Reading Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments 4

What do we owe to each other?

I am reading Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS): earlier posts are here, here, here and here, and you can follow along with Professor Smith himself here.¹

But I’m going to begin with a quote from Smith’s much more famous The Wealth of Nations, published seventeen years later, in 1776 (Smith admitted that he was a very slow writer, and would have little chance at gaining tenure these days):

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. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

The interpretation of this quote that has come to us through the ages is that business owners are out for themselves, but, as Smith will later explain, this all works out because it means that consumers will have access to good bread, ale, and cuts of meat at competitive prices. But in Part II of TMS, on “Merit and Demerit”, the interests of the baker and brewer are set in a moral context.

Smith asks: what would an impartial spectator think of how we behave? A proxy for the impartial spectator is the general opinion, the man on the Clapham omnibus. Smith divides our actions into three sorts, with differing levels of obligations, in terms of what the impartial spectator, someone seeing us but not knowing us, would think.

And the first level is that, well, we need to take care of ourselves. If we are able, we need to find a way of providing for ourselves, and it is perfectly reasonable to put our own self interest first in the basic activity of making a living. No reasonable person can fault me for trying to run a successful bakery, even though in doing so my mind is focused upon my own well-being, and not on being charitable (that will come later). The “self-love” that he identifies in The Wealth of Nations is not selfishness, or narcissism. From TMS:

Though it may be true, therefore, that every individual, in his own breast, naturally prefers himself to all mankind, yet he dares not look mankind in the face, and avow that he acts according to this principle. He feels that in this preference they can never go along with him, and that how natural soever it may be to him, it must always appear excessive and extravagant to them. When he views himself in the light in which he is conscious that others will view him, he sees that to them he is but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it. If he would act so as that the impartial spectator may enter into the principles of his conduct, which is what of all things he has the greatest desire to do, he must upon this, as upon all other occasions, humble the arrogance of his self-love, and bring it down to something which other men can go along with. They will indulge it so far as to allow him to be more anxious about, and to pursue with more earnest assiduity, his own happiness than that of any other person. Thus far, whenever they place themselves in his situation, they will readily go along with him. In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments, he may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle, in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle, or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of. This man is to them, in every respect, as good as he: they do not enter into that self-love, by which he prefers himself so much to this other, and cannot go along with the motive from which he hurt him. They readily, therefore, sympathize with the natural resentment of the injured, and the offender becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. He is sensible that he becomes so, and feels that those sentiments are ready to burst out from all sides against him.

And so, nobody can reasonably object to the person who tries to build a popular brewery, and do well out of it, and strain every nerve and every muscle to make a tastier pale ale. Though the brewer will lose sympathy and respect if he does not play fair, sabotaging his competitors, or conspiring with the local council to get an ordinance allowing for his brewery alone but no competing entrepreneurs.

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But what are our obligations to others, as per what an impartial spectator would approve of?

Here Smith makes a divide between what he calls justice, and beneficence. Simply put, we could think of justice as our obligations to each other which must be met whether we like it or not. Beneficence is akin to our modern notions of charitable philanthropy, which we admire in a person, but which do not strictly speaking constitute an obligation.

When Smith talks about the remorse of someone who has committed an injustice, I’m again reminded that these are lecture notes for his class on moral philosophy, being addressed to students in their mid-teens:

The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him, without feeling all the agonies of shame, and horror, and consternation. When his passion is gratified, and he begins coolly to reflect on his past conduct, he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it. They appear now as detestable to him as they did always to other people. By sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence which other men must entertain for him, he becomes in some measure the object of his own hatred and abhorrence. The situation of the person, who suffered by his injustice, now calls upon his pity. He is grieved at the thought of it; regrets the unhappy effects of his own conduct, and feels at the same time that they have rendered him the proper object of the resentment and indignation of mankind, and of what is the natural consequence of resentment, vengeance and punishment. The thought of this perpetually haunts him, and fills him with terror and amazement. He dares no longer look society in the face, but imagines himself, as it were, rejected, and thrown out from the affections of all mankind. He cannot hope for the consolation of sympathy in this his greatest and most dreadful distress. The remembrance of his crimes has shut out all fellow-feeling with him from the hearts of his fellow-creatures. The sentiments which they entertain with regard to him, are the very thing which he is most afraid of. Every thing seems hostile, and he would be glad to fly to some inhospitable desert, where he might never more behold the face of a human creature, nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation of his crimes.

He might be a little bit hopeful on the degree of remorse felt by the criminal.

What of beneficence?

Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force, the mere want of it exposes to no punishment; because the mere want of beneficence tends to do no real positive evil. It may disappoint of the good which might reasonably have been expected, and upon that account it may justly excite dislike and disapprobation: it cannot, however, provoke any resentment which mankind will go along with. …

All the members of human society stand in need of each other’s assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices. …

Though nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence, by the pleasing consciousness of deserved reward, she has not thought it necessary to guard and enforce the practice of it by the terrors of merited punishment in case it should be neglected. It is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building, and which it was, therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means necessary to impose. Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which, to raise and support, seems, in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms.

When it comes to how we treat one another, justice represents duties and obligations which must be upheld, and formally punished if not upheld. Beneficence represents charitable acts, and gratitude to those who have helped us out in times of need, something that will be admired and attract positive sympathy, but which cannot be forced.

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From this section I get a sense of different spheres of our lives: the practical need to do the best we can to provide for ourselves, and the general acceptance of pursuing careers and honors as best we can (within the rules!); the obligations of justice, which are formalized into laws; and voluntary acts which show charity and gratitude, which cannot be forced, but which make the world a better place.

Morals are a practical thing: how do we treat each other? Smith is building a moral theory from the ground up: we don’t have an ingrained moral intuition, but we do have sentiments and sympathies, and a bit of reflection reminds us that others will have sentiments and sympathies towards us in our own behavior. And from there we develop codes of behavior - when is self-interest justified, what are duties to one another we would formalize, what are behaviors we admire but cannot formalize.

The next part will look more closely at how we see ourselves…

1. I do not have profound thoughts on the election of two days ago, and to add my two cents would reach deeply into diminishing returns. I wish the Democrats had won, but they didn’t. They stand for a lot of good things that make the country better, that Republicans will try to dismantle, and that is worth fighting for.

To my arts policy friends and colleagues in the US I will just add one thing: I receive all sorts of messages and blog posts from “arts advocates”, and if I were to aggregate their messages, two things stand out: (1) arts organizations must focus more on community needs, reaching out to people, both to do what is right and to broaden access and appreciation for what we do, and (2) the slightly-more than half of the voting population who voted for that guy are monsters who have flung the country into ruin. Good luck.