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The Practical System of Morality in Adam Smith
Abstract
‘As I consider’, wrote Smith to his London publishers in March 1788, ‘my tenure of this life as extremely precarious, and am very uncertain whether I shall live to finish several other works which I have projected and in which I have made some progress, the best thing, I think, I can do is to leave those I have already published in the best and most perfect state behind me.’ In the same letter, cited above, he notes that the additions and corrections for the new edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments will be sent in three months. But as we see in the next letter also cited above, which was sent to Cadell a year later, Smith has discarded his initial plan to insert, after the fifth part, ‘a compleat new sixth part containing a practical system of Morality, under the title of the Character of Virtue.’ He only suggests, as to his change of mind, that ‘the subject has grown upon me.’
... gr. Shinohara, 1992) ...
El trabajo compara el lugar que ocupa la pregunta sobre la posibilidad y la viabilidad de la civilización capitalista en los proyectos filosóficos de Adam Smith y de Henri Bergson. Se reconstruye cómo, y hasta qué punto, estos dos autores conciben el tránsito entre sociedades humanas particulares y una sociedad humana de alcance mundial mediada por la relación mercantil; qué esperanzas y peligros consideran que se ciernen en aquel proceso, y si examinan (o no) necesario y pertinente integrar a sus respectivos proyectos filosóficos la pregunta acerca de las condiciones y circunstancias históricas que pueden hacer posible la realización de las promesas de la modernidad.
The sympathy principle that Smith develops in the first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TSM) is discussed, emphasizing in the sense he considers it insufficient to achieve cohesion in commercial society. It is argued that Smith conceives of The Wealth of Nations as part of his mission to develop the theory of jurisprudence, and that in this work he emphasizes the dangers that are engendered in commercial society and the consequent difficulties for it to become a civilized society. It is argued that such dangers and difficulties lead Smith to work in the field of virtue ethics, incorporating Part VI of the latest edition of the TSM.
As late twentieth-century discourses of modernity and postmodernity invoke their Enlightenment heritage in a search for the origins of their present achievements and predicaments, Adam Smith's works are still seen as a canonic representative of that heritage. Smith has long been evoked as the ‘father’ of economics and the original proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, but the political changes in recent decades have reconstituted his iconic status. With the full range of Smith's published and unpublished writings and lectures now widely available, there has been a huge growth in the scholarly literature on Smith which has subjected this traditional view to searching questions. The overwhelming conclusion to emerge is that Smith's works display a subtlety and complexity that is at odds with the received image of Smith as the spokesman of modernity, but the diversity of interpretation raises some difficult methodological issues.
Le newtonisme moral, à la mode au milieu du xviiie siècle, n'est pas seulement une métaphore: en vertu du principe de l'unité de la nature, il postule dans la société une loi semblable à la loi des distances en physique, voire une possibilité de mesure. La même règle d'analogie (A/B=C/D) sous-tend leContrat social de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: en prolongement des métaphores classiques de l'horloge, la définition du gouvernement reproduit l'agencement d'une montre, jusque dans les calculs de proportion qui servent aux horlogers à former le rouage. De même, dans laThéorie des sentiments moraux, Adam Smith se sert de la vieille métaphore de l'œil de l'esprit et des notions plus modernes de la perspective optique pour agencer en système l'ensemble des interactions possibles entre deux personnes — hormis l'intérêt — en faisant varier la distance imaginaire entre les protagonistes selon les passions exprimées et leur intensité. Il est important de restituer ces transferts et ces controverses pour comprendre les enjeux fondamentaux de la sociologie au XIXe siècle.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (oxford, 1976) (hereafter cited as TMS with references to part, section, chapter Italics added
- Adam Smith
Essays on the Active Powers of Man (Edinburgh, 1788, facsimile reprint
- Thomas Reid
- T Reid
Thomas Reid on Adam Smith’s Theory of Morals
- D F See
- J C Norton
- Stewart-Robertson
- DF Norton
Macfie (oxford, 1976) (hereafter cited as TMS with references to part, section
- Adam Smith
- A Smith