Adam Smith's Ethics and the “Noble Arts” 1

1 An early draft of this paper was prepared for the European Business Ethics Network, Brunel University (2002) and the Association for Private Enterprise Education (2004). The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable suggestions of Jean Wight, Reingard Nethersole and two anonymous referees.

Abstract

Adam Smith's character-based ethical system lays the foundation for his vision of the social and economic good. Within this system, the arts perform a critical role. Smith's essays “Of the Imitative Arts” and his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres are useful companions to The Theory of Moral Sentiments in analyzing the mechanisms whereby literature and the arts excite moral development. The arts stretch the boundaries of imagination and perspective, stimulating self-awareness and self-reflective growth. When combined with rational thought, decision-making takes place through an internal dialogue in which this wider perspective weighs upon one's “impartial spectator” and becomes the background for action. According to this view, the arts provide positive externalities for society and should be encouraged through public policy. The arts promote a conversation that becomes part of the common goods of society, including that of science.

Keywords:

• Adam Smith
• arts
• ethics
• morals
• moral imagination

Notes

1 An early draft of this paper was prepared for the European Business Ethics Network, Brunel University (2002) and the Association for Private Enterprise Education (2004). The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable suggestions of Jean Wight, Reingard Nethersole and two anonymous referees.

2 On Smith's death, one of his friends wrote a letter to an admirer in which he noted that Smith himself “always considered his TMS [Theory of Moral Sentiments] a much superior work to his [Wealth of Nations]” (Ross 1995: 408). Additional circumstantial evidence supports this view. Smith's work is structured systematically so that Moral Sentiments provides a philosophical foundation, and The Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurisprudence fills in subject details. One further detail seems compelling: Smith revised, expanded, and reissued Moral Sentiments through six editions, a fact consistent with the notion that he regarded the work highly.

3 The literature on teaching and the arts is vast. A brief selection would include articles on: (a) literature and drama (Watts 2002, 2003; Brown and Myring 2002; Hansen 2002; Hartley 2001; Garaventa 1998; Levy 1998; Williams 1997; McCurdy 1995; Carson 1994; McAdams 1993; Kennedy and Lawton 1992; Marini 1992; McAdams 1992; Coles 1989); (b) feature films (Berger and Pratt 1998; Peterson and Philpot 1997; Williams 1997; Nofsinger 1995; Belden 1992; Dyl 1991); (c) documentary videos (Hosmer and Steneck 1989); (d) music (Tinari and Khandke 2000); and (e) animation (Champoux 2001).

4 Although there is little difference in common meaning between the word “develop” and “unfold,” in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1983: 3) Smith expressed a native preference for the English-derived “unfold” over the French-derived “develop.”

5 One could argue that, in today's world, it is instant visual communications and not imagination that creates the spark of moral transformation. Who needs to imagine an earthquake in Asia when one can watch it real-time on television? This argument is convincing up to a point, and certainly the television coverage of the tsunami disaster of December 2004 would support it. But the overload of sensory information, particularly the visual portrayal of suffering around the world, could make someone less likely to close the moral divide than before. Smith's moral imagination argument is really about the outside world getting inside our heads, and seems to work equally well in a digital age.

6 Smith writes: “[W]hat is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? … . It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it” (Smith 1982a: 137).

7 Voltaire's treatment of Mohammed in Mahomet is criticized today for its “ethnocentric and anti-Islamic bias” and for concocting false historical events surrounding the fall of Mecca, in order to promote his own Deistic views (Hammerbeck 2003). Smith's comments, however, relate not so much to the veracity of Voltaire's portrayal as to the moral lessons represented.

8 From the Correspondence of Adam Smith (1987, 286 – 287). It is not likely that Smith thought he could ever complete these large-scale projects, as he noted in that same letter of 1785: “old age” was “fast upon me, and whether I shall ever be able to finish either is extremely uncertain” (ibid.).

9 His first appointment to the University of Glasgow in 1751 was in the Chair of Logic and Rhetoric, and he assumed the chair in Moral Philosophy the following year.

10 Smith writes, “[The entrepreneur] can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress” (1981: 454).

11 These are a student's notes, and they were not transcribed, edited, or verified by Smith. It would seem best to use these notes only as a guide to Smith's thinking on uncontroversial issues.

12 Adam Smith published only two books during his lifetime, and at his death left a wealth of unfinished manuscripts, many of which were burned at his request. Several of Smith's friends posthumously published his Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1982a [1795]), which includes the essay “On the Imitative Arts” as well as the more important “The History of Astronomy” essay in which Smith develops the role of imagination in science.

13 Smith's use of the term “Sister Arts” differs slightly from the more common practice of his day of grouping painting, rather than dance, as being a sister art.

14 This is not to suggest that Smith associates music only with positive sentiments. He notes, for example, that the repetitive nature of some musical forms imitates the psychological focus of someone experiencing emotional extremes (the depths of grief and hatred and the heights of joy and love). The words of a passionate air, even a short one, are “transposed and repeated again and again” mimicking the intense single-mindedness of a “haunted” mind (Smith 1982b: 191 – 192).

15 For example, a civil magistrate must not only preserve the peace, he must also promote prosperity. To do this Smith says the magistrate should discourage vice and promote virtuous conduct “to a certain degree” (1982: 81).

16 Nussbaum quotes the 1976 Supreme Court ruling in Woodson vs. North Carolina (1995: xv).

17 Alasdair MacIntyre, in his path-breaking book After Virtue, also asks philosophers to seek the virtues by studying Homer and Sophocles, Jane Austin and C.S. Lewis, and others writers of fiction (in addition, of course, to studying Aristotle).

18 Professor Bruce Payne directs the “Leadership and the Arts” program at Duke University and spends every spring semester with a group of students in New York City for immersion in the arts.

19 The arts shape the mind by quite a different pathway than lecture or study—but not always in a controllable way. One writer notes that, “In drama we don't always learn morality from watching moral characters. We sometimes learn it from watching people behaving badly, which is usually more interesting …” (Chandler 2000).

20 For example, it was never Smith's intention that there be monolithic public art, funded by bureaucratic state committees and subject to censorship. This would by-pass the self-regulation of a competitive marketplace and could lead to political correctness or brainwashing, defeating the very purpose of public art. The primary role of the state is to “encourage” the arts by defending artistic freedom (a free marketplace of ideas), and each individual's rational powers can interact with art to enrich the human conscience.

21 Emotivism is an ethical theory that follows naturally from logical positivism. If all truth comes from facts and logic, the only scope for morality is subjective feeling. Hence, no ethical issue can ever be resolved through reference to anything external beyond one”s own opinions. This philosophy is strongly criticized by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue (1984).

22 For instance, the metaphor “time is money” links two related concepts and stimulates further thought. Yet we know factually that time is not money, and a purely positivist researcher must hold this statement to be false and hence unhelpful.