Reading Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments 8 (final)
And in the end...
I have been reading Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and today I reach the end of the book. My prior post in this series is here, and you can read TMS here.
In the final part of the book Smith does what most contemporary writers do first: look at moral philosophies of the past, from Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, through Hobbes, his good friend David Hume, and his teacher Francis Hutcheson.
Smith is a generous reader, and looks for the wisdom and common elements of the philosophic tradition rather than go on any sort of attack (though he gets a bit testy with Bernard Mandeville). Like Hutcheson, he is drawn to the Stoics: live one’s life virtuously, and even though disasters might strike, if they were beyond our control, we can proceed with that calm that comes from knowing we have done, and been, our best - for all the setbacks we have in life, it is the ones where we know, as a twentieth-century American philosopher put it, it’s our own damn fault, that weigh on us. Smith does not follow the Stoics in their willingness to see suicide as a viable option: he writes
Three different accounts have been given of the death of Zeno the Stoic. One is, that after enjoying for ninety-eight years the most perfect state of health, he happened, in going out of his school, to fall; and though he suffered no other damage than that of breaking or dislocating one of his fingers, he struck the ground with his hand, and, in the words of the Niobe of Euripides, said, “I come, why dost thou call me?” and immediately went home and hanged himself. At that great age one should think he might have had a little more patience.
In that last sentence we are reminded that TMS came from his lecture notes to undergraduates - I picture him in front of his class of boys there.
In the end? We constrain ourselves as if viewed by an impartial spectator, impartial in that he will give us no allowances he would not give universally. The impartial spectator approves of our prudence (taking care of ourselves and families), justice (follow the laws; do no harm), and beneficence (where one can, act in the public good, either through private actions or contributing to governance). I agree with him in not worrying about whether beneficent actions are done with some degree of self-interest - how could we ever know? - so long as they truly are beneficial. But the impartial spectator will disapprove, most strongly, of vanity:
[T]he desire of doing what is honourable and noble, of rendering ourselves the proper objects of esteem and approbation, cannot, with any propriety, be called vanity. Even the love of well grounded fame and reputation, the desire of acquiring esteem by what is really estimable, does not deserve that name. The first is the love of virtue, the noblest and the best passion of human nature. The second is the love of true glory, a passion inferior, no doubt, to the former, but which in dignity appears to come immediately after it. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for qualities which are either not praiseworthy in any degree, or not in that degree in which he expects to be praised for them; who sets his character upon the frivolous ornaments of dress and equipage, or upon the equally frivolous accomplishments of ordinary behaviour. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for what, indeed, very well deserves it, but what he perfectly knows does not belong to him. The empty coxcomb who gives himself airs of importance which he has no title to; the silly liar who assumes the merit of adventures which never happened; the foolish plagiary who gives himself out for the author of what he has no pretensions to, are properly accused of this passion. He too is said to be guilty of vanity who is not contented with the silent sentiments of esteem and approbation; who seems to be fonder of their noisy expressions and acclamations than of the sentiments themselves; who is never satisfied but when his own praises are ringing in his ears, and who solicits, with the most anxious importunity, all external marks of respect; is fond of titles, of compliments, of being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in public places with the appearance of deference and attention. This frivolous passion is altogether different from either of the two former, and is the passion of the lowest and the least of mankind, as they are of the noblest and the greatest.
I don’t think I need to add much there.
Was reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments worth the time? There’s an old joke that beyond a certain age it is unwise to buy green bananas, and in this stage of my life, let’s say the fourth quarter is about to begin, one starts to wonder: how many more of these unread books on my shelf will I actually ever get to?
But I am glad I did this. Smith’s style is straightforward, he stays on point, and follows his own advice on self-command, being interesting without ever giving in to false emotions. And his argument is convincing: morals come from our being a part of society, observing others and in turn thinking about how we are observed, and, perhaps without thinking about this formally, we are influenced by what persons we are drawn to and what persons repel us, and over time, hopefully, we sharpen our skills at getting a sense of who in our circle actually is virtuous, and worth in some degree emulating, and who is not, who has an attractive image but an empty core.
Will reading this make me a better person? I couldn’t say so. In my arts policy world there is a great number who insist that reading lots of fiction and going to shows and museums make us morally better, more “empathetic”, but I have always thought the evidence is rather weak for that, and there is a bit of self-congratulation going on. I’m going to say the same about works of moral philosophy: in my experience my colleagues in the philosophy department, while sometimes fine people, are not more so than my colleagues in the chemistry or accounting departments, whether they be Kantians or Utilitarians or even Virtue Ethics people.
So I would count myself a little wiser having read The Theory of Moral Sentiments - whether I will be “better”, having more awareness of my social world, of the importance of self-command, I guess remains to be seen.