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ABSTRACT
Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer (because unnecessary, just as we speak of ‘the world’). Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ (all new to edition 6), we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed (purported), not sup-pos’d (posited).
Notes
1 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1982). This work is hereafter abbreviated as ‘TMS’, followed by page and paragraph.
2 Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 79.
3 Ibid.
4 Smith, TMS, 237.6.
5 Ibid., 215.11.
6 Samuel Fleischacker, ‘Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator: Symposium Remarks’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 274.
7 Jack Russell Weinstein, ‘My Understanding of Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 352.
8 Ibid., 355.
9 Craig Smith, ‘Peer Review and the Development of the Impartial Spectator’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 328.
10 James Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 73.
11 James Otteson, ‘How High Does the Impartial Spectator Go?’, in Adam Smith as Theologian, ed. Paul Oslington (New York: Routledge, 2011), 96.
12 T.D. Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), 137.
13 D.D. Raphael, The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 45.
14 Theodore Jouffroy, ‘Introduction to Ethics, Including a Critical Survey of Moral Systems’, in On Moral Sentiments: Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith, ed. John Reeder (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 191.
15 Haakonssen, Science of a Legislator, 56.
16 Ibid., 58 (emphasis original).
17 Jerry Evensky, ‘The Two Voices of Adam Smith: Moral Philosopher and Social Critic’, History of Political Economy 19, no. 3 (1987): 452.
18 Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience (London: Routledge, 1994), 74.
19 Ross B. Emmett, ‘Man and Society in Adam Smith’s Natural Morality: The Impartial Spectator, the Man of System, and the Invisible Hand’, in Smith as Theologian (see note 11), 128; Paul Mueller, ‘Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 312–18.
20 Roderick Firth, ‘Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12, no. 3 (1952): 318 (footnote 2).
21 Jeffrey T. Young, ‘Natural Morality and the Ideal Impartial Spectator in Adam Smith’, International Journal of Social Economics 19, no. 10–12 (1992): 74.
22 Charles Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 91.
23 Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: Further Thoughts on the Principles of Adam Smith (South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 2001), 21.
24 Douglas J. Den Uyl, ‘Impartial Spectating and the Price Analogy’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 264.
25 In an online spreadsheet, we collect all passages for key terms and, among other things, code all cases of ‘impartial spectator’. Available at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/Assets/ImpartialSpectatorFinal.xlsx.
26 Smith, TMS, 10.4.
27 Ibid., 22.8.
28 Ibid., 148.28.
29 Ibid., 249.27 (emphasis added). The phrase is also repeated by Smith at 283.28.
30 For passages in Smith on admiration and emulation of exemplars, see TMS, 20.3, 75.3, 114.3, 159.7, 192.11, 247.25, 323.10, 336.24.
31 Ibid., 20.3.
32 Ibid., 155.42, 158.4.
33 Ibid., 137.4
34 Ibid., 152.34–6.
35 Ibid., 142–3, 172.4.
36 Ibid., 301–6.
37 Ibid., 116.5.
38 Ibid., 118.9.
39 The Shadow ‘possessed many gifts which enabled him to overcome any enemy. Besides his tremendous strength, he could defy gravity, speak any language, unravel any code, and become invisible with his famous ability to “cloud men’s minds”’. Old Radio World, http://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/The_Shadow.php.
40 Ibid. Perhaps economists resort, in effect, to such a Shadow figure when they tell the science-fiction story called ‘Supply and Demand’: the Shadow knows the supply curve and demand curve, and the economist discusses what he might see and know, and feel about outcomes. Even if the story is used chiefly as a foil, economists thereby make points about how markets work (or do not work), without knowing what the Shadow knows.
41 If such being (Joy) were superhumanly beneficial without herself being so benevolent, it would seem natural to explain her alignment with benevolence the same way we do for humans: Seeking the approval of some higher being, an approval that depends on such alignment. We might content ourselves with such a regress, but it also seems quite natural, and quite satisfactory, to simply make the step to a being who is so benevolent.
42 Superhuman-ness might also be said to mark Joy’s impartiality, in that no human could be as disinterested a bystander or spectator to the large wholes that she beholds.
43 Notably, a common attribute of God is his designing/willing/creating of the universe, and that attribute is not necessary to the allegory of Joy. There is, however, a naturalness to attributing providence to a being who is morally supreme, for the benevolence of such a being resembles that of a creator: creators usually care for their creation, as a parent cares for her child, a homemaker her home, and an author her discourse.
44 Smith, TMS, 166.7 (emphasis added).
45 The idea of virtue as cooperation with the Deity is very old, of course, but some predecessors recent to Smith include Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Douglas Den Uyl (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 201; Joseph Butler, Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature to Which Are Added, Two Brief Dissertations (1737), http://www.ccel.org/ccel/butler/analogy.toc.html; Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas Concerning Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises, ed. Wolfgang Leihold (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), 109.
46 Smith, TMS, 166.7.
47 Ibid., 305.18.
48 Ibid., 164.4.
49 Ibid., 247.25.
50 In the above-mentioned spreadsheet (see note 25) we have coded all instances of ‘impartial spectator’. Instances especially aptly understood as Joy include those at 215.11, 225.19, and 294.49.
51 Haakonssen, Science of a Legislator, 58 (emphasis original).
52 Smith, TMS, 241.11.
53 The introductory paragraph to Section III, Part VI of TMS, ‘Of Self-command’, seems to run counter to our suggestion here that the wisdom and virtue are like two sides of the same coin. We propose the following interpretation of it: When Smith posits Jim as having ‘the most perfect knowledge’ of ‘the rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper benevolence’, he means rules regarding a set of things that falls short of the passions in Jim that ‘are very apt to mislead him’. A larger set of things, a set that included those troublesome passions, could be made the subject of a yet more extensive body of rules, a body of rules of which Jim, who lacks self-command, does not have ‘the most perfect knowledge’. In other words, for any issue of self-command we can extend virtue so as to view the issue as a matter of self-knowledge.
54 Ibid., 298.13. Smith also writes, in the same paragraph: ‘Temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence, come thus to be approved of, not only under their proper characters, but under the additional character of the highest wisdom and most real prudence’.
55 Ibid., 114.3.
56 Ibid., 215.11 (emphasis original, boldface added).
57 Ibid., 165.5–6.
58 Ibid., 166.7.
59 Ibid., 130 note r (emphasis added).
60 Ibid., 192.11.
61 Ibid., 131.32.
62 Ibid., 137.4.
63 Ibid., 62.2. Other scornful remarks in TMS include: ‘the present depraved state of mankind’, 77.8; ‘so weak and imperfect a creature as man’, 77.9; ‘The coarse clay of which the bulk of mankind are formed’, 162–3.1; ‘the noisy applauses of ten thousand ignorant and enthusiastic admirers’, 253.31.
64 A shift between intrapersonal and interpersonal comparison might be a way to resolve a contrariety appearing in the Chinese earthquake paragraph: while pondering whether to sacrifice his little finger, the man hears his ‘inhabitant of the breast’ call to him that he is ‘in no respect better than any other in [the multitude]’ and yet he sacrifices his little finger from the love of the ‘superiority’ of his own character – though no better than others, the man, by making the sacrifice, is superior to what he would otherwise be. Ibid., 137.4.
65 Ibid., 12.12.
66 Ibid., 215.11.
67 Ibid., 25.8.
68 Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
69 Ibid., 281.
70 Daniel Turner, De Morbis Cutaneis: A Treatise of Diseases Incident to the Skin (London: J. Walthoe, 1731), 332 (boldface added).
71 Daniel Turner, The Art of Surgery (London: C. Rivington, 1729), 251 (boldface added). When we chart ‘supposedly’ in Google’s Ngram viewer, 1600–2000, we see that the word was used a bit up to the early 1700s, fell into disuse, and then revived after 1890. Nonetheless, it appears that there was awareness of supposedly and its sarcasm prior to Smith. Incidentally, none of Turner’s works appear in Bonar’s catalogue of Smith’s library.
72 Wierzbicka, English, 280–1.
73 Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. (accessed online, March 2018); William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (1623); Richard Montagu, Acts and Monuments of the Church (London, 1642).
74 Collins Dictionary, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/supposed (accessed March 2018).
75 Samuel Fleischacker, ‘Samuel Fleischacker on Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator’, Econ Journal Watch (2016), minute 13:00, podcast interview by Daniel B. Klein, https://econjwatch.org/podcast/samuel-fleischacker-on-adam-smith-s-impartial-spectator. We would like to express thanks to Professor Fleischacker for engagement on these matters. In fact, it was not until the podcast that we noticed that the two different meanings corresponded to two different pronunciations.
76 Here we should note that, although it is clear that the sceptical meaning of supposed clearly existed well prior to Smith (and Fleischacker acknowledges that in the above-mentioned podcast), we have had difficulty confirming that in Smith’s time that meaning would have been phonetically expressed as sup-po-sed. We have searched old dictionaries and thus far found neither confirming nor disconfirming evidence of the hypothesis that our differentiation in pronunciation corresponding to the different meanings extends back to Smith’s time.
77 Smith, TMS, 85.4 (also in edition 5), 110.2 (also in edition 5), 120.11, 120.11, 130.32, 131.32, 134.1, 145.21, 223.14, 226.22, 233.17, 262.2, 287.34.
78 Or, presumably new to edition 6: they are not in edition 5, which appeared in 1781. We have not checked editions 1–4, but presumably the twelve occurrences would not be found in any of them.
79 The exception is item 8 on the above list (‘real or supposed spectator’, 145.21) which we think is better understood as sup-pos’d.
80 Smith, TMS, 120.11 (boldface added).
81 Ibid., 223.14 (boldface added).
82 Ibid., 233.17 (boldface added).
83 See our spreadsheet (see note 25).
84 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 188 (boldface added). There are 37 instances of the adjective supposed in Wealth of Nations, and in our spreadsheet (note 25) we have coded 5 as clearly and 4 arguably better understood as sup-po-sed.
85 Smith, TMS, 153.38.
86 Ibid., 156.1.
87 Ibid.
88 Daniel B. Klein, ‘Corruption According to Adam Smith’, published online by Institute of Economic Affairs (October 7, 2016), https://iea.org.uk/corruption-according-to-adam-smith/.
89 Smith, TMS, 146–7.25.
90 Ibid., 155.43.
91 Ibid., 147.26, 148.28, 148.29, 153.38, 158.4.
92 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London: Strahan, 1755), 1039, https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/page-view/?i=1039.
93 Smith, TMS, 147.26, 153.38.
94 Ibid., 158.4.
95 Ibid., 148.28, 148.29.
96 Ibid., 225.19 (boldface added).
97 Ibid., 174.9.
98 Ibid., 294.49 (boldface added).
99 Ibid., 174.9–175.11.
100 Ibid., 293.48.
101 Ibid., 83.1.
102 Ibid., 159.8, 187.2.