Essays on the Philosophy of Adam Smith

The Adam Smith Review, Volume 5: Essays Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of the Theory of Moral Sentiments

Vivienne Brown, Samuel Fleischacker

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136932502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Adam Smith's contribution to economics is well-recognised but in recent years scholars have been exploring anew the multidisciplinary nature of his works. The Adam Smith Review is a refereed annual review that provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary debate on all aspects of Adam Smith's works, his place in history, and the significance of his writings for the modern world. It is aimed at facilitating debate between scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, thus emulating the transdisciplinary reach of the Enlightenment world which Smith helped to shape.

The fifth volume of the series is a special issue to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Contributors to this volume include Stephen Darwall, Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Patrick Frierson, Charles L. Griswold Jr, Ryan Patrick Hanley, Alice MacLachlan, Bence Nanay, Angelica Nuzzo, D.D. Raphael, Ian Simpson Ross, Emma Rothschild, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Arby Ted Siraki and Robert Urquhart, who discuss:

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• The phenomenology of moral life

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• Sympathy, moral judgment and the impartial spectator

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• Issues such as aesthetics, value, honour, resentment, praise-worthiness, cosmopolitanism and religion

Part I
Moral phenomenology

The virtue of TMS 1759

D.D. Raphael

Our conference is intended to commemorate the publication of the first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 (Smith 1976, TMS). I have therefore focused my contribution mainly on that edition.

To speak of the virtue of TMS 1759 is, in a way, paradoxical, for the most substantial change that Adam Smith made in the sixth edition was to add a new Part VI on ‘The Character of Virtue’. Earlier editions include a distinction between ‘amiable and respectable virtues’, an extensive discussion of two particular virtues, justice and beneficence, and an historical survey of philosophical theories about the nature of virtue in general; but there is no detailed account of Smith’s own view of the general concept of virtue. That comes only in the sixth edition.

The first edition has a further defect, concerning sympathy. Smith deals with this in a long note added to the second edition, answering critical queries posed by David Hume and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Their queries are not so closely related as Smith seems to think. Hume’s point is that Smith’s theory depends on the false supposition that sympathy is always pleasant; Elliot’s concern is that basing moral judgment on social attitudes does not allow for conscientious dissent from majority opinion. Hume’s criticism is given in a letter dated 28 July 1759, asking Smith to deal with it in his projected second edition (Smith 1987, Corr. Letter 36). Elliot’s criticism was given in a letter that has not survived, but the gist of it can be inferred from Smith’s reply, dated 10 October 1759, which is accompanied by a copy of the statement that he had sent to Hume (Corr. Letter 40). That statement, with some minor adjustment, also formed the note added to the second edition of the book, published in 1761.

When Smith reports Hume’s criticism in the second edition, he purports to defend his original view, but his defence includes an addition that goes beyond the original view. The original view described two elements in moral approval: (1) sympathy with the feeling of the person affected by an action, and (2) a consequential feeling of approval or disapproval of the action. (In some places Smith says, confusingly, that the apparent two elements are simply different descriptions of a single element.) The defence in the note of the second edition speaks of three elements: (1) sympathy with the feeling of

The Philosophy of Adam Smith, The Adam Smith Review, 5: 15–24 © 2010 The International Adam Smith Society, ISSN 1743–5285, ISBN 978-0-415-56256-0.

the person affected, a sympathy that can be pleasurable or painful, depending on the character of the feeling shared; (2) awareness of that sympathy; and (3) a feeling of approval or disapproval, which includes the pleasure of knowing it is a shared feeling.

Since the first edition contains two serious defects, why am I ready to speak of its virtue? Because of two commendable qualities. One is the character of its language, relatively simple and at times strikingly vivid, so that the book is a pleasure to read and can be easily understood. The other commendable quality is that the role given to sympathy is distinctly original and quite persuasive. These are the things that made the book popular among the literary public at its first appearance.

I have in the past suggested that Smith wrote the new Part VI because he realized that he had failed to live up to his statement, in the final Part, that there are two main topics for moral philosophy, the nature of virtue and the nature of moral judgment (Raphael 1992: 103, 109; 2007: 10–11). In the original version of his book he deals at length with the second topic but says comparatively little about the first topic. He distinguishes virtue from propriety, classifies virtues into the amiable and the respectable, and gives careful consideration to the leading virtues of justice and beneficence; but he does not produce a theory about the concept of virtue as such, comparable with his elaborate theory about the origin and character of moral judgment.

Professor Samuel Fleischacker has expressed dissent from my suggestion that Smith wrote the new Part VI to repair an omission which he recognized late in the day (Fleischacker 2006: 249). Fleischacker queries this because the final Part of the Moral Sentiments, in the early editions as well as in the sixth, gives far more space to the topic of virtue than to the topic of moral judgment. Fleischacker says there are 50 pages on virtue and 13 on moral judgment. His figures presumably relate to the pages of the modern Glasgow Edition (Part VII, Sections ii and iii). In the actual first edition of 1759 (Part VI, Sections 2 and 3) there are 74 pages on virtue and 31 pages on moral judgment. The apparently greater difference in the modern edition (roughly 4:1 as against 2.5:1 in the first edition) is due to some long editorial notes, but that does not affect the nub of Fleischacker’s case.

What needs to be said, however, is that the final Part of the Moral Sentiments surveys the history of the philosophic treatment of the two topics. It is not written as a statement of Adam Smith’s views. In the sixth edition Smith allies himself with the propriety theory of virtue and claims to improve on predecessors in giving a measure for judging the propriety of feeling, namely ‘the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator’ (TMS VII.ii.1.49). But he also, in all editions, regards the propriety theory as inadequate because virtue is often more than propriety and commands greater esteem than propriety taken alone (TMS VII.ii.1.50). A little later in the final Part Smith refers to the difference between his theory of virtue and Hume’s theory, which, he says, ‘coincides’ with the propriety theory. He writes:

According to this [ie. Hume’s] system … virtue consists not in any one affection, but in the proper degree of all the affections. The only difference between it and that which I have been endeavouring to establish, is, that it makes utility, and not sympathy, or the correspondent affection of the spectator, the natural and original measure of this proper degree.

(TMS VII.ii.3.21)

Smith plainly thinks that his own view of virtue is to be found in earlier Parts of the book, not in the final Part.

The title page of the book in the first three editions names the book simply as ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’, but the fourth edition (followed by the fifth and sixth) supplements this with a long alternative, describing the subject-matter: ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments, or an Essay towards an Analysis of the Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves’. The long addition says explicitly that the book is about judgment. So I stick to my view that in the original version of the book Smith does not live up to his thesis in the final Part that there are two main topics for moral philosophy, the nature of moral judgment and the nature of virtue. I think that my view receives some support from the very title of the new Part added to the sixth edition, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’.

In Smith’s correspondence with his publisher Thomas Cadell about a possible sixth edition there is no mention of this substantial addition until 31 March 1789. A letter of 21 April 1785 is primarily concerned with the possibility of a new edition of the Wealth of Nations, but Smith added a sentence about the Moral Sentiments: ‘If a new edition of the theory is wanted I have a few alterations to make of no great consequence which I shall send to you’ (Corr. Letter 244, p. 281). He returned to the subject on 14 March 1786 in a letter, only an extract of which survives. It is concerned with the period of copyright available at that time: ‘I should be glad to know in what degree of demand the theory of Moral Sentiments still continues to be. The eight and twenty years property are now near expired. But I hope to be able to secure you in the property for at least fourteen years more …’(Corr. Letter 257, p. 293).

These letters clearly imply that a new edition would not contain anything very substantial in the way of additional material. Unlike them, Smith’s next letter on the matter, dated 15 March 1788, does speak of substantial addition, but not of a whole new Part:

… I am at present giving the most intense application. My subject is the theory of moral Sentiments to all parts of which I am making many additions and corrections. The chief and the most important additions will be to the third part, that concerning the sense of Duty and to the last part concerning the History of moral Philosophy.

(Corr. Letter 276, pp. 310–11)

Only after a further year, on 31 March 1789, do we hear anything of the new Part on the character of virtue.

Ever since I wrote to you last I have been labouring very hard in preparing the proposed new edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. … Besides the Additions and improvements I mentioned to you; I have inserted, immediately after the fifth part, a compleat new sixth part containing a practical system of Morality, under the title of the Character of Virtue.

(Corr. Letter 287, pp. 319–20)

It seems that the idea of this further, and even more substantial, addition came to Smith in the course of making the changes described in the letter of 1788. There he had said that his corrections and additions would affect his discussion of the history of moral philosophy. I think that his attention to this final Part of the book is probably what led him to see that he had written there of two main topics and that he had not dealt adequately with the second of them.

A delightful letter from Hume, dated 12 April 1759, tells Smith of the immediate success of the first edition of the Moral Sentiments:

Supposing, therefore, that you have duely prepared yourself for the worst by all these Reflections; I proceed to tell you the melancholy News, that your Book has been very unfortunate: For the Public seem disposd to applaud it extremely. It was lookd for by the foolish People with some Impatience; and the Mob of Literati are beginning already to be very loud in its Praises. Three Bishops calld yesterday at Miller’s Shop in order to buy Copies, and to ask Questions about the Author: The Bishop of Peterborough said he had passed the Evening in a Company, where he heard it extolld above all Books in the World. You may conclude what Opinion true Philosophers will entertain of it, when these Retainers to Superstition praise it so highly. … Millar exults and brags that two thirds of the Edition are already sold, and that he is now sure of Success. You see what a Son of the Earth that is, to value Books only by the Profit they bring him. In that View, I believe it may prove a very good Book.

(Corr. Letter 31, p. 35)

Hume is, of course, being ironic when he says that true philosophers will take a very different view from bishops and that the book will prove to be very good (only) in being profitable to the publisher. Yet I think he makes these ironic remarks with tongue in cheek; that is to say, he himself does not have a particularly high opinion of the Moral Sentiments. Why do I think that? Well, compare the beginning of this letter with the beginning of Hume’s letter on receiving a copy of the Wealth of Nations. The letter on the Moral Sentiments begins: ‘Dear Smith, I give you thanks for the agreeable Present of your Theory’. That is all, quite simple. The letter on the Wealth of Nations begins at much greater length:

Euge! Belle! Dear Mr Smith: I am much pleas’d with your Performance, and the Perusal of it has taken me from a State of great Anxiety. … I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular: But it has Depth and Solidity and Acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious Facts, that it must at last take the public Attention.

(Corr. Letter 150, p. 186)

What a difference. The initial words of the Wealth of Nations letter are worth some attention. The first word is Greek, the second Latin. They illustrate the familiarity of educated men of the eighteenth century with the classical languages, but they do a little more than that. The word ‘euge’ is not easily found in the most prominent works of ancient Greece: ‘eu’, meaning well, is very common, but not together with the enclitic ‘ge’, added for emphasis. The word ‘belle’ is familiar to us as the feminine of ‘beau’ in modern French, but in classical Latin it is the adverbial form of the adjective ‘bellus’, which can mean beautiful but is more commonly a synonym of ‘bonus’. So Hume’s opening words mean something like ‘Well done! Splendid!’, with the extravagance of his feelings discreetly veiled in the words of dead languages known to both of them.

It is not really surprising that Hume should be impressed by the Wealth of Nations but not by the Moral Sentiments. He himself had written both about ethics and about...

Table of contents

• The Adam Smith Review
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Moral phenomenology
• Part II Sympathy and moral judgment
• Part III Economics, religion, aesthetics and value theory
• Memoir on Adam Smith’s life
• Index