Wealth and sensibility. The historical outcome of better living conditions for all according to Adam Smith

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I argue that Smith's commercial society is characterised more by restraint of self-command than by restraint of emotions through self-command, as usually stated. According to Smith, the appropriate degree of self-command varies with historical circumstances: better living conditions for all favour relaxation of self-command and lead people to express their sentiments more freely. I thus highlight a crucial link in Smith's thought between variations in general economic conditions and variations in moral judgement on the expression of emotions, or, in other words, between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations.

KEYWORDS:

• Adam Smith
• self-command
• savages
• wealth
• sensibility

JEL CODE:

• B12

Acknowledgments

An early draft of this paper was presented in the seminar of Centre Walras Pareto in 2015, in the Journées Gide in 2015 and in the HES Conference in 2016. I would like to thank the participants, as well as the anonymous referees, for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See in particular the works of Macfie (1967), Raphael and Macfie (1976), Brown (1994), Young (1997), Evensky (1998), Griswold (1999), Fleischacker (1999, 2004), Verburg (2000), Montes (2003), Hanley (2009), and Forman-Barzilai (2010).

² Self-command is not understood here as internal control of passions allowing for rational behaviour (Carrasco 2012), nor as what directs actions toward right objects (Montes 2008; Carrasco 2012), but command over the expression of emotions.

³ On the problem arising over this connection, known as the “Adam Smith Problem”, see among others Raphael and Macfie (1976), Montes (2003, 2004), and Paganelli (2008).

⁴ Some reference can be found in Meek (1976), Pack (1991), Justman (1993), Berry (1997, 2013), Griswold (1999), Otteson (2002), Schliesser (2003), Rasmussen (2006), Montes (2008), Nohara (2010), Forman-Barzilai (2010), and in particular in Harkin (2002, 2005) and Nussbaum (2002).

⁵ For a different position about the role of the additions Smith made to the sixth edition of TMS, see Verburg (2000, 37), Montes (2008, 34).

⁶ Harkin (2005, 440–443) affirms that “Smith's fascination” with the “supreme self-control” of the savages reveals “a sharply felt sense of decline within Western culture” and “an intense nostalgia for the losses of past forms of social organization which seriously challenges the overt claims of the Theory about the benefits of commercialism”. While Harkin claims that for Smith progress also entails some loss, of the martial spirit, for example, the present paper shows that anyway there is no sort of nostalgia for the primitive state, nor indeed any change in Smith's thought from TMS to WN, as stated by Nussbaum (2002). On martial virtues, see also Montes (2009).

⁷ The date is not certain, but the text was published according to Smith's instructions (see Smith 1777, 172).

⁸ The passage in TMS referring to the Africans continues in particular with a scathing criticism of slavery (V.2.9): “The same contempt of death and torture prevails among all other savage nations. There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished”.

⁹ Smith also appears to find admirable not only the self-command of the tortured but also that of the torturers, given that they show “the same insensibility” (TMS, V.2.9). Moreover, Smith later goes on to observe: “The most heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice; and though it is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter” (VI.concl.7). It is from such admirable self-command that the other virtues “derive their principal lustre” (VI.iii.11), as in the case of “the man who, in danger, in torture, upon the approach of death, preserves his tranquillity unaltered, and suffers no word, no gesture to escape him which does not perfectly accord with the feelings of the most indifferent spectator” and at the same time “suffers in the cause of liberty and justice, for the sake of humanity and the love of his country” (VI.iii.5).

¹⁰ On the relationship between Smith and Montaigne, see Force (2003), Forman-Barzilai (2010), and Fontana (2018).

¹¹ Moreover, one could hardly imagine that Smith had not read this famous essay on savages given his veritable “obsession” with the subject, as remarked by Meek (1976, 115). It is surely significant that as from his first article, for the Edinburgh Review, Smith (1756, 250–254) had translated various passages from Rousseau (1755) and Mandeville (1723) dealing with precisely this topic.

¹² Forman-Barzilai (2010, 242–248), instead, stresses a similarity in Smith's and Montaigne's approach by referring to an alleged “cultural pluralism”.

¹³ Explanation of the reason why Chapter II (Part V) is the closing chapter of TMS is given by Bee (2015).

¹⁴ According to Smith, civil war or war with other countries plunges individuals into extreme situations like those experienced by savages (TMS, III.3.37), and can induce a similar absolute self-command also in civilised people, which can thus torture or stand up to torture with similar insensibility. It is always possible, besides, that some civilised people might be “sordid” (see footnote 8).

¹⁵ Smith seems to have in mind Hume's “On National Characters” (1748) (see Harkin 2005, 436), without, however, agreeing with his thesis that the civilised are superior to the savages; rather, he associates different characteristics with different living conditions.

¹⁶ “Every age and country look upon that degree of each quality, which is commonly to be met with in those who are esteemed among themselves, as the golden mean of that particular talent or virtue. And as this varies, according as their different circumstances render different qualities more or less habitual to them, their sentiments concerning the exact propriety of character and behaviour vary accordingly” (TMS, V.2.7, emphasis added).

¹⁷ This connection also applies to different situations within one and the same society. Significantly, Chapter II (Part V) begins by addressing the connection in relation to the various professions and social positions. This issue is related to WN (I.ii.4, and especially V.i.g.10), where Smith points out the difference between an “austere system” of morality for poor people and a “liberal or loose system” of morality for rich people. Relevant as it is, this aspect merits specific treatment beyond the scope of the present article.

¹⁸ Returning to comparison between savages and the civilized in the Introduction and Plan of the Work of WN, Smith specifies that the general improvement in living conditions in commercial society applies even to the poorest members of society.

¹⁹ Smith's solution to the loss of martial spirit in civilised society is the institution of professional armies; this choice would free the more polished nations from the necessity to live in the cult of Spartan virility (see Berry 1992, 82–83).

²⁰ Of course, Smith makes it clear in both TMS and WN that history is never perfectly linear, but full of distortions and deviations. When he criticises the division of labour as tending to close the hearts and minds of people, his line of argumentation runs in the same direction (on this point, see also Herzog 2013, 123–124 and Nohara 2010, 85–86). Thus, these distortions can be approached from the same point of view, but I will have to hold further discussion for a future article.

²¹ Part VI, which in the edition of 1790 becomes Part VII, deals with the other systems of morality.

²² In particular, this is a matter of that apatheia conceived by the stoic Chrysippus, for whom Smith reserves scathing criticism (TMS VII.ii.1.41). It would be beyond the scope of this article to go further into the relationship between Smith's self-command and that of the Stoics, which would call for distinction between the insensitive and sensitive stoical sage – a point that will be discussed in a subsequent article (see Bee and Paganelli 2017). For some of the present, discordant positions on the subject, see among others, Raphael and Macfie (1976), Waszek (1984), Forman-Barzilai (2010) and Nussbaum (2002). See also Montes (2008), who holds Smith's self-command to be closer to the Socratic virtue of enkrateia, since, he argues, the idea of command includes “a sense of direction”, so that “self-command can be seen as a process of inward looking and then outward acting” (Montes 2008, 48–50; see also Carrasco 2012).

²³ Here, self-command appears to correspond neither to the “pre-moral” nor to the “moral” self-command hypothesised by Carrasco (2012). It is not so much a matter of internal control of passions allowing for rational behaviour, considering that the passions can reach “the highest pitch of fury” (TMS, V.2.11), nor of self-command directing action toward right objects, for the argument concerns vindictive savages. What, despite everything, appears “great and respectable” (VI.iii.12) in the impassive savages is their incredible command over expression of “any outward emotion” (V.2.11). Given that Smith takes the expression of emotions to be an object of moral judgement, such self-command is deemed virtuous regardless of its effects (VI.concl.7), when exercised in “the most perfect” way (VI.iii.1).

²⁴ A finer sensibility does not necessarily mean, for Smith, greater benevolence towards others. Rather, it means quite simply a superior capacity to judge one's own sentiments and those of others. Such judgement, heightened by a finer sensibility, leads to sentiments of benevolence or, on the contrary, resentment, depending on the circumstances. As an anonymous referee pointed out, ‘stupid’ originally meant confounded or dumbfounded, which casts some light on what Smith means here about an insensitive person's incapacity to judge.

²⁵ In a society in which absolute self-command is not required, reserve and concealment “call forth diffidence” (TMS, VII.iv.28).