Adam Smith, Anti-Stoic

ABSTRACT

Commerce changes the production of wealth in a society as well as its ethics. What is appropriate in a non-commercial society is not necessarily appropriate in a commercial one. Adam Smith criticizes Stoic self-command in commercial societies, rather than embracing it, as is often suggested. He argues that Stoicism, with its promotion of indifference to passions, is an ethic appropriate for savages. Savages live in hard conditions where expressing emotions is detrimental and reprehensible. In contrast, the ease of life brought about by commerce fosters the appropriate expressions and sharing of emotions. Imposing Stoicism on a commercial society is therefore imposing an ethic for savages onto a refined society – something to abhor. Smith’s rejection of Stoicism in commercial societies can thus be seen as a defence of commerce.

KEYWORDS:

• Smith
• Stoicism
• insensitivity
• savages
• commerce
• expression of emotions

Acknowledgment

A first version of this paper was submitted in 2016 for the June 2017 JHET meeting. We thank the participants of that conference as well as of the July 2017 Adam Smith from Scotland to the South of the Mediterranean conference in Palermo for comments and feedback. We also thank Leonidas Montes, Eric Schliesser, Craig Smith, Tyler Cowen, Biancamaria Fontana, David Levy, Christian Maurer, Ryu Susato, and Vivienne Brown, as well as the participants of the lecture at Hokkaido University in September 2017, and at Université Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne in December 2017. Thanks to the participants of the January 2018 Adam Smith in Chile conference, and of the May 2018 lecture at Università San Raffaele.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Michele Bee http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3703-6851

Notes

1 For an overview, see, for example, Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

2 For an overview see, among others, Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘The Moralizing Role of Distance in Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments as Possible Praise of Commerce’, History of Political Economy 42, no. 3 (2010): 425–41; Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘We Are Not the Center of the Universe: The Role of Astronomy in the Moral Defense of Commerce in Adam Smith’, History of Political Economy 49, no. 3 (2017): 451–68.

3 David D. Raphael and Alec L. Macfie, ‘Introduction’, in Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1976, 6.

4 Peter H. Clarke, ‘Adam Smith, Stoicism and Religion in the 18th Century’, History of the Human Sciences 13, no. 4 (2000): 49–72. See also Harold B. Jones, ‘Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Ethic, and Adam Smith’, Journal of Business Ethics 95, no. 1 (2010): 92; Ryan Patrick Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 151–2; Jerry Evensky, ‘The Two Voices of Adam Smith: Moral Philosopher and Social Critic’, History of Political Economy 19, no. 3 (1987): 450. Also Raphael and Macfie, ‘Introduction’, 6, refer to ‘a combination of Stoic and Christian virtues – or, in philosophical terms, a combination of Stoicism and Hutcheson’. On the relation between Hutcheson and the Stoic philosophy see Christian Maurer, ‘Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2010): 33–49.

5 For an overview, see for example, Vivienne Brown, ‘“Mere Inventions of the Imagination”: A Survey of Recent Literature on Adam Smith’, Economics and Philosophy 13, no. 2 (1997): 281–312; Christian Maurer, ‘Stoicism and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition (London: Routledge, 2016), 254–69. On a possible less pronounced endorsement of Stoicism in the sixth edition of TMS see Vivienne Brown, ‘The Impartial Spectator and Moral Judgment’, Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 2 (2016): 232–48. For criticisms of the editors taking Stoicism too literally, see among others Leonidas Montes, Adam Smith in Context: A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought, ed. Palgrave-Macmillan (Basingstoke, 2003); Leonidas Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’, Adam Smith Review 4 (2008); Eric Schliesser, ‘Books Review’, Ethics 118, no. 3 (2008): 569–57. For a criticism of Montes’s association of Smith’s concept of ‘self-command’ to the Socratic notion of ‘enkrateia’, see Vivienne Brown, ‘Review of Leonidas Montes, 2004, Adam Smith in Context: A Critical Reassessment of some Central Components of His Thought’, History of Economic Thought Newsletter 73 (2004): 21–4.

6 See among others Alec L. Macfie, The Individual in Society: Papers on Adam Smith (London: Routledge, 1967); Jacob Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order: An Essay in Intellectual History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); Evensky, ‘The Two Voices of Adam Smith: Moral Philosopher and Social Critic’; Richard A. Kleer, ‘Final Causes in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 33, no. 2 (1995): 275–330; Clarke, ‘Adam Smith, Stoicism and Religion in the 18th Century’; Lisa Hill, ‘The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8, no. 1 (2001): 1–29; James R. Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Anthony M. C. Waterman, ‘Economics as Theology: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations’, Southern Economic Journal 68, no. 4 (2002): 907–21; Pierre Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). and cf. among others Spencer J. Pack, Capitalism as a Moral System (London: Edward Elgar, 1991); Lauren Brubaker, ‘Does the ‘Wisdom of Nature’ Need Help?’, in New Voices on Adam Smith (London: Routledge, 2006); Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013); Colin Heydt, ‘The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith’s Moral Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas 78, no. 1 (2017): 73–94.

7 See Russell Nieli, ‘Spheres of Intimacy and the Adam Smith Problem’, Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (1986): 611–24. Cf. also Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue; Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

8 See Norbert Waszek, ‘Two Concepts of Morality: A Distinction of Adam Smith’s Ethics and Its Stoic Origin’, Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 4 (1984): 591–606; Laurence Dickey, ‘Historicizing the “Adam Smith Problem”: Conceptual, Historiographical, and Textual Issues’, The Journal of Modern History 58, no. 3 (1986): 580–609; Jerry Z. Muller, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience (London: Routledge, 1994); Gloria Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue.

9 Raphael and Macfie, ‘Introduction’, 10.

10 Muller, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours: Designing the Decent Society.

11 Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, 59. Among the scholars advocating the idea of a moderated Stoicism of Smith see also Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience; Athol Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Charles L. Griswold Jr, ‘Nature and Philosophy’, Man and World 29, no. 2 (1996): 187–213; Charles L. Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’; Leonidas Montes, ‘Adam Smith: Self-Interest and Virtues’, in Adam Smith: His Life, Thought, and Legacy, ed. Ryan Patrick Hanley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue; Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory. Cf. Maria Carrasco, ‘Adam Smith’s Reconstruction of Practical Reason’, Review of Metaphysics 58, no. 1 (2004): 81–116.

12 See Maurer, ‘Stoicism and the Scottish Enlightenment’.

13 See Benson Mates, Stoic Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), 7.

14 See Max Pohlenz, La Stoa, trans. Ottone De Gregorio (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1959), 223–318.

15 See also Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, 64–75; Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’, 36.

16 See Pohlenz, La Stoa, 307–9 and 346.

17 See, for example, Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience; Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations; Griswold Jr, ‘Nature and Philosophy’; Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment; Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought; Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’; Montes, ‘Adam Smith: Self-Interest and Virtues’; Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue; Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory.

18 On the vehemence of the opposition between Academics and Peripatetics, and in particular on the issue of apathy, see Pohlenz, La Stoa, 344–7.

19 On the criticism of the insensitivity upheld by Chrysippus made by Posidonius and followed independently by Cicero and Seneca and on the difference between the intransigent position of the Greek Stoics, and in particular Chrysippus, and the more indulgent attitude towards sensitivity shown by the Romans, see Pohlenz, La Stoa. On a certain preference for the Roman Stoics as compared with the Greeks on the part of Smith and on their differences, see Raphael and Macfie, ‘Introduction’, 7; Waszek, ‘Two Concepts of Morality: A Distinction of Adam Smith’s Ethics and Its Stoic Origin’, 604; Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations, 59–60; Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’, 31–3.

20 On the connotation of ordinary morality attributed by the Stoics and by Smith, and the difference between virtue and propriety, see Waszek, ‘Two Concepts of Morality: A Distinction of Adam Smith’s Ethics and Its Stoic Origin’, 594–604; Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, 6–9; Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, 60; David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart, ‘The Evils of Independence: Stoics Sources for Adam Smith’, Adam Smith Review 4 (2008): 62; Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory, 111. On an Aristotelian influence on Smith’s idea of propriety, see Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue; Alexander Broadie, ‘Aristotle, Adam Smith and the Virtue of Propriety’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2010): 79–89. On Cicero being an academic in speculation but a Stoic in practical morality, see also Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science: Being Chiefly a Retrospect of Lectures Delivered in the College of Edinburgh, ed. A. Strahan and T. Cadell. London and W. Creech (Edinburgh, 1792), 8.

21 On Smith’s project going beyond the traditional opposition between Stoicism and Epicureanism, see Knud Haakonssen, ‘Introduction’, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), xi–xxi. Cf. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 411, on Smith’s inconsistency with the Epicurean moral philosophy; and Christopher Brooke, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 205–7 on Smith ‘modern Epicureanism’.

22 Levy and Peart, ‘The Evils of Independence: Stoics Sources for Adam Smith’, 63.

23 Silvia Sebastiani, The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

24 Joseph-François Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps (Paris: Saugrain l’aîné – Hochereau, 1724), Smith’s main source for this account of the American savages (see Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 177–8) associates the savages’ death song with the Hebrew songs contained in the Psalms in the Bible. Discussing the admirable self-command of the savages, Lafitau’s mind also turns to the Stoics, and so he recalls a celebrated anecdote on Zeno: ‘Parmi les anciens Peuple de l’Inde, à un certain âge ou l’on croyoit avoir assez vêcu, il étoit ordinaire de se faire brûler vif soi-même de sang froid […]. Zenon instruit de leurs maximes, et qui avoit peut-être été le témoin d’une pareille scéne, les admiroit, et disoit qu’il aimoit mieux voir un Indien lorsqu’il se brûle lui-même, que d’entendre toutes les leçons que fait la Philosophie sur la constance’, see Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps, 281.

25 Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 321.

26 On the connection between commercial societies and the rewards ‘bourgeois virtues’ such as sincerity or honesty, see Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtue. Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Lisa Herzog, Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

27 See also Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘Boys Do Cry: Adam Smith on Wealth and Expressing Emotions’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2017): 1–8.

28 Martha Nussbaum, ‘Mutilated and Deformed: Adam Smith on the Material Basis of Human Dignity’ (Manuscript, 2002), https://scholar.google.ch/scholar?q=nussbaum+mutilated+and+deformed&btnG=&hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5.

29 On the ‘hardness of heart’ in Hutcheson’s thought see Maurer, ‘Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology’.

30 See also Eric Schliesser, ‘“The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher”: Adam Smith’s Reflections on Hume’s Life’, Hume Studies 29, no. 2 (2003): 349–50.

31 ‘Frankness and openness’ is also reflected in the ‘probity and punctuality’ of commercial societies where merchants, constantly transacting, become ‘the most faithfull to their words’ (LJB 326-327) (on the virtue of punctuality see also Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘Adam Smith and the Virtue of Punctuality’, in Essays in Honor of Christopher Berry (2019, forthcoming)).

32 See, for example, Samuel Fleischacker, On Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’: A Philosophical Companion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory; although they show awareness of the anachronism.

33 See also Michele Bee, ‘Opening One’s Self Up. The Historical Result of Bettering One’s Condition According to Adam Smith’, IEPHI Working Paper Series 63 (2015); Michele Bee, ‘Wealth and Sensibility. The Historical Outcome of Better Living Conditions for All According to Adam Smith’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 25, no. 3 (2018): 473–92.

34 See also Michele Bee, ‘Exploring the Continuity in Adam Smith’s Thought: Chapter II (Part V) of The Theory of Moral Sentiments’, Adam Smith Review 12 (2019, forthcoming).

35 See Maureen Harkin, ‘Adam Smith’s Missing History: Primitives, Progress, and Problems of Genre’, ELH 72, no. 2 (2005): 429–51; Nussbaum, ‘Mutilated and Deformed: Adam Smith on the Material Basis of Human Dignity (Manuscript)’.

36 For more on martial virtues, manliness, vir virtutis, and the discourse on Smith’s own defence of the professional army see Leonidas Montes, ‘Adam Smith on the Standing Army versus Militia Issue: Wealth over Virtue?’, in Elgar Companion to Adam Smith, ed. J.T. Young (London: Edward Elgar, 2009), 315–35. On progress entailing some losses such as martial virtues see also Maureen Harkin, ‘Natives and Nostalgia: The Problem of the ‘North American Savage’ in Adam Smith’s Historiography’, Scottish Studies Review 3, no. 1 (2002): 21–32; Harkin, ‘Adam Smith’s Missing History: Primitives, Progress, and Problems of Genre’.

37 On Smith’s promotion of stoic manhood as a way to balance the effeminacy brought by commercial society, see Stewart Justman, The Autonomous Male of Adam Smith (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). On a professional army as Smith’s solution to the loss of martial spirit in civilized society, see Christopher J. Berry, ‘Adam Smith and the Virtues of Commerce’, Nomos 34 (1992): 83–3; Maria Pia Paganelli and Reinhard Schumacher, ‘Do Not Take Peace for Granted: Adam Smith’s Warning on the Relation between Commerce and War’, Cambridge Journal of Economics (forthcoming).

38 See also Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘Adam Smith on the Future of Experimental Evolution and Economics’, Journal of Bioeconomics 20 (2018): 20–8 and Maria Pia Paganelli, ‘Adam Smith and the Origins of Political Economy’, Social Philosophy & Policy (2020, forthcoming).

39 Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience; Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations; Griswold Jr, ‘Nature and Philosophy’; Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment; Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought; Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’; Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue; Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory; Montes, ‘Adam Smith: Self-Interest and Virtues’.

40 Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, 81.

41 Charles L. Griswold, ‘Rhetoric and Ethics: Adam Smith on Theorizing About the Moral Sentiments’, Philosophy & Rhetoric 24, no. 3 (1991): 236; Montes, ‘Adam Smith as an Eclectic Stoic’. For Griswold, Smith’s theory was influenced by Scepticism.

42 See Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics: The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, 82.

43 See Waszek, ‘Two Concepts of Morality: A Distinction of Adam Smith’s Ethics and Its Stoic Origin’; Harkin, ‘Adam Smith’s Missing History: Primitives, Progress, and Problems of Genre’.