by deducing a system of moral duties from the abstract dictates of pure practical reason. Where Kant's imperative is "categorical," that is, legislated absolutely by pure reason, Smith's imperatives are conditional, that is, conditioned by the very ordinary experience which Kant denies can be a basis for moral rules. Only if duty is legislative and binding, Kant argues, can we speak of duty in the precise sense.
This paper aims to use Smith's and Kant's conflicting accounts of the origin of moral duties as an entry point into what I identify as a tension in the Enlightenment moral law tradition between the deduction of moral or political duties from pre-political experience (be it in a state of nature or in a natural "moral sense") and the authority those duties are supposed to wield over the individual. If Smith gives greater due to "ground-level" moral experience, Kant gives greater due to the higher (one might say transcendental) claims morality seems to make for itself. I end by speculating on the possible origin of this tension in the divorce of rights from duties in modern political thought, and whether classical political philosophy offers any resources with which to synthesize Smith's and Kant's moral insights.
Soren Kierkegaard presents an ethical system that remains very influential with three basic classifications. Some live the 'Aesthetic' life which is essentially hedonism, others the 'Ethical' life (following laws and behaving justly) and a few live the 'Spiritual' life (when laws and normal practice are suspended to pursue a higher telos).
This paper examines the extent to which the tripartite Kierkegaardian ethical model can be deployed as a hermeneutical lens to view Smith's ethics - which also has three lives - a way of unconstrained self-love, a way of constrained self-love and a way of benevolence.
The paper proposes to examine the extent to which the three moral lives of Kierkegaard and Smith converge and/or diverge.
With half of a book manuscript written on this topic the paper provides a timely opportunity to engage in debate with other Smith scholars.
While both classical liberals and libertarians claim Adam Smith as their intellectual forefather, this paper argues that Smith's thought represents a distinctive form of liberalism that differs fundamentally from later traditions. Unlike utilitarian, social contract, or Millian approaches, Smith's liberalism is grounded in a realistic assessment of human nature and social possibilities rather than abstract ideals or rights claims. His political economy aims not to maximize individual freedom or articulate basic rights but to remove concrete impediments to human flourishing and general prosperity. I argue that Smith’s realist approach offers a more compelling foundation for liberal thought than competing frameworks. Where utilitarians seek to maximize aggregate welfare and rights theorists emphasize inviolable individual liberties, Smith provides a nuanced account of how institutions can promote human flourishing without utopian assumptions. This focus on alleviating practical barriers to prosperity rather than achieving abstract ideals offers valuable insights into contemporary political theory and institutional design.
Adam Smith was against mercantilism and against monopolies in a time where mercantilism and monopolies prevailed. He was against slavery in a time when slavery was the norm. He was against the Empire in a time in which the Empire he was a subject of was at its peak. He was against colonialism in a time in which colonialism was the backbone of power. He was against taxation without representation in a time in which democracy did not exist. He was against the established Church in a time in which the Church had power of life and death over people. He was against endowed universities in a time in which education and its prestige were in their hands. When taken all together, one appreciates the extent to which Adam Smith was a dissenter.
In the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith presents a critique of the spirit of monopoly for the way in which it led to policy that privileged the few at the expense of the many. Implicit in this view is the idea that those who gained an advantage from the privileges they secured were what we could now call rent-seekers, who were able to alter the rules of economic exchange for their own benefit. Also implicit here is the idea that there is a natural or free economic order that is distorted by politics. This paper questions the plausibility of Smith’s view by asking whether there is or can be a natural system of economic liberty.
This paper investigates the possibility of transcending sympathy’s limitations through imaginative engagement with the other via literature.
Beginning with an analysis of reasons why Smithian sympathy resists universalization, the paper then explores literature’s potential as a tool for extending sympathy’s operation.
To illustrate this, the paper then focuses upon Gustave de Beaumont’s prize-winning 19th-century novel, Marie, or On Slavery. Through this novel, which tells the story of an idealistic young Frenchman’s doomed involvement with a beautiful mulatto and her brother, Beaumont attempts to overcome the limitations of his white readers’ sympathetic gazes and to cultivate in them a more democratic sympathetic engagement, inclusive of previously marginalized American Blacks and Native Peoples.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is known for his poetry and literary criticism in the Biographia Literaria. But he also wrote extensively on politics, history, natural philosophy, wealth, and property. An avid critic of Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Robert Malthus, and the new political economy of the early 19th century, he sought a moral foundation for commercial society.
With the notable exception of William Francis Kennedy’s 1978 work Economist versus Humanist, Coleridge’s contributions to a history of economic thought have mostly been overlooked.
Coleridge’s engagement with Adam Smith was deeply complicated. He derided a Tory fashion of Smithian accounts of the marketplace; and referred to those ministers as men “thoroughly Adam Smithed and Macintoshed.” By the 1820s Coleridge believed that the popular and vulgarized reception of Wealth of Nations had reduced Smith’s laws of supply and demand to a crude and mechanical social theory.
This paper will consider Coleridge’s repackaging of Smith as a counter philosophy to that advanced by the Benthamites. Leaning heavily on TMS, as well as the faculty psychology of Thomas Reid and Dougald Stewart, Coleridge modified Smith’s account of the market. After reading Burke on scarcity and criticizing Malthus’s Essay on Population, Coleridge would contend in 1801 that “men should be weighed and not counted.” In his critique of Bentham’s ‘science of legislation,’ Coleridge advanced his own sympathetic science; a sociological history grounded in empathy and imagination and constituted through culture, narrative and opinion.
This paper compares Adam Smith’s naturalistic theory of moral sentiments and the art of literary persuasion.
Section 1 establishes relevant concepts and mechanisms from TMS: fellow feeling, mutual recognition, sense of propriety, and conformity.
Section 2 outlines the logic of narrative art.
Section 3 compares Smith’s theory of moral sentiments and key moments in three great literary probes of conformity, which have exercised philosophers and psychologists: La Ginestra (Giacomo Leopardi), Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), and Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro).
Section 4 considers whether literature changes moral norms — and whether Smith’s theory of moral sentiments is intrinsically conservative.
This paper presents my initial thoughts for a chapter in The Smithian Mind on Smith’s idea of good citizenship.
Smith is sometimes depicted as a prophet of a depoliticized liberal society, in which ordinary citizens can and even should limit themselves to obeying the laws and following their private interests, as his contemporary James Stewart more explicitly wrote. But Smithian citizenship demands more than that, or so I shall argue.
My exposition of Smithian citizenship will be divided into three parts: 1. Acting like a citizen - what Smithian citizens do, focusing on his principles of obedience and improvement; 2. Feeling like a citizen - unpacking the moral psychology of good citizenship, particularly the sentimental relation to fellow-citizens; 3. Living like a citizen - discussing the material bases of good citizenship and how commercial society supports or disrupts the practice of good citizenship.
The Wealth of Nations presents a bleak picture of the prospects for well-informed public deliberations in commercial society. This paper reads the book as a work of political pedagogy, in which Smith encourages his readers to recognize themselves as a public and reflect on the diversity of perspectives that might equip them to make better moral and political judgments.
To what extent does Smith think are either free or equal? In this paper, I suggest Smith’s arguments for class hierarchy and ambition in commercial society render individuals socially unequal and psychologically unfree despite his basic commitments to moral equality and certain kinds of equal freedom.
The British eighteenth-century debate about the foundation and limits of political obligation was structured by a fundamental opposition between Lockeanism, on the one hand, and Filmerianism on the other. Hume questioned both the internal coherence of contract theory and, more importantly for my purposes, its compatibility with experience and opinion. The Lockean principle that human beings are born free, that by nature we exist in a state of liberty, was according to Hume a philosophical fantasy. It is, on the contrary, a matter of everyday belief that we are born into a state of subjection. Here Hume agreed with Filmer. But of course Hume accepted neither the de facto theory of authority that Locke had found in Filmer nor Filmer’s absolutism.
Duncan Forbes claimed that in treatment of political obligation, 'Smith simply took over Hume's arguments'. This was an exaggeration. There is a distinction to be made between Smith's critique of social contract theory, which is indeed essentially a recapitulation of Hume's arguments, and his positive account of 'public jurisprudence'. Just because he was, in his lectures, laying out a comprehensive theory of right, Smith had more to say than Hume about the origins and scope of the rights of sovereigns and of subjects.
Smith filled out what Hume had left schematic, and, in the process created an unstable synthesis of Lockean and Filmerian understandings of the moral basis of political power. His project of an empirically grounded science of politics required that he acknowledge that here 'opinion' is fundamentally divided -- and divided against itself. Smith registered this tension in the foundation of political authority without trying to resolve it.
Early forerunners of political economy, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, worked largely within a paradigm shaped by Machiavelli’s approach to politics. Setting aside the customary constraints of Judeo-Christian morality, this Machiavellian approach was more like an expansion and normalization of the old Roman dictum salus populi, suprema lex—the salvation of the people is the highest law. The moral code that states pursued must, in this tradition, be separate and distinct from the one that governs the lives of individuals. “The end justifies the means” is a stark but not unrepresentative example of this widespread ragione di stato. Even Mandeville’s “Private Vices, Publick Benefits” pays homage to the magnetic appeal of this moral exceptionalism.
A brief survey of the conduct of twenty-first-century governments from the ancient empires of Eurasia prompts the reflection that this Machiavellian, state-centered tradition of national wealth-creation might well have continued uninterrupted over five hundred years.
But it didn’t. When Adam Smith put a diffuse and eclectic discourse of “political economy” onto a firm and rigorous foundation, he imparted to it an inextricably moral dimension. Though often overlooked or misunderstood, the moral dimension is actually integral (or so I shall argue) to the modern project of political economy itself.
In this paper, I will address the subtle ways in which Smith put the moral individual at the very center of modern economic thought.
This paper uses Smith’s corpus to explore the role that idealizations play in providing us with normative leverage on our practices. In particular, it is interested in whether a general account can be provided of why some degree of idealization seems needed to get leverage on our practices, while too much idealization seems to diminish the weight or significance of our normative assessments. To this end the paper pays special attention to whether normative assessments of the actions and characters of individual agents utilize idealizations in the same way that normative assessments of institutions and society do. Key to addressing this is comparing the role that idealizations play in the impartial spectator, on one hand, with the role they play in the analysis of aggregate social phenomena on the other. Along the way the paper will also address what Smith has to say about the source of our interest in normative questions comes from. Do these questions arise primarily from practical problems we confront in our lives, or are they instead downstream theoretical commitments we have about virtue, the good, and human flourishing? Ultimately the paper is not just concerned with understanding Smith’s views on these questions, though. Instead it asks whether Smith’s views can help us make progress in contemporary debates about these questions.
This paper is concerned to explore the different ways in which time and history operate within Smith’s works. It begins by setting Smith in his own temporal context by examining the wider debates stimulated by his close friend Jospeh Hutton’s arguments about the age of the Earth. It then examines the ways in which Smith deploys two ‘voices’ or two registers across his works from the early essays on philosophy through to the Wealth of Nations. These two voices reflect not just Smith’s particular intellectual influences, but also some of the key elements and tensions within Enlightenment thought more generally. In one voice Smith worked historically and empirically tracing the ways in which processes of philosophical, moral and economic progress played out over time. It is this that provides Smith’s works with some of their richness, but it could generate difficulties, as pursued to its logical conclusion this historicization threatened the secure grounds for judgments about morality and progress. Smith avoided this by also working in another voice that found grounds for judgment outside of history. In these two voices Smith was thinking both in and out of time. The paper argues not that Smith was ‘inconsistent’, but that the tensions we find in his thinking remain of considerable importance, not just for understanding Smith, but more generally for the temporalities of liberal thinking today.
This study was motivated by the resurgence of interest in the writings and influence of the renowned Scottish social philosopher and political economist, Adam Smith, particularly his seminal work in classical economics, the Wealth of Nations. In recent years, as research into the Wealth of Nations has deepened, there has been a growing global movement to ‘return to Adam Smith’ or ‘Adam Smith’s revival’, reflecting his increasing influence on contemporary thought. Accompanying this global trend is a resurgence of interest in the Wealth of Nations within China. Scholars have called for greater attention to Smith’s work, arguing that his legacy remain ‘alive’ and relevant to today.
When examining the transmission of classical economic texts in China, it becomes evident that the Wealth of Nations stands out as one of the most significant, and the most frequently retranslated and influential works. The act of translating a work into a different language inherently involves an intricate interaction with its social and historical context. In the case of the Wealth of Nations, its dissemination in China has spanned over a century, closely mirroring China’s broader socio-historical trajectory. Commencing with the translation dating back to the late Qing Dynasty, subsequent editions reflect the dynamic historical contexts and processes that influenced Smith’s reception and propagation of his concepts in China. In general, China’s assimilation of the Wealth of Nations has not adhered to a straightforward linear path; instead, it has adapted in accordance with shifting societal and historical circumstances, signifying an increasingly profound comprehension of Smith’s ideologies as time progressed. This evolving process bears witness to the uniqueness of China’s historical development and represents the distinctive nature of the Wealth of Nations reception and dissemination in the Chinese context.
The transmission of Western economic ideas to China during the late Qing period was shaped by a diverse group of individuals, whom I refer to as ‘travelers’. These travelers, both Western and Chinese, played a crucial role in introducing and disseminating The Wealth of Nations in China. The process of transmitting knowledge from one context to another inevitably involves both challenges and transformations. In this context, Mary S. Morgan’s (2011) concept of ‘traveling well’ offers valuable insights. She outlines two key criteria: integrity, which refers to the retention of the core elements of knowledge as it moves between cultures, and fruitfulness, which indicates the ability of the knowledge to generate broader and more relevant applications in its new setting. These criteria are essential in understanding how Adam Smith’s economic ideas were adapted, interpreted, and integrated into China’s intellectual and political landscape, and how they contributed to the country’s evolving understanding of political economy.
This article investigates the early reception and transmission of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in late Qing China, a period marked by profound socio-political upheavals and intellectual transformations. It specifically focuses on the initial two phases of translation and dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in China during the late-Qing Dynasty (1840-1912), addressing key questions: how the work evolved through translations by Western missionaries and Chinese translators; the underlying reasons for these translation practices; and how Yan Fu interpreted Smith’s economic ideas and reflected them in his translation. The study aims to explore the overarching question: how consistent is Smith’s portrayal in late Qing China with how he is perceived today? To achieve this, the research adopts an interdisciplinary approach which moves beyond past studies that have been isolated in the areas of the history of economic thoughts and translation studies, by employing case study, textual analysis, descriptive translation studies and genetic translation studies. The study investigates two types of case studies: translations by Western (who often adopt a more detached or impartial tone when presenting the Western viewpoint, while attempting to stand in the shoes of a Chinese perspective) missionaries and Chinese local translators, including the prominent translator Yan Fu. Five case studies form the core of the analysis: translations by William Alexander Parson Martin and Wang Fengzao (Fu Guo Ce), John Fryer and Ying Zuxi (Zuo Zhi Chu Yan), Joseph Edkins (Fu Guo Yang Min Ce), Timothy Richard and Cai Erkang (An Outline Modern History of the West) and Yan Fu’s translation (Yuan Fu).
Through these case studies, the study contextualizes the initial translation and dissemination of the Wealth of Nations within China’s transition following the Opium War. It argues that the translations of the Wealth of Nations in late Qing China evolved from fragmented renditions to more systematic and comprehensive interpretation of Smith’s ideas; the reception of Smith’s work was deeply intertwined with China’s intellectual and political efforts to navigate the challenges of modernization and Westernization. Besides, Yan Fu’s translation established a unique ‘Yan Fu economic discourse space’, reshaping Smith’s ideas to align with China’s intellectual landscape. The introduction and dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in the particular historical period were profoundly shaped by the era’s complex socio-historical, economic and cultural context. While Smith’s portrayal during this period differed from his modern reception, this phase of translations facilitated a shift from the initial obscurity of Smith’s ideas to their growing recognition, promoting Chinese enlightenment and engagement with Western economic thought, thereby shaping the nation’s trajectory toward modernization. Therefore, this study highlights the interplay between the socio-historical context of late Qing China and the translation of the Wealth of Nations, revealing the unique features of its reception and dissemination. It holds significant research value for comprehensively outlining the historical trajectory of Smith’s work in China and highlighting the enduring relevance of Adam Smith’s legacy.
Key Words: Adam Smith; the Wealth of Nations; traveller; transmission; late Qing China
Although the theme of the causes of poverty (and in particular begging and idleness) is not one that most directly mobilizes reflection on Smith's Wealth of Nations (Gilbert 2006), his comments on this theme appear to be key to the appropriation and interest of some of its first continental readers. The WN's treatment of issues such as "freedom of labor as a natural right" and the "free circulation of labor and wage inequalities" (I, x), or the relationship between "industry and idleness" (II, iii), and more broadly on the question of the division of labor and wages, will quickly become part of current debates on the question of poverty and begging, or on the question of guilds and corporations in different parts of the continent, and can provide us with particularly relevant aspects of how Smith was read, appropriated and articulated with other sets of ideas in the last decades of the eighteenth century. This topic is one of those that will be of most immediate interest to some of Smith’s first readers in the Iberian Peninsula, and will allow us to proceed with a reading of some writings by Spanish and Portuguese authors who were directly or indirectly involved in the practical affairs of state administration, in order to show how this reception necessarily took place in an eclectic way and amidst a series of perspectives typical of enlightened reformism.
The analysis focuses on two manuscripts and authors that are not usually considered together in historiography: the “Plan para desterrar la ociosidad” by Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, and the “Discurso sobre a Mendicidade” (1787 or 1788) by Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho. Both texts present interesting dialogues with Smith, mainly in relation to Book 1 of WN, and reveal important aspects of how the Scottish author was appropriated by individuals involved in the administration of state affairs at the end of the eighteenth century in Spain and Portugal. The “Informe sobre el libre ejercicio de las artes” (1784) by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, which takes up the ideas of Campomanes and is usually analyzed in the literature as important in terms of the appropriation of Smith’s ideas in Spain, is also analyzed in the article. In addition to this Iberian connection, the article also explores an interesting and original additional connection, with the Italian peninsula, since Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho's text is also connected to the reflections of Giovanni Battista Vasco (himself a central name in the reception of Smith in Italy), with whom he had a close personal relationship during the years when he was the Portuguese diplomatic envoy to the court in Turin.
Based on a thorough analysis of these texts and a broad contextual apparatus, the article aims to advance the discussion of Smith's appropriation by highlighting the interesting eclectic combinations to which his ideas were subjected in enlightened reformism, which help us to better understand how his work was effectively read and debated in that context and, more broadly, the influences on the actual use of the language of political economy in those contexts.
The reception of the Wealth of Nations in the years after its publication reveals a wide range of interpretations of Smith’s ideas. On the one hand, Smith appealed to revolutionaries and subversives; on the other hand, he appealed to ‘conservatives’ who supported the burgeoning laissez faire movement. By 1800, however, in intellectual circles, the ‘conservative’ Smith had largely won out. Yet this was not the case for advocates of working-class interests. As this paper will show, reformers of the early to mid-nineteenth century emphasised Smith's sympathetic attitude towards the labouring poor, his labour theory of value and his distinction between productive and unproductive labour. Reformers turned to Smith for intellectual validation of the workers’ right to vote and often to a larger share of the national produce, hailing him as a supporter of the working classes. The backlash against the ‘subversive’ Smith was significant, with protectors of the status quo pointing to the dangers of ‘misrepresenting’ Smith’s ideas.
While translating Adam Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence, I encountered two particularly challenging terms to render into Portuguese: police and stock. Both are central to Smith’s thought and essential for understanding him as a philosopher, as well as the political economy he develops in The Wealth of Nations.