No need for society: Adam Smith’s critique of Pufendorf’s summa imbecillitas

Abstract

Adam Smith saw in Pufendorf the idea of a sociability prior to government, arising from a perception of the advantages of cooperation in overcoming the alleged natural inability of human beings to provide for their needs. The idea of a principle of sociability independent of government was crucial to Smith, who also addressed since the beginning of the Wealth of Nations the advantages of cooperation. However, as this article intends to show, for him sociability did not arise from the need for the assistance of others, as it is often said, but from the desire for deserved esteem.

Keywords:

• Adam Smith
• Samuel Pufendorf
• Sociability
• division of labour
• needs

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• B10
• B11
• B12

Acknowledgments

This paper was presented at the ESHET 2022 conference in Padova, the HES 2022 conference in Minneapolis, the IASS 2022 conference in Bogotá, the Seminário de Diamantina 2022 and at the Cedeplar (UFMG) history of economic thought study group in Belo Horizonte. We thank all the participants in these meetings for their feedback, as well as the two anonymous referees for their comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Natural jurisprudence was incorporated into the moral philosophy courses at Glasgow University in 1690 through curriculum reform headed by Gershom Carmichael, Francis Hutcheson’s predecessor. Pufendorf’s abridged treatise, De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem (1673), became the main reference for jurisprudence courses. Cf. Moore and Silverthorne (1983) and Lieberman (2006, 219–220).

2 See Hont (1987).

3 There is an important literature that sees in Pufendorf a decisive contribution to the genesis of a theory of commercial society, or an economic and pre-political conception of society, that furnishes a bridge between seventeenth century Natural Law and eighteenth-century Political Economy. See among others Hasbach (1891), Medick (1981 [1973]), Hont (1987) and Grewal (2021).

4 See, among others, Rosanvallon (1989 [1979]), Hont (1987, 2005, 2015), Kingsbury and Straumann (2010, 37–8), Sæther (2017, 234–7) and Sagar (2018, 168–9). Haakonssen (1996, 131), in turn, considers that, in Smith’s view, “We turn to other people not only out of need but out of curiosity or a spontaneous tendency to identify with the other, a tendency which Smith calls ‘sympathy'”. This reading is more in line with the thesis defended in this paper. However, it is argued more explicitly here that, in Smith’s theory, the inability to satisfy one’s needs alone is not the principle of sociability, as in Pufendorf. Cropsey (1957) emphasizes the desire of self-preservation as the most important principle of Smith’s conception of human behaviour and society, and therefore brings his ideas closer to Hobbes’ philosophy.

5 See Rosanvallon (1989), according to whom this would be the basis of an economic representation of society, in which the societal bond is human needs and interests.

6 In particular, see Hont (1987, 2005, 2015), but also Sæther (2017) and Van Holthoon (2020).

7 See Berry (2013a, 43–4; 2013b, 90–2) and Sagar (2018, 19, n. 41).

8 Hont (1987, 255–6) mentions Pownall’s commentaries, but does not see the relevance of his critique of Smith’s propensity to exchange.

9 The lack of quotations from Pufendorf has led interpreters such as Stein (1988, 400), Berry (2013a, 43–4; 2013b, 90–2) and Sagar (2018, 19, n. 41) to question the hypothesis of influence raised by Hont (1987), especially in regard to the formulation of Smith’s four stages theory. This article does not intend to analyse the hypothesis of such an influence, but only the relationship between Smith's theory of sociability and the critique of the conception of sociability commonly attributed to Pufendorf by the moral philosophers of the University of Glasgow. On the relevance of Pufendorf’s and other seventeenth-century natural jurists’ works to the emergence of Scottish social theory and natural history, see the studies by Medick (1981), Meek (1976), Forbes (1982), Hont (1987), and Buckle (1993).

10 In a way, Hutcheson’s and Smith’s reading of Pufendorf as a follower of Hobbes seem to harmonize with Fiammetta Palladini’s (2020 [1990]) well-known interpretation. For alternative interpretations of Pufendorf, see among others Hochstrasser (2004), Pink (2009) and Haara (2018).

11 Cf. Pufendorf (1729, 109–116: LNN, II.ii.5-11, II.iii.15), where Pufendorf respectively contests Hobbes’s idea that the natural state of mankind is a state of war, and states that sociability is the fundamental law of nature.

12 For an account of the centrality of the condition of imbecillitas for Pufendorf’s system of natural law, see Medick (1981, 52–4).

13 The inaugural lecture was delivered in Latin, and its original title was De Naturali Hominum Socialitate Oratio Inauguralis. According to Hont (2005, 39, n. 72), Hutcheson's text was reprinted in 1756 by the Foulis Press. We have as reference the translation made by M. Silverthorne, whose title is On the Natural Sociability of Mankind Inaugural Oration (Hutcheson, 2006).

14 The recognition of sociability as the foundation of rights and duties was seen as an alternative view to the voluntarist conceptions of the origin of morality and civil obligations. According to the latter, the obligatory nature of moral laws resulted from the fact that they were imposed by a superior (be it God, or the sovereign). On this, see Haakonssen (1996). It is noteworthy that Hutcheson (1755, 264: SMP II.3.vi), alongside Carmichael, and possibly Smith, saw Pufendorf’s stance as ambiguous in what concerns the foundation of moral obligation, making a reference to Leibniz’s (1988 [1706]) critique of Pufendorf’s position and Barbeyrac’s (2003 [1718]) defence of it. In this respect, their reading really converges with Palladini’s (2020 [1990], 47).

15 Also in this regard, Hutcheson (2004 [1725], 85–6) makes a qualitative distinction between the natural and the moral goods. The former is understood as the pleasure derived from the enjoyment of useful things, and the latter as the pleasure one feels when observing altruistic actions. The pleasure felt when obtaining an external benefit is caused by the external senses, and does not provoke any kind of approval or love in the spectators. The pleasure felt when observing a good action, in turn, is caused by an internal moral sense, and calls forth the approval and love of the spectator for the agent, even when the former expects no benefit from the latter. This distinction was meant to underline the amoral status of self-love as the desire for external advantages.

16 For Pufendorf (1729, 137: LNN, II.iii.15), sociability is a law of nature, that is, an obligation in the face of the need for self-preservation. “Now that such a Creature may be preserv’d and supported, and may enjoy the good Things attending his Condition of Life, it is necessary that he be social [sic: sociabile, i.e., sociable] […]. This then will appear a fundamental Law of Nature, Every Man ought, as far as in him lies, to promote and preserve a peaceful Sociableness with others, agreeable to the main End and Disposition of the Race in general”.

17 See, among others, Rosanvallon (1989 [1979]), Hont (1987, 2005, 2015), Kingsbury and Straumann (2010, 37–8) and Sagar (2018, 168–9). See also Fleischacker (2004, 142), who suggests the centrality of the need of self-preservation by saying that, according to Smith, without the assistance of others, human beings would be unable to survive. Hurtado (2018, 217) and Paganelli (2020, 21), in turn, state that, for Smith, human beings cannot survive on their own.

18 About the natural man, Rousseau (2002 [1755], 90) states: “I see an animal less strong than some, and less agile than others, but, upon the whole, the most advantageously organized of any: I see him satisfying his hunger under an oak, and his thirst at the first brook; I see him laying himself down to sleep at the foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and there are all his wants completely supplied”. See the correspondent passage in Pufendorf (1729, 101: LNN, II.i.8). On the relevance of Pufendorf for Rousseau’s thought, see Wokler (1994).

19 This insecurity and hardship necessarily lead him to become accustomed to great hardiness and thus assume an “absolute self-command” (TMS V.2.9, 15). The “general security” offered by commercial society, on the other hand, allows everyone to relax their self-command and share their feelings more freely (Ibid.; emphasis added). See Bee (2018), Bee and Paganelli (2019).

20 Smith continues: “Both of them however suppose, that there is in man no powerful instinct which necessarily determines him to seek society for its own sake: but according to the one, the misery of his original state compelled him to have recourse to this otherwise disagreeable remedy; according to the other, some unfortunate accidents having given birth to the unnatural passions of ambition and the vain desire of superiority, to which he had before been a stranger, produced the same fatal effect”.

21 See, for instance, Mandeville (1988, ii.180): “The Love Man has for his Ease and Security, and his perpetual Desire of meliorating his Condition, must be sufficient Motives to make him fond of Society; considering the necessitous and helpless Condition of his Nature”.

22 It includes all “savage nations” (TMS V.2.9; emphasis added). In describing the way in which the division of labour emerges from exchange, Smith speaks of a tribe, and not of isolated individuals: “In a tribe of hunters, an individual…” (WN I.ii.3).

23 On the other hand, if Smith had not conjectured an already established society in which exchanges take place before the division of labour is established (since the advantages are not yet known), and within which it gradually emerges due to the frequency of exchanges, he could not have supported the thesis of the third chapter of the WN. According to this thesis, it is the extension of the market that limits the development of the division of labour, since the division of labour is derived from the spread of exchanges (and not vice versa). For a more in-depth discussion of this point, see Bee (2021).

24 For Smith, it is a kind of moral pleasure, distinct from the pleasure given by the enjoyment of external objects, or their “appearance of utility” (see TMS IV.2.3-5). For a similar distinction in Hutcheson, see footnote 15.

25 See, among others, for instance, Dupuy (1987), Force (2003), Hanley (2009), Douglass (2017).

26 For an explanation of exchange in the WN in a society in which there is no division of labour and therefore in the absence of its advantages, see Bee (2021).

27 Note that the desire to persuade others to appreciate us in a just manner involves speech and a sense of justice, and therefore it is different from a pure social instinct implanted in people by nature. In this sense, for Smith, as for Aristotle, human beings distinguish themselves from mere gregarious animals, like bees. Smith’s sociability is somewhat reminiscent of Aristotle’s zoon politikon, whose polity is founded in speech and the distinction between just and unjust (see Aristotle 1995, 10–1: Politics, 1253a7-18). A discussion of similarities and divergences between Smith and Aristotle on human nature, speech and justice, however, is beyond the scope of this article and will have to be addressed elsewhere. On the relationship between Smith and Aristotle, see among others, Vivenza (2001), Hanley and Smith (2006), Pack (2010), Broadie (2010), Hurtado (2018); see also Berns (1994) and Bee (forthcoming) on justice in Smith and Aristotle.

28 A Letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith, LL.D.F.R.S., being an Examination of Several Points of Doctrine, laid down in his 'Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' (London, 1776). This letter is found in Appendix A of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. 7 (Smith 1987, 337–376). References to it are made by indicating the acronym of Correspondence of Adam Smith (CAS), followed by a comma and the page in question. An anonymous review of this letter was published in volume 56 of the Monthly Review (1777).

29 This point is more deeply developed in Pownall’s earlier book, Principles of Polity (1752). See especially Pownall (1752, 21–3). “For man, whether we consider him in every State and Circumstance of Fortune thro' all Stages of Life, if we look upon him an Infant groveling and crying upon the Ground, thro' Life, to that second more helpless Infacy of old Age, we shall see him in all his Wants and Imperfections incapable of supporting and maintaining this strange implicated Frame of Being, scarcely in one Instance, much less thro' all of them” (ibid., 22).

30 On the division of labour creating such differences in skills which the philosopher’s vanity would assume as natural, see Peart and Levy (2005).

31 Pownall also writes that: “Man’s wants and desires require to be supplied through many channels; his labour will more than supply him in some one or more; but through the limitation and the defined direction of his capacities he cannot actuate them all. This limitation, however, of his capacities, and the extent of his wants, necessarily creates to each man an accumulation of some articles of supply, and a defect of others, and is the original principle of his nature, which creates, by a reciprocation of wants, the necessity of an intercommunion of mutual supplies; this is the forming cause, not only of the division of labour, but the efficient cause of that community, which is the basis and origin of civil government; for, by necessarily creating an inequality of accumulation, and a consequential subordination of classes and orders of men, it puts the community under that form, and that organization of powers, which is government” (CAS, 338–9).

32 See, for example, WN I.v.7, where Smith made changes in order to better explain the idea that equal quantities of labour always have the same value for the labourer. This had been a specific objection made by Pownall (CAS, 344–5). It is worth noting that, among other things, Pownall defended the monopoly of the colony trade with North America and the bounty for the exportation of corn against Smith’s critiques. He also condemned Smith’s suggestion for Great Britain to give up the dominion over the American colonies (CAS, 357-8, 361-6, 368-376). On the relevance of Pownall’s theoretical formulations for the debate about colonization and the British Empire, see Miller (1994).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horizon Europe’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais.