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ABSTRACT
In this article, I explore the complex and unappreciated relationship between the moral and political thought of Cicero and Adam Smith. Cicero’s views about justice, propriety, and the selfish love of praise find new expression in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I illustrate the important ways in which Smith adopts – often without attribution – Cicero’s precepts and moral judgments. I then go on to demonstrate how Smith strips those Ciceronian conclusions from their original justifying grounds in teleology and natural law. In their place, Smith injects his own psychology based in sentiments as a new account of why it is that we prefer virtue and justice to their opposites. By exploring this relationship, I hope to shed light on an important dynamic whereby modern thought has creatively adapted classical moral and political concepts.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Richard Whatmore and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Berkeley Graduate Conference in the History of British Political Thought. I would like to thank Shannon Stimson for her very constructive feedback. In addition, I owe thanks to Michael Gillespie, Ruth Grant, Thomas Spragens, Alexandra Oprea, Samuel Bagg, Christopher Kennedy, and Antong Liu for their contributions to earlier stages of this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Wood (1988, pr.).
2 This is not to say that there has been no work at all done on Cicero’s relationship to any of the important early modern thinkers. Scholars have noted, if not explored in great detail, Cicero’s importance to Locke (Mitsis 2003), Montesquieu (Fott 2002), and Mably and Burke (Atkins 2014).
3 Several careful readers of Smith, including Griswold (1999), Nussbaum (2000), Vivenza (2001), and Phillipson (2010) in particular have noted such moments of continuity.
4 A compelling account of this dynamic is offered by Kapust and Schwarze (2016).
5 For those who focus on the similarities of between Stoicism and Smith’s thought, see Heise (1995), Jones (2010), Montes (2008), and Waszek (1984). In constrast, Griswold (1999), Vivenza (2001), and Fitzgibbons (1995) are among those who have persuasively cast doubt on Smith’s Stoicism.
6 For more on Cicero’s own complicated relationship to Stoicism, see Schofield (1991), Kries (2003), and Pangle (1998).
7 Such a finding supports claims made by scholars such as Charles Griswold and Ryan Hanley, who have argued that virtue ethics – or something like it – play an important role in Smith’s moral theory. This essay suggests a specific classical inspiration for that aspect of Smith’s thought.
8 Others have made similar arguments tracing a crisis in the West to the Enlightenment’s alleged abandonment of classical philosophy. Perhaps most prominent among these is Leo Strauss (1989). Likewise, in a very recent book, Patrick Deneen makes a similar diagnosis of modernity. He, too, includes Smith among the key figures in the West’s going astray (Deneen 2018, 46). Of these, however, it is MacIntyre who singles out Smith for special consideration.
9 According to the catalogue, Smith’s library contained 22 volumes of Cicero’s works (Smith and Bonar 1966, 22).
10 That Cicero’s complex relationship with Stoicism is most clearly apparent in these two works will prove relevant to the argument of this article.
11 For instance, Joseph Cropsey writes that Smith’s project is ‘the grand design in behalf of free society, requiring the emancipation from the reign of virtue that commerce makes possible’ (1957, 88).
12 All translations from the Latin are my own.
13 Smith’s description of middle duties as ‘something for which a plausible reason can be given for acting’ is a direct translation of On Duties 1.8. Commenting on this very passage, Phillipson argues that Cicero’s imperfect duties constituted ‘the useful heart of “the practical morality of the Stoics”’ in Smith’s eyes (Phillipson 2010, 21).
14 See also his extended attack on Epicureanism as a philosophical system in book II of On Ends.
15 The famous ‘Adam Smith problem’ of Lujo Brentano suggested that the self-interested orientation of WN is incompatible with the moral account in TMS. This view is now generally rejected by scholars as a misreading. See Force (2003, 256–260) for a summary of this debate.
16 The nature of this dynamic is explored in greater depth below.
17 In fact, Smith connects Epicureanism to Mandeville, in part to demonstrate how much worse Mandeville is in comparison. But, it is noteworthy that, as he does with Mandeville, Smith acknowledges that there is a modicum of truth the Epicurean position, which even its staunchest opponents must recognize. Smith cites Cicero in support of this contention (TMS VII.ii.4.5).
18 A very partial list includes Griswold (1999), Broadie (2006), Haakonssen (1981), Heath (1995), Campbell (1971), and Forman-Barzilai (2005).
19 This image is Cicero’s. See On Ends III 13, 42.
20 For a fuller and more exact account of this process, see Griswold (1999, especially pp. 83–85).
21 See Broadie’s rebuttal to Thomas Reid’s claim that sympathy is at bottom a selfish impulse (2006, 163–164).
22 Cicero himself takes this example from Chrysippus. But, as none of the latter’s works are extant, and Smith’s phrasing so nearly matches that of Cicero, we are again compelled to conclude that Cicero is Smith’s source.
23 See Griswold (1999, 233, 235–236). Griswold rightly notes Smith’s awareness that our sympathy in the case of violated justice has a certain illusory quality, as we sympathize even with the dead, and we feel resentment on their behalf if they were wrongfully killed, even though the dead presumably feel nothing themselves.
24 One might be tempted to attribute the source of Smith’s knowledge of oikeosis to Hierocles – the Stoic philosopher most closely associated with the concept. However, Forman-Barzilai, whose work thoroughly explores Smith’s engagement with the idea of oikeosis, argues persuasively that the concept instead comes to Smith through Cicero (2005, 6).
25 See On Duties I.30; this is a Stoic-inflected position.
26 For a very thorough treatment of this topic, see Forman-Barzilai (2010). See also Hill (2010).