Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory
Abstract
This 2010 text pursues Adam Smith's views on moral judgement, humanitarian care, commerce, justice and international law both in historical context and through a twenty-first-century cosmopolitan lens, making this a major contribution not only to Smith studies but also to the history of cosmopolitan thought and to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse itself. Forman-Barzilai breaks ground, demonstrating the spatial texture of Smith's moral psychology and the ways he believed that physical, affective and cultural distance constrain the identities, connections and ethical obligations of modern commercial people. Forman-Barzilai emphasizes his resistance to the sort of relativism, moral insularity and cultural chauvinism that too often accompany localist critiques of cosmopolitan thought today. This is a fascinating, revisionist study that integrates the perspectives of intellectual history, moral philosophy, political theory, cultural theory, international relations theory and political economy, and will appeal across the humanities and social sciences.
... Money, knowledge and social status/networks are well-known capitals. The main rule within the moral system is to use the capital for one's own needs first and then share it with others [1]. ...
... For example, as they participate in educational processes, they increase their skills and knowledge. They then convert this knowledge into money and social networks within the same timeframe or in the near future [1]. A career within this economy plays the role of an ecosystem where people can practice their moral values and beliefs. ...
Background
Previous studies have provided important findings on the profession of dentistry and the motivators for choosing dentistry. This study has attempted to contribute to this accumulation by using a sociocultural perspective and interpreting the relationships among motivators from this perspective in a large Turkish sample. The aim of this study was to investigate what motivates dental students to choose dentistry as a career in Türkiye.
Methods
First-year dental students from different dental schools were included in a descriptive cross-sectional study. The questionnaire included sections covering demographics, motivators and career satisfaction. A total of 919 students from 29 different state dental schools and four private dental schools participated. Descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and standard deviations were used to summarize the sociodemographic information and the distribution of the motivators. Factorial analysis was carried out for the structural status of the questionnaire items. The relationships between the motivators were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation.
Results
Among the 919 students, 64.2% were female, and 35.8% were male. Half of them chose dentistry after seeing their higher education institution’s examination results, while the other half had already considered it a career during their preuniversity years. Communicating with people, artistic skills, and helping others were the main motivators for students to choose dentistry as a career in Türkiye, and students’ overall career satisfaction was moderately high. The strongest correlations were between communication with people and benefits (r =.74), between communication with people and helping others (r =.71), between communication with people and artistic skills (r =.66), between artistic skills and benefits (r =.69), between artistic skills and helping others (r =.65), between dental experience and benefits (r =.51), between dental experience and helping others (r =.50), and between benefits and helping others (r =.71).
Conclusion
Helping others, artistic skills, communicating with people, and benefits were the most important factors motivating dental students to choose a career, and positive relationships were detected between these four factors. This information may help to develop more effective career guidance and mentorship strategies for dental students.
... Wordsworth's efforts have been noticed for the cultivation of sympathy in his poems. McCarthy's (1992) idea of writerly capacity and use of imaginations for the development of sympathy and Barzilai's (2009) ideas on the cultivation of sympathy have been used in the paper. In the same way, Reiser's (2009) terms, writer is the "culture's shared nervous system" writing from "affective circumstances" (p. ...
... Development of sympathy had been the indicator for popular discourse from the perspective of Romantic texts. Barzilai (2009) remarks that sympathy was not something permanent, rather it can be cultivated through pedagogic process; it "enlarges our perspective and refine our judgment" (p. 164). ...
William Wordsworth has written a number of poems dedicated to abolition of slave trade. His sonnets Poems in Two Volumes (1807) — To Thomas Clarkson, To Toussaint L’Ouverture, September Ist, 1802 —, Humanity (1835), and The Prelude (1850) deal with the issue of slave trade and slavery explicitly. These poems show Wordsworth’s anger on the attitude favoring perpetuation of slavery for economic reasons. This paper seeks to show that Wordsworth’s abolitionist poetry stem from the affective circumstances and not from his genuine feeling for the predicament of the slaves. His sympathy for them verges on the capitalistic and the effect of outrage evoked is not so for the plight of the slaves as much it is for the oppressive ordinance of expansionist Napoleonic France. The outrage at the French villainy translates as the British honesty about the issue of slavery in Wordsworth.
... The type of diverse engagement indicated by the participants reflects Adam Smith's concept of the impartial spectator. While the impartial spectator uses imagination to consider the impact on those different from the decision maker, the participants directly engage with those affected by pending decisions to gain their perspectives(Forman-Barzilai, 2010). ...
Capitalism is a system that was constructed through economic and philosophical thinking by Adam Smith. Smith envisioned a model where morality could be achieved through an economic-based design. Today, social enterprise leaders embrace the friction when making decisions between the economic and moral tensions of profit and purpose, business and society, and stability and change. Given the rising tensions, building moral courage capacity within business leaders and organizations is imperative. This study explores how for-profit social enterprise leaders resolve the inherent economic and social tensions and proposes a model to build moral courage capacity within business leaders.
... Smith had argued in his Theory of Moral Sentiments that our moral sensibilities are not present at birth; neither are they transcendent truths awaiting to be apprehended by reason. Instead, they are learned by our interactions with others (Otteson 2002;Hanley 2009;Forman-Barzilai 2011;Weinstein 2013). 12 Smith believes, however, that all of us do have an innate desire for "mutual sympathy of sentiments" (TMS, pp. ...
Elizabeth Anderson claims that the prevailing culture of business is one of domination. “Most workplace governments in the United States are dictatorships, in which bosses. . don’t merely govern workers; they dominate them” (2017, p. xxii; italics in the original). If this diagnosis is correct, then the culture of business poses a significant threat to human liberty, as each year millions of people in the employ of businesses spend hundreds or thousands of hours on the job. This essay provides a further argument supporting Anderson’s analysis, by extending her treatment of Adam Smith and drawing on his claim about the potentially mind-numbing effects on workers of extreme division of labor. Smith’s analysis, though consistent with Anderson’s, implies that the problem is more worrisome than she allows, and accordingly that Anderson’s own remedy might be insufficient. Our Anderson/Smith argument suggests that worker unfreedom might warrant more aggressive institutional remedy.
... They are present in social interaction, and thus in the making of society, certifying the Fergusonian insight concerning the centrality of the social bond. As was already the case with Smith's reflections on sympathy (Forman-Barzilai, 2009;Weinstein, 2009), particularly in the light of a neurosociological perspective (Özler and Gabrinetti, 2018), Ferguson's idea of rationality can be defined as 'emotional' as it considers empathy to be helpful to reason, seen as a human faculty oriented toward the solution of social problems. The Fergusonian reason, as Berbalet points out, is a synthesis of different human faculties, including emotional ones, since intellectual liveliness often goes hand in hand with feelings of the heart (Barbalet, 2004, p. 45-61). ...
Adam Ferguson has a leading position among those who have developed a sociological interpretation of modernity that dismiss metaphysics without following the echoes of rationalism. Ferguson outlines a vision of social life that correlates the analysis of individual behavior to the study of social context and institutions. Consistently with this approach, the Scottish scholar emphasizes the multidimensionality of human beings without forgetting the non-rational features of social behavior. This essay aims to discuss Ferguson's thought with a special attention to the importance of the emotions in social life, so as to enhance the contribution of classical sociology to the analysis of the emotionality. Ferguson, in fact, argues that emotions have a leading role in shaping the behaviors and values of individuals. Developed in the context of Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson's sociology shows how the study of modern society can be reconciled with a reasonable as well as emotional approach to social life.
... Although Forman-Barzilai's understanding of panopticism is also constrained by a reductionist assessment of Bentham's panopticon as noted by Brunon-Ernst (2012), her assessment of the impartial spectator is problematic. Forman- Barzilai's (2010) appraisal of Smith's impartial spectator does not take account of the complex nature of the critical cognitive processes that Smith accentuates. According to Smith, the impartial spectator goes beyond passive subjection. ...
Panopticism is Michel Foucault's term for the internalisation of surveillance and cultural control that is closely linked to the panopticon or surveillance architecture (associated with prisons) of Jeremy Bentham during the 18 th and 19 th centuries. The purpose of this article is to argue that Adam Smith's concept of the impartial spectator provides an alternative perspective of internal surveillance that may enhance moral development and resistance to oppressive forms of control. For Smith, this is established through analogical imagination that is used for self-observation to enhance prudent behaviour. The impartial spectator and its resistance to totalitarian behaviour is specifically relevant in contemporary society because of the dominant role of digital technology and scandals that have exposed digital media as participating in digital forms of surveillance, digital personae, artificial intelligence and control. It will also be highlighted that digital surveillance is closely connected to the capitalism that has infiltrated all domains of society, from socio-personal relationships to the workplace.
This study investigates the influence of individualistic culture on property rights protection using a dataset of 86 countries. Employing the instrumental variable estimation method, the study uncovers the causal relationship between culture and institutional dynamics, considering variations in historical pathogen prevalence, linguistic pronoun usage, and genetic distance between countries. The findings reveal that individualism has a positive and statistically significant impact on property rights. The results are robust even after controlling for variables associated with both individualism and property rights and when considering alternative dependent and independent variables. This paper effectively links two significant societal elements, namely, the cultural aspect highlighted by Geert Hofstede and the establishment of economic institutions emphasized by Douglass North.
The article's novelty is its focus on the role of Smith’s theory of beauty and its implications for utility, systems, and morality in the narrative of “The Poor Man’s Son”. From his enlightenment worldview, the narrative contains Smith’s criticism of the misguided or reductionist view of the beauty of utility and affirmation of harmonious systems. Adam Smith’s narrative of “The Poor Man’s Son” in his book, The theory of moral sentiments [1759], has received significant attention from scholars. Three modes of interpretation can be distinguished. The first group follow a mode of interpretation from the world of the text, which is literal and regards the narrative as Smith’s support of beneficence. The narrative is perceived as Smith’s criticism of commerce and consumerism in pursuing happiness. The second group, reading from the world behind the text, pay more attention to historical and material aspects and argue that the narrative warns against misplaced ambition and affirms the virtue of commerce. The third group, reading from the world in front of the text, focus on the reception of the text, and the emphasis shifts to the tension between beneficence and commercial prowess in Smith's work. The problem with all three interpretations is that the interrelated nature of beauty, utility, and commerce has not been explored. Consequently, an analysis of the narrative from Smith’s theory of beauty underscores that the poor man's son's anguish resulted from a lack of appreciation of the beauty of the economic system and not solely the pleasure of consumption. This unlocks the connection between beauty, utility, and commerce, affirming the common good and societal harmony of systems when artefacts function correctly.
The debate on the demise of the Liberal International Order (LIO) lacks engagement with liberal thought, leading to a neglect of liberal alternatives to the main presentation of LIO. To address this knowledge gap, this article presents and analyses the views on international relations of Friedrich Hayek, one of the most influential classical liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. The few scholars in this debate that engage with Hayek’s ideas tend to cherry pick from his writings to support their own position. Consequently, Hayek’s critique of the worldview of liberalism in international relations theory is misrepresented, and the alternative he offers for the debate on LIO is overlooked. In this article his views will be compared to those of the leading LIO theorist G. John Ikenberry, focussing on the main ideas underpinning the idea of LIO as presented in Ikenberry’s main writings. The comparison yields some similarities between Ikenberry and Hayek, in particular regarding the Westphalian foundations of international order. Yet Hayek’s focus on individual liberty, free market economics and a limited state offer a clear classical liberal alternative to Ikenberry’s established ideas on liberal international order, with their focus on state action.
By exploring Adam Smith’s considerations of arts, this paper stresses that the philosopher establishes a profound connection between music and sympathy. In his essay “Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts,” Smith delves into esthetic theory, dedicating a significant portion of the text to music and its role in eliciting pleasure and emotions. While previous studies have acknowledged the presence of art-related vocabulary and an esthetic dimension in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, they have not comprehensively mobilized his art essay to illuminate his moral theory. Following this unexplored path, this paper rallies the parallel Smith creates between emotions and musical aspects, such as rhythm and melody, to find a connection between his esthetic and moral ideas. In essence, it reveals how the human esthetic sensibility to look for regularities and order serves as a foundational element in Smith’s understanding of sympathy and social harmony .
Resumo O artigo de Lisa Herzog examina como Adam Smith e G. W. F. Hegel conceitualizam a identidade de trabalhadores no mercado. Embora ambos vejam seres humanos como indivíduos formados dentro de relações sociais e por meio delas, a relação entre o trabalhador e seu trabalho é vista por eles de modos diferentes. Para Smith, trabalhadores “possuem” capital humano, enquanto, para Hegel, trabalhadores “são” cervejeiros, açougueiros ou padeiros, pois sua profissão é parte de sua identidade. Essa diferença conceitual, que se reflete em diferentes “variedades de capitalismo” contemporâneas, mostra que não apenas graus, mas também tipos de enraizamento devem ser distinguidos na discussão sobre a relação entre indivíduo e sociedade. O artigo é precedido de uma apresentação feita pelos tradutores.
Central to the debate on the moral relevance of shame is whether we take others’ assessments of our moral shortcomings seriously. Some argue that viewing shame as a social emotion undermines the moral standing of shame; for a moral agent, what is authoritative are his own moral values, not the mere disapproval of others. Adam Smith's framework sheds some light on the contemporary debates in philosophy on the moral value of shame. Shame is mostly a social emotion but has moral value for Smith. This is because we desire sympathy and share an ongoing social practice of morality with others. Smith developed the underpinnings of an account for a sympathetic basis of shame. An agent is evaluated through the sympathetic process to determine whether he/she has lived up to shared norms and morality. Shame emerges from the understanding that we ought not to be favorably thought of by others, the impartial spectator, or by our own conscience. We want to avoid shame for two reasons: first, we want to receive praise which gives pleasure, blame and blameworthiness operate by giving pain. Secondly, we are pleased with the sympathy of others. According to Smith, shame is a very painful emotion. Given our dread of pain and love of pleasure, we are motivated to be not blamed or blameworthy. We want to be favorably thought of so as not to be, or feel, shamed. Our dread of blameworthiness and our desire for sympathy motivates us to be a person who acts according to the norms and morality of society. Shame has a moral value both as a social emotion and when it arises from our conscience; however, Smith was also aware that there are limits to shame as a moral value, which arises from misjudgments of spectators.
This chapter focuses on a particular kind of education in Smith’s moral philosophy. Specifically, it describes in what sense Smith’s understanding of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and others that mature through natural education. In Smith, ‘natural education’ consists of those natural educational consequences of the sympathetic consideration and emulation of others and their judgments by human beings, since childhood. This natural education concerns both the self-correction of the human being in the sense of a spontaneous self-command in infancy, and the condition of possibility of the moral conscience in the sense of an impartial spectator.
For Smith, natural education is the basis of the first stage of the formation of moral conscience, which underlies the moral development of the self and the emotional expression associated with the moral judgment by the internal and external spectators on human conduct. In this context, for Smith, sympathetic human beings would correct themselves in order to be deservedly approved by others and by their own internal impartial spectator.
For Smith, the historical process is indispensable for understanding in what sense and to what extent we can speak of harmony between the individual self and others. Indeed, the historical process is not only a driving cause of self-development in terms of the differentiation of the individual self of each human being in society, but it also influences the nature of the relationships that human beings have with each other. Starting from these premises, this chapter describes in what sense Smith’s understanding of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and others that depends on the historical process. Therefore, I outline in what sense it would be possible to speak of a relationship between historical context, moral conduct and human nature in Smith’s conception of the human being. In particular, after outlining some features of Smith’s philosophy of history, I explore one of the main features of Smith’s philosophical anthropology through an examination of the figure of the savage. In doing so, I provide an example of how the development of the self would be linked to the satisfaction of a desiderative human nature of the human being depending on the historical and social context.
Samenvatting De nieuwe accountant is ook filosoof. Goede accountantscontrole is niet alleen een vaktechnisch maar ook een filosofisch vraagstuk, waarbij accountants zichzelf en anderen blijven bevragen op hun perspectief op de werkelijkheid. Hoe kun je professioneel-kritisch zijn, als je niet opmerkt en verwondert, precies de essentie van filosoferen? In dit artikel pleiten wij voor een versterking van het professionele fundament van accountants met behulp van denkinstrumenten uit de filosofie. Het is belangrijk om in de opleiding meer aandacht te besteden aan filosofie, om het beroep aantrekkelijk te houden voor jonge mensen en de maatschappelijke rol van accountants steviger te verankeren.
This chapter describes in what sense Smith’s conception of human nature can be defined in different ways, and how it is related to some tendencies and desires, such as sociability, language, the human propensity to exchange, self-love, harmony, the desire to gain deserved approval from real and imagined spectators, the desire to improve one’s condition and happiness. In particular, I describe how, in Smith’s moral philosophy, these desiderative and motivational dimensions, across several categories of discourse (philosophical, psychological and anthropological), are all linked to the possibility of harmony between oneself and others in society.
In this comprehensive volume, Italian and international scholars contribute to nearly 200 chapters, delving into the evolution of concepts surrounding work and leisure in Western culture from Homer to the present day. With six chronological sections spanning an unprecedented thematic and disciplinary range over the longue durée, this book significantly advances the understanding of work and leisure, and serves as an invaluable reference tool to the ongoing debate on the transformations of these crucial facets of contemporary societies.
This chapter shows in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding Smith’s conception of harmony between oneself and others. Specifically, assuming the centrality of the concept of immediacy, I describe in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding human nature, mind and the self in relation to Smith’s conceptions of the origin of moral judgment, the moral development of the self, and emotional expression. Firstly, I analyse the fundamental role of the passions as the object and origin of moral judgment in human beings, showing their immediate dimension. Then I consider the crucial role of the imagination in the articulation of the imperfect and perfect degrees of sympathy, understanding this imagination as a mental process consisting of two moments: a natural-immediate, linked to sensory perception; a moral-rational, marked by an intellectual effort. Thus, imperfect sympathy is defined as that related to the perceptual dimension, which a person experiences only when he has a general idea of the cause that provokes the feeling with which she sympathises; perfect sympathy is described as that which a person has when, considering the other’s situation, she expresses a moral judgment on the character and conduct of the other. Finally, the chapter offers an inventory of Smith’s main qualifications of the concept of sympathy in his moral theory.
This chapter outlines the aim of this work, the questions that motivated it, the structure of the book and the expected results. In particular, the aim of the book is to problematise what it means to be ‘human’ in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy from a historical and theoretical perspective. To do this, I explore in what sense Smith’s moral conception of human beings would be based on an idea of harmony between oneself and the others. This kind of harmony will be examined in the light of a reconstruction of the main aspects constituting Smith’s conceptions of human nature, mind and the self, as part of a broader investigation of Smith’s conceptions of nature, history, morality and natural education. Specifically, I reconstruct Smith’s conception of human nature, mind and the self by reconsidering the notion of immediacy as an important aspect of understanding Adam Smith’s moral philosophy of the human being.
This chapter demonstrates the importance of immediacy as a philosophical problem for understanding Smith’s conception of the human being and Smith’s model of the mind. First, I argue that imagination underlies the possibility of harmony between oneself and others and the moral, cognitive and perceptual experience of others. I analyse the concept of ‘imagination’, showing how natural aspects in terms of perception have an immediate moral connotation in terms of morality, thanks to two conceptual devices: ‘perception’ and ‘aesthetics’.
I then show the link between pleasure and moral displeasure and physical pleasure or pain in order to: (1) link the natural dimension of imagination (perception and sympathy) to the moral context of conscious and responsible control over the expression of certain natural passions in society; (2) underline the importance for Smith of the desire to be deservedly approved and the centrality for the human being of the corresponding pleasure that derives from it. Then, I consider the psychological origin of the self in Smith’s philosophy and I explore what prudence and impartiality mean for Smith.
Starting from the idea that a person judges as his own what he can naturally sympathise with, I focus on Smith’s investigation of the principle of approbation the character and conduct of an ordinary human being. I argue, therefore, that for Smith, the principle of approbation would be based on the immediate sympathy of the impartial spectator. The impartial spectator is the perspective from which a human being strives to judge and think impartially as a spectator, without fully identifying themselves with their passions or emotions, accepting without reducing to a single part the coexistence of passion and reason, nature and morality, unintentional and conscious aspects.
In this chapter, Erik W. Matson describes how Hume’s international theory derives from his understanding of commerce and international trade as sources of moral improvement. Drawing on Hume's ideas of technical progress and innovation, Hume’s writings are shown to convey a nascent theory of comparative advantage.Trade benefitstrich and poor countries alike, facilitating a process of mutual emulation and development. International trade, moreover, contributes in Hume's view to cultural enhancement through its effects on socialization and the consequent extensions of individual sympathy.
In this chapter, Edwin van de Haar argues that Smith’s international theory offers a unified view of politics and economics, based on Smith’s views on human nature. Smith's political economy covers many topics, such as the nation, war, the balance of power, military organisation, empire, and of course free trade. Contrary to alleged academic wisdon, he did not see a relation between free trade and peace.
Adam Smith was born 300 years ago, in June 1723. The son of a Scottish lawyer and customs commissioner grew to become a great Enlightenment thinker who gained global fame for his writings in moral philosophy and political economy. His second major work, the “Wealth of Nations” (1776), enabled economics to establish itself as a separate academic discipline. In numerous countries, the book had not only a theoretical but also a practical policy impact. Yet many distortions crept into the reception history of Smith’s oeuvre. For some years now, an interdisciplinary group of Smith scholars has taken on the received wisdom to challenge the clichés. In this survey written on the occasion of the Adam Smith tricentenary, Karen Horn presents some insights from recent Smith scholarship and shows just how inspiring and fruitful an engagement with the great Scot continues to be – even for economists, who are so far remarkably underrepresented in this activity.
This article offers a cross-reading of Smith and Rawls in order to highlight the fundamental role of sympathy, moral sentiments and the idea of reciprocity they contain in Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness, and more specifically in the possibility of ensuring the stability of the ideal, well-ordered society through the development of an appropriate sense of justice. I study their respective moral anthropologies and their analyses of guilt, resentment, indignation and envy, highlighting the fundamental role these moral sentiments play in social cooperation.
According to Adam Smith, we appeal to the imagined reactions of an ‘impartial spectator’ when justifying moral judgements of others and aspire to be impartial spectators when making judgements of ourselves. However, psychological research has shown that trying to be impartial will often have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing other-directed prejudice and self-serving bias. I argue that we can get around this problem by aspiring to be ‘partially impartial spectators’ instead.
The central core of the work of Adam Smith is identified here, with particular reference to his own words. His argumentation is full of surprises and paradoxes, and it offers key insights for sociology, especially as it allows us to better understand key features of the modern world.
Zusammenfassung
Vor 300 Jahren, im Juni 1723, kam Adam Smith auf die Welt. Aus dem Sohn eines schottischen Anwalts und Zollkommissars wurde ein großer Aufklärer, der vor allem mit seinen moralphilosophischen und ökonomischen Schriften Berühmtheit erlangte. Mit seinem zweiten Hauptwerk, dem „Wealth of Nations“ (1776), etablierte sich die Volkswirtschaftslehre als eigenständige akademische Disziplin. Das Buch entfaltete nicht nur theoretische, sondern in zahlreichen Ländern auch praktische Wirkung. Freilich ging die Rezeptionsgeschichte mit erheblichen Vergröberungen und Verzerrungen einher. Gegen diese Klischees stemmt sich seit einigen Jahren eine interdisziplinäre Gruppe von Smith-Forschern. In diesem Überblicksartikel aus Anlass des Jubiläums stellt Karen Horn einige der Einsichten aus der jüngeren Literatur der Smith-Forschung vor und zeigt, wie reizvoll und fruchtbar die Auseinandersetzung mit dem großen Schotten weiterhin ist – auch für die hier unterrepräsentierten Ökonomen.
How can the harm caused by waves of fake news or derogatory speech on social media be minimized without unduly limiting freedom of expression? I draw on an eighteenth-century debate for thinking about this problem: Hume and Smith present two different models of the transmission of emotions and ideas. Empathetic processes are causal, almost automatic processes; sympathy, in contrast, means putting oneself into the other person’s position and critically evaluating how one should react. I use this distinction to argue that the architectural logic of social media should be improved to prevent cumulative harms and to facilitate sympathetic processes.
Most Adam Smith scholars hold that Smith endorsed public provision of education to offset deleterious consequences arising from the division of labor. Smith’s putative endorsement of publicly funded education is taken by some scholars as evidence that he tends more toward progressive than classical liberalism, or that this is a departure from, perhaps an inconsistency with, Smith’s otherwise strong presumption against government intervention in markets. This paper argues that these interpretations are flawed because Smith ultimately does not advocate public provision of education. He raises the idea and explores its potential benefits, but he ultimately does not endorse it. Smith also provides reason to be skeptical of public provision of education, which suggests that his final position may have inclined against it.
Die klassische Unterscheidung zwischen „Gemeinschaft“ und „Gesellschaft“ ist bei Tönnies mit als „sozialbiologisch“ apostrophierten weiteren Dualismen verbunden, vor allem mit dem Dualismus der Geschlechter und mit der Unterscheidung von zwei Formen des Willens, Wesenswillen und Kürwillen. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert, wie weit diese Dualismen, kritisch gewendet, geeignet sind, um gesellschaftliche Normen in Gemeinschaft zu gründen, eine Möglichkeit, die von der Wirtschaftswissenschaft strikt verneint wird, etwa bei Hayek. Dabei lässt sich zeigen, dass die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft erstaunlich nahe bei Tönnies liegt, etwa mit der Unterscheidung von zwei ‚Systemen‘ (dem intuitiv-emotional-affektiven und dem rational-reflektivem) in der Verhaltensökonomik, und sogar hinter ihn zurückfällt, was die Naturalisierung dieser Kategorien angeht. Die Kritik an Tönnies’ sozialbiologischen Dualismen lässt sich also in eine Kritik der modernen Wirtschaftswissenschaft ummünzen. Auf dieser Grundlage wird es möglich, eine nicht-kapitalistische Gesellschaft zu denken, deren Normen in Gemeinschaft begründet sind. Es wird gezeigt, dass die ‚Sorge’ als Grundkategorie von Gemeinschaft auch in der Gesellschaft institutionalisierbar ist, beispielsweise über die geeignete Ausgestaltung eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens oder bestimmte Rechtsformen, die Unternehmen als Gemeinschaften konstituieren.
This essay uses concepts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop ideas about choice and welfare. I use those ideas to offer several challenges to common approaches to behavioral welfare economics and new paternalist policy making. Drawing on Smith’s dialectical concept of practical reason, which he develops in expositing ideas about self-awareness and self-judgment, I first argue that inconsistency need not be viewed as pathological. Inconsistent choices might indicate legitimate context-dependencies as individuals reflect over disjointed perspectives and act accordingly. Understanding inconsistency as reasonable raises epistemic difficulties for identifying errant choices and designing corrective policies. Second, I draw on Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator to discuss dynamic aspects of welfare. Welfare is not simply a matter of preference satisfaction but involves a sense of progress and improvement towards better preferences. Smith’s account suggests that economists interested in welfare should focus on institutional arrangements that facilitate self-development.
In the first edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in London in 1776, the ‘by the same author’ list is presented in a very unusual place: directly opposite the table of contents. That placement suggests a continuity and unity in Smith's published works. A photograph provides a touchstone to discuss: (a) the Language essay, (b) the full title of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and (c) Wealth of Nations under the ethical umbrella of Moral Sentiments.
Sociology shows the role of emotions in economic life. Sympathy and self-interest are crucial individual dispositions to explain the social behavior that shapes market institutions. Adam Smith emphasized the importance that sympathy has in the achievement of stability in social interactions that foster market society. On the other hand, Max Weber argued that disciplined self-interest is essential for the accumulation of capital. Although their analyses differed in some aspects, both Smith and Weber considered emotions to be the key to understanding the moral values that drive economic behavior. This paper will compare Smith's and Weber's theories of the relationship between emotions and the market. Finally, this paper will interpret sympathy and self-interest as the emotional foundations of the market, highlighting the fundamental role that emotions might have in economic analyses.
Bringing the collaborative process to life through an array of examples, Heather Witcher shows that sympathetic co-creation is far more than the mere act of writing together. While foregrounding the material aspects of collaboration – hands uniting on the page, blank space left for fellow contributors, the writing and exchanging of drafts – this study also illuminates its social aspects and its reliance on Victorian liberalism: dialogue, the circulation of correspondence, the lived experience of collaboration, and, on a less material plane, transhistorical collaborations with figures of the past. Witcher takes a broad approach to these partnerships and, in doing so, challenges traditional expectations surrounding the nature of authorship itself, not least its typical classification as a solitary activity. Within this new framework, collaboration enables the titles of 'coauthor,' 'influencer,' 'editor,' 'critic,' and 'inspiration' to coexist. This book celebrates the plurality of collaboration and underscores the truly social nature of nineteenth-century writing.
This edited volume argues that democracy is broader and more diverse than the dominant state-centered, modern representative democracies, to which other modes of democracy are either presumed subordinate or ignored. The contributors seek to overcome the standard opposition of democracy from below (participatory) and democracy from above (representative). Rather, they argue that through differently situated participatory and representative practices, citizens and governments can develop democratic ways of cooperating without hegemony and subordination, and that these relationships can be transformative. This work proposes a slow but sure, nonviolent, eco-social and sustainable process of democratic generation and growth with the capacity to critique and transform unjust and ecologically destructive social systems. This volume integrates human-centric democracies into a more mutual, interdependent and sustainable system on earth whereby everyone gains.
This paper engages Adam Smith’s reflections concerning the moral and economic dimensions of business–society relations in the context of the Multinational Corporation (MNC). The paper argues that Smith formulates a pronounced moral criticism of prevailing corporate business practices, which emphasize profit while de facto undermining the moral underpinnings and social cohesion of commercial society. Rather than simply promoting selfish profit maximization by individuals, businesses, and society at large, Smith’s work reveals a deeply entangled analysis of the complex interplay between material interests, moral aspects of human behavior, and Smith’s overall goal of broad socioeconomic welfare. The balancing of moral and material motivations requires the social embeddedness of economic exchange within normative community frameworks. In this context, the sociopsychological process of moral approbation via Smith’s impartial spectator mechanism has the potential to temper humans’ tendency for excessive (material) self-love. Smith’s scrutiny of internationally active corporations problematizes a range of institutional and governance issues and their implications for the moral bonds between individuals, MNCs, and global society. Most importantly, Smith worries about the potentially negative impact of increasingly anonymous and emotionally distant economic relationships between market participants on their ability to reckon with the moral consequences of their actions. Building on Smith’s entangled perspective, the paper proposes a normatively grounded framework to critically contend with contemporary efforts to redefine corporate citizenship in the global economy.
Reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments in dialog with civil rights struggles in the United States and with decolonial thinking more generally, this essay argues that sympathy constrains the conditions for social change by restricting the legibility of Black suffering. To demonstrate as much, this essay offers a close reading of Smith’s account of sympathy and of the impartial spectator, following which this essay reads #BlackLivesMatter as a hashtag and social movement whose advocacy is counteracted by antisympathetic rhetorics of white universalism, Black respectability, and masculine supremacy. In response, this essay argues in favor of decolonial acts of listening that occur in the context of a societal project of restorative justice because it is the persistence of reified colonial sympathy-allocation patterns in the United States and elsewhere that are driving the disproportionate impacts of anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and other historic events on nonwhite, nonmale people around the world.
Which individuals should count in a welfare-consequentialist analysis of public policy? Some answers to this question are parochial, and others are more inclusive. The most inclusive possible answer is ‘everybody to count for one.’ In other words, all individuals who are capable of having welfare – including foreigners, the unborn, and non-human animals – should be weighed equally. This article argues that ‘who should count’ is a question that requires a two-level answer. On the first level, a specification of welfare-consequentialism serves as an ethical ideal, a claim about the attributes that the ideal policy would have. ‘Everybody to count for one’ might succeed on this level. However, on the second level is the welfare-consequentialist analysis procedure used by human analysts to give advice on real policy questions. For epistemic reasons, the analysis procedure should be more parochial than ‘everybody to count for one.’
Adam Smith writes favorably about innovation in Wealth of Nations while writing unfavorably about a figure associated with innovation: the projector. His criticism of projectors prompts many scholars to claim that Smith disapproves of entrepreneurship. But Smith criticizes the projector not because he acts as an entrepreneur but because he fails to meet Smith’s moral standards for entrepreneurship. In Theory of Moral Sentiments , Smith conceives of a framework for moral entrepreneurship based on prudence. The framework consists of two principles: first, approach everyday matters with the general “tenor of conduct” that governs your life and trade, and second, approach life-changing matters with prudence and justice. Recognizing that Smith is concerned with the total effect that an entrepreneurial venture has on society beyond its immediate profits opens the door to engage with contemporary research that studies the ethical and moral externalities of entrepreneurship.
One of the most powerful themes in the contemporary revisionist literature on the Scottish Enlightenment is the desire to understand the disciplinary context within which political economy began to develop. Central to this is the observation that Adam Smith was a professor of moral philosophy and conceived of his writing as a branch of that discipline. In this article I suggest that we can better come to understand some important elements of Smith's thinking if we appreciate and read The Theory of Moral Sentiments in the context of a philosophical debate between Smith and his contemporary Adam Ferguson, a debate that is driven by the pedagogical dimensions of moral philosophy in the eighteenth-century Scottish universities.
We investigate the role of individualistic social rules and norms in charitable giving. Individualism in market societies is often criticized as corrupting morality and discouraging charitable giving. We contest that view. We propose direct and indirect mechanisms through which individualism increases charity. In the direct channel, individualism encourages self-interested giving. In the indirect channel, individualism contributes to charity by reinforcing economic freedom. We use evidence from a large cross-section of countries and several measures of individualism to investigate both channels. Our empirical findings confirm each channel and support the insights of classical liberals, such as Adam Smith and David Hume, and more recent studies in the humanomics tradition, which recovers the argument that individualism has its virtues.
Adam Smith’s discourses aim to encourage mores, practices, and public policies in service to the common good, or that which a universally benevolent spectator would approve of. The Wealth of Nations illustrates how in pursuing our own happiness within the bounds of prudence and commutative justice, we may be said, literally or metaphorically, to cooperate with God in furthering the happiness of humankind. The Theory of Moral Sentiments elaborates an ethic, here called “focalism,” that instructs us to proportion our beneficent efforts to our knowledge and ability. The relationship between political economy and focalism is bidirectionally reinforcing. In one direction, the ethic of focalism contributes to the moral authorization of self-love, thereby invigorating and dignifying honest commercial activities. In the other direction, the insights of political economy reinforce the ethic of focalism by elaborating how through prudent commerce and focal beneficence, we cooperate, even if only metaphorically, in a grand social enterprise.
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