Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education and the Moral Sentiments
Yale University Press (September 24, 2013). 360 Pages. ISBN-10: 0300162537 ISBN-13: 978-0300162530
Some see contemporary liberal thought as necessarily founded on the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In contrast, author Jack Russell Weinstein suggests that Scotsman Adam Smith (1723–1790) can provide the original guiding principles of liberalism, especially with his account of the individual’s position and purpose in a community. A pioneer of modern economics and a major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith, Weinstein believes, should be recognized for an account of pluralism that prefigures the theories of cultural diversity that have greatly influenced twentieth‑ and twenty‑first‑century social politics.
In his thought‑provoking study, Weinstein offers an interpretive methodology for reading and understanding Smith’s writings, particularly The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the central work in the philosopher’s corpus. Considering Smith’s second major work, The Wealth of Nations, as an elaboration of the moral philosophy set forth in the previous volume, Weinstein cogently argues against the libertarian interpretation of Smith’s words. In doing so, he connects Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment to contemporary critical thinking theory and ultimately demonstrates that his influential ideas, both moral and economic, can form a basis for modern liberalism.
In his thought‑provoking study, Weinstein offers an interpretive methodology for reading and understanding Smith’s writings, particularly The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the central work in the philosopher’s corpus. Considering Smith’s second major work, The Wealth of Nations, as an elaboration of the moral philosophy set forth in the previous volume, Weinstein cogently argues against the libertarian interpretation of Smith’s words. In doing so, he connects Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment to contemporary critical thinking theory and ultimately demonstrates that his influential ideas, both moral and economic, can form a basis for modern liberalism.
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"...an original and thought-provoking look at one of the seminal figures in modern thought. At a time when scholars are inundated with a plethora of monographs, Weinstein’s book is one of those which stand out, and that in itself is a remarkable achievement." -- Nathaniel Wolloch, Cosmos & Taxis, symposium on Adam Smith's Pluralism.
"Weinstein is by no means the first … to have argued for Smith’s economic theorising in the Wealth of Nations to be read through the lens of Smith’s wider moral and social philosophy contained in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. However, few others have connected the dots as well as Weinstein …. His book is to be commended to all with a serious interest in liberty and in the social and political conditions needed for it to flourish."
-- David Conway, The Library of Law and Liberty.
"Few, if any, sources probe Smith's nuanced and integrated approach to a social system with the depth of this book....Smith enthusiasts will find [it] indispensable." -- J. Halteman, Choice Reviews.
"Fascinating…an invigorating reorientation of liberal theory. Weinstein’s rescue…[of] Smith's moral philosophy from its economically obsessed captors will prove an extraordinary blessing for conservative and liberal alike.” -- David J. Davis, The American Conservative.
"Remarkable….Lays the groundwork for a multivolume project using Smith to anchor a 'twenty-first-century liberalism'.” -- John Paul Rollert, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“[Weinstein’s] interpretation of Adam Smith is original in challenging both standard philosophical and economic interpretations, producing a lucid and interesting narrative.”--J. Patrick Raines, Jack C. Massey Dean of the College of Business Administration, Belmont University.
"By a patient and clear analysis of the explicit and implicit elements of Smith’s notion of the ‘impartial spectator’, including the persuasive, reasoned, educative and imaginative nature of the observational processes involved in moral and other judgments, JRW’s innovative inquiry has: repositioned the relationship between all of Smith’s major works; imaginatively challenged the ‘Adam Smith problem’; emphasized Smith’s sustained educational concerns; and, by showing the ‘pluralism’ inherent in Smith’s work, restored Smith to the position of enduring moral philosopher through the specification of internal and consistent themes across Smith’s works and by illustrating significant pre-figured conceptual links to modern notions of liberalism/pluralism."--Willie Henderson, Emeritus Professor, University of Birmingham UK, International Associate of the Alworth Institute, University of Minnesota Duluth.
Introduction (excerpt)
When Adam Smith was three years old he was kidnapped by Gypsies. As a biographical event this is interesting. As a metaphor it is synecdochic. In this particular allegory the past holds the future hostage, the emotional takes control of the rational, the capitalist gets commodified, and the thief violates fair exchange.
There is no way to know how much truth there is to the story. There are several accounts of young Adam’s recovery and two traditions regarding where the kidnapping took place. More insidiously, stigmatization of the Roma permeated Europe. The myth of child stealing was pervasive, and anti-Rom sentiment drove nations and individuals to despicable acts. For example, during the reign of Henry VII it became a capital offence to be a Rom. In the Netherlands and elsewhere it became fashionable to organize Gypsy hunts. And, “in Hungary, Germany, Spain, and England, Gypsy children as young as 2 or 4 were taken by force and given to non-Gypsies to rear.” All of this is exacerbated by the fact that Great Britain had no laws outlawing child theft before 1814, and Roma were a good scapegoat to cover more commercial motivations. Smith’s abduction fits all these narratives well.
My interest in Adam Smith’s alleged kidnapping lies not in what actually happened but in what it symbolizes. However unfair it may be, the Roma came to represent a pagan culture of mysterious sexuality, dishonorable practices, and uncontrolled emotion. They were perceived as untrustworthy and uncivilized, nomadic and tribal, a remnant of a time long past. Their image represented what Europe wanted not to be and what it was most afraid of acknowledging. As a tale about a philosopher whose central moral prescription involves entering into the perspective of those about whom one knows little, it is unfortunate that this popular legend is likely influenced by prejudice and ignorance. However, given Smith’s theory of the imagined impartial spectator—his theory of conscience describing how moral actors create more objective alter egos—it is certainly appropriate that the story associates the other with that which is within ourselves.
Smith’s work is widely misunderstood. His theories are said to justify purely unfettered markets, libertarian governments, interactions solely for the purpose of satisfaction, and atomistic cosmopolitanism. Much that the Roma were supposed to be—emotional, group-centered, and traditional—was surgically removed from the Adam Smith of popular culture and superficial scholarship. These accounts all miss the point. In an age of reason and enlightenment, Smith offered a social theory that glorified the role of emotion. Amidst his theory of market exchange, Smith issued a clarion call for personal relationships. While his fellow philosophers sought access to the universal, Smith developed methods to enter into the particular. Very little of this is acknowledged by anyone but the Smith scholar.
This book is in part about the Smith that so often gets forgotten: the systematic philosopher whose first loyalties were to his theory of moral sentiments; the bachelor-teacher who had a love for young learners and a lifelong commitment to discovering how human behavior is governed by natural laws; the devoted fellow of the Scottish Enlightenment who was cautious about making local political claims but who, paradoxically, was fearless enough to engage, in his words, in a “very violent attack . . . upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain” (Corr. 208).
METHODOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH
In this book I argue that Smith presents an account of pluralism that prefigures our more modern theories of diversity; I do so by prioritizing The Theory of Moral Sentiments over his other work. In the current context, prioritize means that one ought to read TMS as the first chapter in a larger work, as if it contains the “legend” to Smith’s systematic map. This is a theory of reading, an interpretive methodology before it is a statement of conceptual priority. It argues that The Wealth of Nations ought to be considered an elaboration of Smith’s moral philosophy and that TMS is not simply a prolegomena to a political economy. I do not mean to suggest that WN cannot stand alone in certain respects. It is a powerful work in philosophy, history, and economics; many of its conclusions require no more elaboration than what is contained within its volumes. However, in terms of understanding Smith’s pluralism and insofar as WN is a component of Smith’s general system, its metaphors, methods, approach, and categories should not trump TMS. Smith’s moral psychology is not a system of economics, but his account of universal opulence and natural liberty are themselves components of a much more elaborate moral system.
My interpretation emphasizes that there is enough continuity between Smith’s books, lecture notes, essays, and fragments to see how each of these fits with the others. Of course, his two published books retain authority over the rest, and the later editions trump the earlier ones—when there is a contradiction between the texts, I give priority to the works Smith himself endorsed. But this is surprisingly rare, and when his other writing is useful, I call upon it as evidence.
Because I assume the coherence of Smith’s project, I reject the interpretive difficulty known as the Adam Smith Problem. The original formulation, a nineteenth-century pseudo-problem, argues against the compatibility of TMS and WN, suggesting that the former is built upon altruism while the latter is built on self-interest. This challenge is prima facie incoherent: sympathy is not altruism, and Smith never asserts that self-interest governs every human action. Even when his own index suggests that he might propose such a principle—Smith includes an entry that reads “Self-love the governing principle in the intercourse of human society” (WN, Index of Subjects)—he points only to the famous but complicated discussion referencing the butcher and the baker that includes the sentence, “But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only” (WN I.ii.2, emphasis added). Here, Smith tells us that we cannot expect only benevolence from others, but some benevolence is certainly implied. As we shall see, Smith qualifies his call for the recognition of self-interest with the realization that other motives—multiple motives—complement self-love. He derives this position from rejecting some parts of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees and tempering others, or so I argue.
Smith himself would likely find the Adam Smith Problem baffling. He wrote WN while he revised TMS, and he advertised the later book in many editions of TMS. He never offered any suggestion in either published writings or personal correspondences that one might contradict the other. In fact, although large sections of text were added to later editions of TMS, only a relatively small amount of text was ever removed. He also continued to advertise WN and his other works at TMS VII.vi.37, even when he himself acknowledges that he had “very little expectation” of completing his proposed system (TMS advertisement). His announcement seems compelling evidence that Smith saw the works as interrelated. . .
Excerpt (c) 2013, Jack Russell Weinstein. Adam Smith's Pluralism, pp. 1-3. (Footnoted citations removed from text for formatting reasons.)
There is no way to know how much truth there is to the story. There are several accounts of young Adam’s recovery and two traditions regarding where the kidnapping took place. More insidiously, stigmatization of the Roma permeated Europe. The myth of child stealing was pervasive, and anti-Rom sentiment drove nations and individuals to despicable acts. For example, during the reign of Henry VII it became a capital offence to be a Rom. In the Netherlands and elsewhere it became fashionable to organize Gypsy hunts. And, “in Hungary, Germany, Spain, and England, Gypsy children as young as 2 or 4 were taken by force and given to non-Gypsies to rear.” All of this is exacerbated by the fact that Great Britain had no laws outlawing child theft before 1814, and Roma were a good scapegoat to cover more commercial motivations. Smith’s abduction fits all these narratives well.
My interest in Adam Smith’s alleged kidnapping lies not in what actually happened but in what it symbolizes. However unfair it may be, the Roma came to represent a pagan culture of mysterious sexuality, dishonorable practices, and uncontrolled emotion. They were perceived as untrustworthy and uncivilized, nomadic and tribal, a remnant of a time long past. Their image represented what Europe wanted not to be and what it was most afraid of acknowledging. As a tale about a philosopher whose central moral prescription involves entering into the perspective of those about whom one knows little, it is unfortunate that this popular legend is likely influenced by prejudice and ignorance. However, given Smith’s theory of the imagined impartial spectator—his theory of conscience describing how moral actors create more objective alter egos—it is certainly appropriate that the story associates the other with that which is within ourselves.
Smith’s work is widely misunderstood. His theories are said to justify purely unfettered markets, libertarian governments, interactions solely for the purpose of satisfaction, and atomistic cosmopolitanism. Much that the Roma were supposed to be—emotional, group-centered, and traditional—was surgically removed from the Adam Smith of popular culture and superficial scholarship. These accounts all miss the point. In an age of reason and enlightenment, Smith offered a social theory that glorified the role of emotion. Amidst his theory of market exchange, Smith issued a clarion call for personal relationships. While his fellow philosophers sought access to the universal, Smith developed methods to enter into the particular. Very little of this is acknowledged by anyone but the Smith scholar.
This book is in part about the Smith that so often gets forgotten: the systematic philosopher whose first loyalties were to his theory of moral sentiments; the bachelor-teacher who had a love for young learners and a lifelong commitment to discovering how human behavior is governed by natural laws; the devoted fellow of the Scottish Enlightenment who was cautious about making local political claims but who, paradoxically, was fearless enough to engage, in his words, in a “very violent attack . . . upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain” (Corr. 208).
METHODOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH
In this book I argue that Smith presents an account of pluralism that prefigures our more modern theories of diversity; I do so by prioritizing The Theory of Moral Sentiments over his other work. In the current context, prioritize means that one ought to read TMS as the first chapter in a larger work, as if it contains the “legend” to Smith’s systematic map. This is a theory of reading, an interpretive methodology before it is a statement of conceptual priority. It argues that The Wealth of Nations ought to be considered an elaboration of Smith’s moral philosophy and that TMS is not simply a prolegomena to a political economy. I do not mean to suggest that WN cannot stand alone in certain respects. It is a powerful work in philosophy, history, and economics; many of its conclusions require no more elaboration than what is contained within its volumes. However, in terms of understanding Smith’s pluralism and insofar as WN is a component of Smith’s general system, its metaphors, methods, approach, and categories should not trump TMS. Smith’s moral psychology is not a system of economics, but his account of universal opulence and natural liberty are themselves components of a much more elaborate moral system.
My interpretation emphasizes that there is enough continuity between Smith’s books, lecture notes, essays, and fragments to see how each of these fits with the others. Of course, his two published books retain authority over the rest, and the later editions trump the earlier ones—when there is a contradiction between the texts, I give priority to the works Smith himself endorsed. But this is surprisingly rare, and when his other writing is useful, I call upon it as evidence.
Because I assume the coherence of Smith’s project, I reject the interpretive difficulty known as the Adam Smith Problem. The original formulation, a nineteenth-century pseudo-problem, argues against the compatibility of TMS and WN, suggesting that the former is built upon altruism while the latter is built on self-interest. This challenge is prima facie incoherent: sympathy is not altruism, and Smith never asserts that self-interest governs every human action. Even when his own index suggests that he might propose such a principle—Smith includes an entry that reads “Self-love the governing principle in the intercourse of human society” (WN, Index of Subjects)—he points only to the famous but complicated discussion referencing the butcher and the baker that includes the sentence, “But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only” (WN I.ii.2, emphasis added). Here, Smith tells us that we cannot expect only benevolence from others, but some benevolence is certainly implied. As we shall see, Smith qualifies his call for the recognition of self-interest with the realization that other motives—multiple motives—complement self-love. He derives this position from rejecting some parts of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees and tempering others, or so I argue.
Smith himself would likely find the Adam Smith Problem baffling. He wrote WN while he revised TMS, and he advertised the later book in many editions of TMS. He never offered any suggestion in either published writings or personal correspondences that one might contradict the other. In fact, although large sections of text were added to later editions of TMS, only a relatively small amount of text was ever removed. He also continued to advertise WN and his other works at TMS VII.vi.37, even when he himself acknowledges that he had “very little expectation” of completing his proposed system (TMS advertisement). His announcement seems compelling evidence that Smith saw the works as interrelated. . .
Excerpt (c) 2013, Jack Russell Weinstein. Adam Smith's Pluralism, pp. 1-3. (Footnoted citations removed from text for formatting reasons.)
