THE STILL-HIGHER TRIBUNAL:

The leftist's Adam Smith (Joshua Glenn, 3/28/2004, Boston Globe)

ADAM SMITH IS often hailed as the original free-market guru. But according to Samuel Fleischacker, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of the new book On Adam Smith's `Wealth of Nations", the Scottish economist was also a deeply moral thinker who has some lessons to teach the left. "I came to Adam Smith with the notion that he must be a right-wing libertarian," says Fleischacker, who spoke with Ideas from his home in Evanston, Ill. "So it was eye-opening to discover that Smith didn't exalt `commercial society' because it allows people to amass goods, but because it can lead to good for human beings."

IDEAS: Before writing "Wealth of Nations" (1776), which is in part a tract against mercantilist restrictions on trade, Adam Smith published a much-acclaimed treatise on moral philosophy. Yet it's difficult to find any mention of morality in "Wealth of Nations."

FLEISCHACKER: It's true that in "Wealth," moral considerations are given oblique and cursory treatment. But remember, Smith was writing for politicians and merchants likely to ignore appeals to their better natures. Still, he argued for a liberal political economy largely because the broadening of free markets reduces the price of food and raises the standard of living for the poor. Also, he believed that political liberty has a crucial moral function: In a commercial society, individuals are able to develop virtues of self-reliance and self-government, essential to the development of good character.

IDEAS: But isn't Smith pessimistic about our selfish human nature? In a famous line, he writes, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

FLEISCHACKER: Read in context, Smith's point is that what distinguishes humans from animals isn't self-interest, but the fact that we understand that we can pursue our individual interests together. Instead of being a zero-sum game, economic exchange can serve a joint human effort to increase the wealth of everyone -- that's also the point of his "invisible hand" line. But it's important to note that Smith also believed that sometimes an individual's unconstrained pursuit of his interest will not benefit society, and he didn't rule out the possibility of benevolent actions.

The Leftist (or libertarian) who turns to Adam Smith will find cold comfort, Is Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy an Adequate Foundation for the Market Economy? (James Halteman, Fall 2003, Markets & Morality)

For Smith, the innate passions of humanity fall into three main categories: the social passions of generosity, compassion, and esteem that, when practiced, lead to benevolence and self-control. Unfortunately, these are rare and cannot be counted on to provide the glue of a social order. The unsocial passions of hate, envy, and revenge are never condoned as a social practice and they cannot be transformed into a social virtue. The third category of passions includes grief, joy, pain, pleasure, and self-preservation. These passions are the key to the formation of the social order, and when the downside of these passions is channeled for good, these passions become the virtues of prudence and justice.

The key to the transforming of passions into virtues is three screens or conditioners that function to make society viable. The first is sympathy, which helps people see themselves as others see them. The innate ability to see, hear, feel, and identify with another person’s situation and to experience the same fellow-feeling in return creates an interdependency that is socially constructive. The second screen is the impartial spectator, which acts to provide a totally unbiased perspective on how the passions are lived out. Finally, there is always the appeal “to a still higher tribunal, to that of the all-seeing Judge of the world, whose eye can never be deceived, and whose judgments can never be perverted.”

If this system of three checks on the passions is effectively supported by the proper institutional structures, then the social order can be viable and virtuous. In the area of economics, a market order will best fit this moral framework because of its compatibility with the rules of prudence and justice. The key is the effective control of the passions, and it is the moral order described above that must be present in order for the market system to succeed. What follows is a more detailed discussion of that moral system with special attention given to the question of whether that system is based on nature, custom, and habit alone or whether there is a moral force involved that is anchored in some sense of human telos or essence that defines human purpose. [...]

Smith does not root morality in our ability to attach self-command to sympathy or to our ability philosophically to discern right from wrong. Rather, he looks to the impartial spectator that comes to us from creation and is outside of ourselves—but people often do not have constancy in following the impartial spectator, so the moral battle is ever-present. In one example of a person in distress, Smith describes the battle that goes on between the selfish passions and the impartial spectator.

His own natural feelings of his own distress … presses hard upon him, and he cannot, without a very great effort, fix his attention upon that of the impartial spectator. Both views present themselves to him at the same time. His sense of honor, his regard to his own dignity, directs him to fix his whole attention upon the one view. His natural, his untaught and undisciplined feelings, are continually calling it off to the other. He does not, in this case, perfectly identify himself with the ideal man within the breast, he does not become himself the impartial spectator of his own conduct.

In other words, the inability to appropriate the ideal impartial spectator limits the ability of people to live a truly moral life. The language and context of this discussion points toward a view of the impartial spectator that approximates the conscience as it is used in modern discussion. There is a spiritual component to the conscience, but it can be easily abused by human weakness. In a similar manner, there are times when public pressure opposes the impartial spectator’s judgment for a person, and in those times the influence of the spectator will become weak and faltering, leaving the person with sympathy alone to guide action.

In such cases, this demigod within the breast appears like the demigods of the poets, though partly of immortal, yet partly, too, of mortal extraction. When his judgments are steadily and firmly directed by the sense of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, he seems to act suitably to his divine extraction: But when he suffers himself to be astonished and confounded by the judgments of ignorant and weak man, he discovers his connexion with mortality, and appears to act suitably, rather to the human, than to the divine, part of his origin.

The All-Seeing Judge of the World: The Still-Higher Tribunal

This divine and human extraction of the impartial spectator leaves the possibility of unsolved moral dilemmas where there is no reliable guidance left for a person involved in such a situation. Commenting on the mortal side of the impartial spectator, Smith concludes that there are times when the impartial spectator is no more dependable than the man without (sympathy of public) that accepts options that are not just or ethical.

In such cases, the only effectual consolation of humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still-higher tribunal, to that of the all-seeing Judge of the world, whose eye can never be deceived and whose judgments can never be perverted. A firm confidence in the unerring rectitude of this great tribunal, before which his innocence is in due time to be declared, and his virtue to be finally rewarded, can alone support him under the weakness and despondency of his own mind, under the perturbation and astonishment of the man within the breast, whom nature has set up as, in this life, the great guardian, not only of his innocence but of his tranquility. Our happiness in this life is, thus, upon many occasions, dependent upon the humble hope and expectation of a life to come: a hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature, which can alone support its lofty ideas of its own dignity.

Smith believed that the idea of life beyond death where justice is fully realized is a valuable contributor to the willingness of people to transcend a weak man within and a faulty man without. Having this fully immortal backup to the impartial spectator, whether real or imagined, would be the final line of defense against antisocial behavior. Religious values could be very beneficial to a social order. In this sense, Smith, though espousing only a natural religion, did adopt a concept of telos that specified how people would behave if they live up to their essential purpose.
The Stoic tradition, which can be seen beneath the surface of Smith’s moral analysis, came through several phases from early Hellenistic philosophy through the Roman period up to the third century. Fundamental to Stoic thinking is the notion that the world is an ideally good organism that operates as a system with each part serving the whole. A divine logos, or primary moving force, ordained the system and acted as its guide, but direct access to the Creator rather than submission to the created order is an error of Christianity. Moral development, in the Stoic view, involved an ever-expanding sense of one’s self-interest until the good of the whole is foremost even to the point of sacrificing what would commonly be one’s personal interest, though later Stoicism developed a more pragmatic, ethical posture.

The notion of self-control in Stoicism gives clues as to how one progresses morally. Smith’s ability to connect the Stoic organismic view of the world with the mechanistic natural concepts of the Enlightenment provided a broad base on which Smith built his views. The notion of moral progress in Stoicism when blended with the Enlightenment ideas of moral precepts led Smith to his three-level approach to the moral socializing of behavior. The ability to exercise sympathy, appropriate to the impartial spectator and, if need be, the final judge of our conduct, can be seen as a marriage of Stoic moral development and the secular virtue concepts of David Hume. While there may be no teleology in Hume, one can see Stoic threads in Smith that make the teleological claims plausible.

The Role of Rules in Proper Conduct

Smith believed that if the proper institutional structures were established and new rules of the economic game could be established, then a new era of economic performance would result. The reason for established rules in a social order relates to the problem of appropriating the impartial spectator. Since all the circumstances and motivations must be known before the impartial spectator can authoritatively speak, and because humans rarely know those things in advance, it is necessary to set up general practices and rules that simplify the moral discernment process. “So partial are the views of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and after it; and so difficult is it for them to view it in the light in which any indifferent spectator would consider it.”

Given this problem and the fact that individuals are easily self-deceived, Smith sees in nature a method that can standardize behavior effectively. We observe behavior that generates individual welfare and social harmony, and we see behavior that does not. “It is thus that general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and demerit, approve, or disapprove of.” Once the rules are established, it becomes the duty of everyone to follow the rules. Apparently, nature reinforces the opinion that the Deity is behind the rules and will subtly enforce them. “Those vice-regents of God within us, never fail to punish the violation of them, [rules] by the torments of inward shame and self-condemnation; and, on the contrary, always reward obedience with tranquility of mind, with contentment, and self-satisfaction.”

Conversely, for Smith, the rules are limited in their purpose. In discussing the operation of virtue development, Smith divides the process into efficient and final causes. The efficient cause of the heart, arteries and veins, or the digestive track in the body is to circulate blood and process food respectively. The efficient cause of the wheels of a clock is to spin with consistency. The final cause of the body is to make human life meaningful, and the final cause of the watch is to tell time. At this point Smith claims that we are trying to do too much if we focus on final causes.

But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish in this manner the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind we are apt to confound these two different things with one another. When, by natural principles we are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which, in reality, is the wisdom of God.

This passage illustrates Smith’s concern that we confuse natural systems, which function as efficient causes, with the ends of social organization, which are the final causes. In short, the natural system is God’s design and the tendencies and forces that he programs into the system guide those concerned with morality to the virtues that God intends for us—but the guiding process is toward an end, which is more than simply a viable social order or an efficient economy. The goal is to achieve the perfection of human nature. “And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety.” This surely represents a vision of the essential purpose of human creation and the role of the impartial spectator and the higher tribunal are not trivial in this process of perfecting human nature.

MacIntyre’s reading of Smith at this point sees Smith’s view of nature as a substitute for the Christian God. When applied to a setting such as economics, nature prescribes principles or rules that when submitted to properly, become a system of prudence. When a similar approach is taken in the moral realm, ethics and moral reflection become a prudential rule following enterprise. When Smith says, “The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtuous,” MacIntyre sees Smith as having a moral system that simply follows rules given in a system based on human passions.

When Smith criticizes ancient moralists for ignoring the rules of justice, MacIntyre sees Smith as equating virtue with rule-following. No purpose beyond the rules of prudence is recognized. While I agree that the intellectual climate in which Smith wrote would support MacIntyre’s view, I believe that Smith could not easily discard the notion that there is a meaningful telos toward which, human activity should be directed. Smith’s references to the design of God, his vice-regents within us, the higher tribunal, and final causation, I argue, are attempts by Smith to hold onto a sense of telos.

In this day and age, only the Right accepts the need for such Christian moralism and rigid institutional structures as a prerequisite for the economic and social systems.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2004 2:26 PM