Phew!
I finally finished reading Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Some time ago I resolved to read his book "The Wealth of Nations." As the book that essentially started the field of economics as a discrete area of study, it looms in the background of all the various economic and financial books I've been devouring over the last decade-plus. Like most people, I just kind of vaguely associate Smith with the "invisible hand of the free market" and a patron saint of laissez-faire. More recently, I've read ancillary posts and side-notes noting that the actual source material is more progressive than its general reputation. I've also heard that TWoN builds on Smith's earlier work with TToMS, and reading the earlier book gives a useful prism for understanding the later work. So I decided to read them in chronological order, as it were.
Now that I'm done, I don't necessarily regret having read this book, but I also kind of wish I had just jumped straight into The Wealth of Nations. When I first checked the book out of the library, I quickly flipped through it and saw that it was about 250 pages long. "That's not so bad," I thought. I read it... and kept reading, and reading, as the weeks stretched into a month. I got past page 100, and noticed that I seemed to be much less than halfway through the book. "That's odd," I thought. I took a closer look, and then realized that TToMS was originally published in two volumes, and this particular book resets the page numbers between the two volumes. It strongly reminded me of defeating the final boss in a video game, and then discovering that he has a second health bar. So it's basically a 300 page book, immediately followed by a 250 page book. Much longer than I had planned! And, as something written in the 1700s, the language is a little archaic, and tends to feature wordy, run-on sentences with lots of inner clauses and digressions.
I should also note that my particular edition seems like a public-domain reprinting. It didn't have an introduction, endnotes, or commentary. It did have huge margins, like 50% of each page just big ole' white space. I'm curious if it was intended for use in a college course or something.
It is still a good book, and I feel better for having read it. But I also could have read a lot of other books in the time it took me to get through this one. So, y'know, keep that in mind if you ever consider reading it!
The book starts out really strong, and the beginning kind of reminded me of the more modern book Thinking Fast And Slow. Smith starts off with the observation that we can never really know what another human being is feeling: we only know for sure what we ourselves feel. When we observe another person in pain, we aren't really feeling their pain: we imagine what it would feel like to feel that pain ourselves. If we have previously experienced a similar situation, we can recall what that felt like; even if we haven't personally experienced some event, we imagine ourselves in their shoes. If we see a person bump their head, we might cringe, even though we ourselves don't feel the injury.
Smith was writing when public executions were still common, and he notes that when people see a corpse hanging from the gallows, they will shiver and twist, almost mimicking the movement of the body. Anyways, this makes me think of Daniel Kahneman's technique of having you do an exercise to demonstrate some point that he's making. I immediately recognized in myself these sorts of reactions (puckering up my mouth when someone describes a bad taste from something they ate, crossing my legs when I see a football hit a groin), which pulls me on-board for Smith's points.
I think that some of what Smith writes about is universal, and other observations are unique to his culture, but in this book (especially the first volume) he presents them all as being timeless and unchanging. One example is his writing about how some expressions of sentiment must be muted. Restrained mourning is famously important in English society, while in other cultures people are encouraged to express their grief as largely as they can honestly maintain. I don't necessarily fault him for this: much like, say, Freud at the start of psychology, early practitioners can mistake anecdotes and small sample sizes for revealing universal truths. Any one of us only knows what we know.
As another example, it's clear that Smith's culture is obsessed with honor. Life, property and reputation are all co-equally valuable to him, while I think that for those of us in modern America they would be valued in that order (life over property, property over reputation). The details vary by sub-cultures, but I think we tend to admire people who "rise above" false accusations and can remain cool in the face of adversity; to Smith, though, that would be unmanly, and every gentleman is responsible for challenging every slander sent his way. He mulls over the problem of a man who promised riches to a highwayman in order to escape death: should he deliver on his promise made under duress? For Smith it's a conundrum, but I don't think modern readers would feel obligated to fulfill terms imposed by a crime. Anyways, for Smith the covaluing of life, property and reputation are equally as timeless and true aspects of human nature as the reciprocity of sentiment; for me, with the benefit of intervening centuries, I consider one of those as a culturally-determined set of values, and the other as a truly universal human experience.
At one point Smith goes on a long multi-page description of how, if someone comes into a fortune, they will feel the need to appear modest and humble, but over time they will inevitably pull away from their former station, grow arrogant, and lose their old friends in favor of new hangers-on. By the end of this I was thinking, "It sure feels like you're writing about one particular guy you know here, not an abstract law of human nature."
But despite these quirks, you can see how he's sort of developing a general theory of public ethics. Starting with almost axiomatic and empirical observations about our individual human experiences, he moves on to observing how those almost instinctive responses to witnessing others' emotions then inform our close relations (with friends, family members, lovers and so on), and then broadly builds up from there to how we are conditioned to act as individual members in a society. This kind of analytical framework built up from empirical observations feels very in keeping with other writing of the Enlightenment era.
I was reminded of how wide-ranging peoples' interests and expertises were in that era. Almost everyone I read about is a Renaissance man, doing all sorts of different things in different fields: Isaac Newton discovered the theory of gravity, laws of physics, invented calculus, was the Master of the Royal Mint and instituted the modern monetary system. Benjamin Franklin was a scientist and inventor and publisher and statesman. Adam Smith wrote treatises on moral philosophy and economics. It's a big difference from today, where people are either experts in a single field or tourists in many fields. One of the few counter-examples I can think of is William Bernstein, which I think is part of why I enjoy him so much: even when I'm reading his writing in a particular area, it's coming from the same mind that deeply understands and is interested in seemingly uncorrelated areas.
Shifting gears a bit, I wanted to briefly describe the experience of reading this book:
The language is slightly challenging, but not too bad. Like other books of the era it tends to use very long compound sentences. If my attention drifts, I'll need to go back and re-read a paragraph. But the actual vocabulary is very accessible. The edition I read uses the original spelling, so you see words like "connexion" and "publick", but those are trivially recognizable.
He frequently uses the word "peculiar", which reminds me of other writing from around the same era. As used in this book, I think "peculiar" means "specific" or "particular", as opposed to its more modern meaning of "strange". He also uses "nice", which doesn't have the modern meaning of "friendly" or "pleasant", but more like "precise".
Smith does have some slightly grating tics. He'll frequently insert "if I may say so" or some other kind of throat-clearing phrase in the middle of a sentence. This would feel perfectly natural in verbal speech but in this book it feels like padding. It isn't terrible, just different from the more efficient writing styles I'm used to these days.
This is the type of book that loves categorizing things. I started parodizing it in my mind: "There are two types of things, things that exist, and things that do not exist. Of things that exist, there are three types: things that existed before, things that exist in the present, and things that will exist in the future. Of things that existed before, there are things we know existed, and things we merely surmise existed. Of things that we know existed before, there are living things, previously-living things, and things which never lived." It's the same structure I encounter in lots of modern books; I tend to associate it with Malcolm Gladwell, but you see it frequently. It's very satisfying for my brain, although over the years I've grown slightly wary of too-neat categorizations like this.
I found myself frequently thinking of Naomi Kanakia's somewhat-recent post on her Great Books project. She makes the interesting assertion that reading the Great Books increases the diversity of your reading - yes, they're largely written by white men, but they lived in a different world than we do and (even in translation) they write differently than we do. Jane Austen remains popular today, but no contemporary writer writes prose like Austen does. Anyways, that's something I like about reading "old books" like this one. There's a strangeness, both in the language and in the world that they came from, the things they assumed or took for granted and so never explicitly spell out, but that deeply inform their writing. It's like stepping through a time portal and immersing yourself in the culture of 18th-century educated bourgeois Scotland.
As an example, I was struck by how Smith asserts that, say, there is a universal craving for individual vengeance: if you suffer a harm you wish to see the guilty party specifically punished for that specific harm. I think that the psychological portrait he draws here is much closer to modern America than to modern Europe.
As the book goes on, though, Smith does begin to specifically address differences in cultures, which he calls "fashions and customs". Smith notes that if someone follows the standards of the culture they occupy (such as showing the appropriate amount of gratitude for beneficence received, or the appropriate reaction of resentment for harms suffered), then our evaluation of that person is neutral. We reserve our praise for people who go above and beyond what we consider "normal" given their circumstances, and our condemnation for those who fail to respond appropriately to some good act, or who overreact to some bad occurrence. I think this is a good insight: just "following the rules" isn't virtuous, doing better than the rules is.
Smith also highlights the function of reciprocity in society. If a person is consistently generous to others, we will want to show generosity to them as well, even if we didn't personally receive their earlier generosity. And if someone has been miserly and cruel to others, we will approve of misfortune that befalls them. And if someone only does the absolute minimum to exist in society, we'll just leave them alone.
I was brought up short by this sentence: "Naturally the sensation of pleasure was much less pungent than that of pain." That's one of the key observations of Thinking Fast And Slow! It's interesting that that was a groundshaking observation at publication (establishing the behavioral-economic fundamental that loss aversion is a more powerful force than the reward drive) when it was also at least hundreds of years olds, and that it shook up the field of economics... which was itself founded on Smith's work! And, to be fair, Smith in this passage and many others is explicitly reiterating the work of the Greek Stoics, so really these are millenia-old bits of wisdom that we seem to lose and re-discover over and over again.
One previous reader left some light pencil commentary in the (very wide) margins. The reader seemed to take issue with Smith's argument about the extent of sympathy. In one passage, Smith posits a scenario where an Englishman reads in the newspaper about a terrible earthquake in China that resulted in thousands or even millions of dead. He would exclaim at how terrible it was and might express some sympathy to a nearby companion. And then he would go about his day, not very bothered at all. On the other hand, if he sprained his finger, he would be annoyed and upset about the injury for the entire day. The injury close to home feels much more keen than a distant one. Smith rhetorically asks, would a man be willing to condemn thousands of Chinese to death in order to avoid a sprained finger? He asserts that no, any decent man would be horrified at the thought. Anyways, this anonymous notator seems to feel that Smith is heartless to imagine someone wouldn't have genuine pity for the plight of the Chinese.
Near this point, Smith also asserts, without basis, that for every miserable person in the world there are at least twenty who are happy. Once again, I think he is taking his immediate social circle of educated and fairly wealthy Scots and Englishmen and assuming that they are representative of all of humanity.
Later in the first volume, Smith notes that many people will act in a moral way because they are driven by sentimental feelings: they feel genuine warmth in their heart that leads them to reward kind deeds, and they feel genuine outrage that leads them to punish wicked deeds. Other people may not have those same genuine feelings and don't have a real emotional reaction; and yet, because we as a society judge each other by our reactions, those people will tend to still go through the motions of responding in an appropriate way. And that's a good thing! There's a momentum behind our social mores that doesn't require 100% alignment in order to be effective. This dovetails with an area I've been thinking about recently. Studies say that something like 5% of people are sociopathic. But that doesn't mean that 1 out of every 20 people you meet are just waiting for an opportunity to rob and murder you. Most sociopaths are rational and know that they need to act as if they felt things even if they don't. That's "fake," but it's good, allowing us all to live in a society with empathetic values even if not 100% of the members of the society actually experience the feeling of empathy.
In the second volume, Smith starts writing about fashion and custom. Unlike the first volume, where he seems to universalize his arguments, here he emphasizes the differences between different nationalities, and how local standards and mores can vary. Similar to his original argument regarding sentiment, here he starts on a biological basis, noting that, for example, we all have an idea in our head of what an "average nose" looks like. It's very rare for someone to actually have the "average," so we'll say that some people have large noses, others small, some narrow, others wide, some crooked, and so on; but we're judging in relation to essentially the average of all the noses we've seen.
Likewise, in a given culture, there will be an average expected mode of behavior, and people within that culture will be judged relative to that average. He heavily leans on stereotypes here, which I actually enjoyed; most of his examples are pretty harmless and amusing. A Russian is expected to be severe, an Englishman less so. A French noble would burst into tears in front of the entire court upon being denied a commission, and he is expected to show that emotion; but a native American is expected to be stoic, and even if sentenced to the gallows would not shed a tear. The same gift that would make a Polish nobleman appear too stingy would make a Dutch burgher appear too generous. And within a nation, different professions have their own local standards of conduct. Smith says that, since soldiers constantly serve under the shadow of death, they tend to carry a gaiety and bawdiness with them, which seems appropriate to observers; but we expect police officers to be sober and stern. We expect priests to act like a "typical" priest, and bankers to act like a "typical" banker. But Smith thinks that, in "big things" like key moral choices, decisions should be based on universal principles; fashion and culture are what tend to drive minor, less consequential actions. So, one profession or nationality might shower affection on a child, while another profession or nationality might be more reserved; but everyone would act to save that child if its life was threatened.
Smith holds some fascinating beliefs. One thing that made me sit up straight and cock my head to the side was an assertion along the lines of "The death of a young child is always a terrible tragedy, but nobody cares very much when an old man dies." Smith is taking that as a baseline fact, and in seeking to explain why this is so he goes into how a child has so much potential in front of them, while an old man has already accomplished most of what he will. I don't think that statement is at all true in modern America, though. Obviously, for the parents the death of a child is devastating, but on the whole I think old men are mourned far more in our society than young children. An elderly person has touched so many more lives, left so many more memories behind, leaves a far greater hole when they pass. Smith's analysis makes sense as a proto-Darwinian argument. For things like this, I'm curious if I'm catching a glimpse into a profound difference in attitudes and mores across a distance of 250+ years, or if Smith was just a quirky guy and not necessarily in line with prevailing attitudes of his own day.
I do often find myself thinking of this book as a work of cultural anthropology at least as much as a work of philosophy, both implicitly as a side-effect of Smith's revealed assumptions and prejudices, and explicitly in his categorization and description of the mores of various groups of people in his time. At one point he observes the widening and flattening of society, with dramatic changes occurring from one generation to the next during his life. He notes that the Scottish highland clans had traditionally been very family-oriented, and would have a much stronger sense of loyalty and obligation to even a distant relation who they rarely saw, more than they would feel towards a neighbor they saw every day who shared no blood. But as people increasingly moved to cities and professional identities grew, those newer bonds of society grew stronger, and conversely those clannish family ties weakened, such that now a man might feel more affinity with a business associate than with a distant blood relation. Smith notes that this transformation started earlier in England and was further developed there than in Scotland, and meanwhile in the developing world family units still dominated social and national allegiances.
Smith seems to really love the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers. He spends a great deal of time describing their philosophy in detail and recounting what specific Stoics said and did. He seems to admire their beliefs and bases a great deal of his own system on their observations. This makes me think of modern people doing the same thing with Adam Smith: quoting him, admiring him, building on top of his ideas. That's the nice thing about a canon: you have these conversations that occur across temporal distances of hundreds or thousands of years, finding existing valuable things to use or improve instead of starting from scratch with each new generation or person.
While very wide-ranging, the overall tone of the book feels to me like a letter that an uncle would write to a favored nephew. There's a mixture of encouragement with admonition, seeking to pass along valuable wisdom in the hopes that it will improve their life; he doesn't expect all of it to be acted on but feels like he has to provide all the wisdom he can in the hopes it will do some good. Especially in the second volume, quite a few parts feel like Benjamin Franklin's writing.
While I wasn't super-diligent about this, I did jot down a few passages that I found particularly interesting. (These are based on the page numbers of what I think is this edition).
Page 114:
It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by
nature to that situation for which he was made. All the members of human
society stand in need of each other's assistance, and are likewise
exposed to mutual injuries. [...] All the different members of it are
bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as
it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices. But though
the necessary assistance should not be afforded from such generous and
disinterested motives, though among the different members of the society
there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, though less
happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. [...] Society,
however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt
and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that
mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are
broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as
it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition
of their discordant affection. [...] Beneficence, therefore, is less
essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist,
though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the
prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.
I found that pretty powerful. Like many of these other quotes, and as I noted earlier, I have been struck by how strongly and frequently Smith invokes the importance and value of collective participation in society, over selfish individual pursuits. As America enters some increasingly dark years in 2025, this speaks to concerns about the fraying of the fundamental fabric of our country. I think that in the past, when we've passed through illegal and immoral acts, whether Watergate or Abu Ghraib or Carnivore surveillance or the January 6th insurrection, we have an instinctive reaction towards appeasement, forgiveness, "moving on". But when, time after time, the most powerful villains escape consequences for their actions, participation in the system seems increasingly untenable. This is sort of a variation on Machiavelli. Love and amity are great, but they must grow out of stability, they cannot replace it.
Page 167-8:
Mathematicians and natural philosophers, from their independency upon
publick opinion, have little temptation to form themselves into factions
and cabals, either for the support of their own reputation, or for the
depression of that of their rivals. They are almost always men of the
most amiable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony with one
another, are the friends of one another's reputation, enter into no
intrigue in order to secure the publick applause, but are pleased when
their works are approved of, without being either very much vexed or
very angry when they are neglected.
It is not always the same case with poets, or with those who value
themselves upon what is called fine writing. They are very apt to divide
themselves into a sort of literary factions; each cabal being often
avowedly and almost always secretly, the mortal enemy of the reputation
of every other, and employing all the mean arts of intrigue and solicitation to preoccupy the publick opinion in favour of the works of
its own members, and against those of its enemies and rivals.
Mr. Fontenelle, in writing the lives and characters of the members of
the academy of sciences, a society of mathematicians and natural
philosophers, has frequent opportunities of celebrating the amiable
simplicity of their manners; a quality, he observes, was so universal
among them, as to be characteristical, rather of that whole class of men
of letters, than of any individual. Mr. D'Alembert, in writing the
lives and characters of the members of the French Academy, a society of
poets and fine writers, or of those who are supposed to be such, seems
not to have had such frequent opportunities of making any remark of this
kind, and nowhere pretends to represent this amiable quality as
characteristical of that class of men of letters whom he celebrates.
This passage is very funny to me given what I know about the feuds between Newton and Leibniz, as well as with Robert Hooke and others. I can't say that writers don't feud, but (at least in my niche) I don't know of any quarrels or controversies as serious as those the Royal Society members engaged in. And those dramatic confrontations occurred just a few decades before Smith wrote this book. I don't know of those feuds weren't widely known at the time, if Smith just wasn't aware of them or what.
Trying to make sense of this, I guess that maybe part of what he's getting at is that you do tend to see distinct movements (which you could consider factions) among poets and novelists, like transcendentalism versus naturalism, or modernism versus post-modernism, or visceralism versus magical realism, and so on. In contrast, at least from my layman's understanding, scientists and mathematicians tend to just identify as scientists or mathematicians: there's more of a sense that they're all on the same team and working towards the same goal. But anyways, Smith's specific examples here seem laughable to me.
Page 249:
The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable.
They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural
selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency,
through the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the
thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and
insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their
improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same
distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made
made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among its
inhabitants; and thus, without intending it, without knowing it, advance
the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of
the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly
masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been
left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that
it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they
are in no respect inferiour to those who would seem so much above them.
In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are
nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the
highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
Very, very interesting! There's a ton to unpack here. First, continuing in the vein of being a time-traveling cultural anthropologist, it's interesting to see an assertion that, at least in 1700s Scotland, the rich "consume little more than the poor". That may actually be true when it comes to literal consumption in the sense of "eating" - a rich man won't eat, say, 100 times as much as a poor man. I can imagine a time when a rich man was thought of as someone twice as wealthy as the average man, and not someone with many orders of magnitude more wealth.
This is also an early appearance of the "invisible hand" analogy, which Smith uses a couple of times in this work and will develop further in The Wealth of Nations. This is ultimately an argument about the efficiency of markets, and that individuals pursuing their self-interest will ultimately lead to an efficient allocation of resources. Smith here is writing about what I think is essentially an agricultural society. The lord/master/owner seeks to improve his own income, so he invests in the lands and provides equipment and introduces improved farming techniques. The thousands of laborers he employs are poorer than he, but they all share in the increased productivity.
The last sentence gives me serious pause. Did Smith really believe that a poor man was just as happy as a rich man? Were poor people in the 1700s just as happy as rich people? (Obviously, money can't buy happiness, but at the same time, we have ample empirical studies showing a strong correlation between income and happiness, up through about $125k/year or so.)
And it seems ridiculous to say that a beggar with no possessions "possesses that security" which kings are fighting for. A beggar has no security! But, much as with "consumption" in the start of this passage, this does make sense if you take "security" and "fighting" literally. The role of a king is to defend the realm, to protect its inhabitants against the ravages of invading armies; so in that literal and narrow respect, yes, the beggar is safe from marauding Frenchmen thanks to the efforts of the king.
I remind myself that Smith wrote this immediately before the start of the Industrial Revolution. I want to go back and cross-reference this with Piketty, I believe that this is right around the time where inequality started soaring.
Page 260-261:
There is many an honest Englishman, who, in his private station,
would be more seriously disturbed by the loss of a guinea, than by the
national loss of Minorca, who yet, had it been in his power to defend
that fortress, would have sacrificed his life a thousand times, rather
than, through his fault, have let it fall into the hands of the enemy.
[...] In these and in all other cases of this kind, our admiration is
not so much founded upon the utility, as upon the unexpected, and on that
account the great, the noble, and exalted propriety of such actions.
The utility, when we come to view it, bestows upon them, undoubtedly, a
new beauty, and upon that account still further recommends them to our
approbation.
[...] If it was possible, therefore, that a person should
grow up to manhood without any communication with society, his own
actions might, notwithstanding, be agreeable or disagreeable to him on
account of their tendency to his happiness or disadvantage. He might
perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance, and good
conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour. [...] Even though
they should occur to him, they would by no means have the same effect
upon him, antecedent to his connexion with society, which they would
have in consequence of that connexion. He would not be cast down with
inward shame at the thought of this deformity; nor would he be elevated
with secret triumph of mind from the consciousness of the contrary
beauty.
The guinea-versus-Minorca duality mirrors the sprained-finger-versus-thousands-of-dead-Chinese exercise from before. Smith notices how both things can be true: we feel a more genuine and profound reaction to our personal experiences than to grander events; and yet we will act to prioritize those grander outcomes over our smaller personal ones. Smith sees this as coming out of our connection with society. We are conditioned to seek the approval of others, which can often cause us to sacrifice our narrow self-interest and act for the good of society as a whole.
Page 262:
All such sentiments suppose the idea of some other being, who is the
natural judge of the person who feels them; and it is only by sympathy
with the decisions of this arbiter of his conduct, that he can conceive,
either the triumph of self-applause, or the shame of self-condemnation.
This closes out the first volume with a pretty clear and succinct statement of Smith's theory of moral sentiment. All that we really know is what we experience ourselves; when we witness the experiences of others, we instinctively imagine what it would feel like for us to experience those events ourselves. We seek to be kind to others because we know how good it feels when others are kind to us; we punish cruelty because we sympathize with the victims of that cruelty, not wishing cruel acts performed on ourselves or others. And ultimately we conduct ourselves in our family, city, church, profession, social class and nation based on the standards we observe. We become aware of how others perceive us, and seek to act in a way that others approve of.
The page numbers reset here! Moving on to volume 2, page 35:
The violence and injustice of great conquerours are often regarded with
foolish wonder and admiration; those of petty thieves, robbers, and
murderers, with contempt, hatred, and even horrour, upon all occasions.
The former, though they are a hundred times more mischievous and
destructive, yet when successful, they often pass for deeds of the most
heroick magnanimity. The latter are always viewed with hatred and
aversion, as the follies, as well as the crimes, of the lowest and most
worthless of mankind. The injustice of the former is certainly, at
least, as great as that of the latter; but the folly and imprudence are
not near so great. A wicked and worthless man of parts often goes
through the world with much more credit than he deserves. A wicked and
worthless fool appears always, of all mortals, the most hateful, as well
as the most contemptible.
This is something I think about a lot. The Sackler family will never see a day in jail for the millions of people they killed, while a street dealer may face life in prison for a vastly smaller crime. People live in fear of petty robbers smashing a window, while ignoring the CEOs who drain tens of thousands of dollars from us with their monopolies, price fixing, deceptive advertising and usurious financing. Nations who launch immoral wars are immortalized in song, violent drunks are sneered at in disgust. This has always been the case, even though it is profoundly unjust.
Page 62:
The wise and virtuous man is, at all times, willing that his own private
interest should be sacrificed to the publick interest of his own
particular order or society. He is, at all times, willing, too, that the
interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater
interest of the state or sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate
part; he should, therefore, be equally willing that all those inferiour
interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe,
to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent
beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and
director. [...] He must consider all the misfortunes which may befall
himself, his friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for the
prosperity of the universe, and, therefore, as what he ought, not only
to submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he had known
all the connexions and dependencies of things, ought sincerely and
devoutly to have wished for.
This seems to be arguing the opposite of the "invisible hand" passage above: here, instead of saying that a rich person pursuing their own greedy interests results in inadvertent social benefits, he is saying that a "wise and virtuous" man should sacrifice their interests for the greater good of society. Maybe the earlier passage is more descriptive and this one more proscriptive: how most people act versus how they should act. This passage segues into a kind of fatalism near the end: I read it as essentially saying that God is ultimately in charge and wants what's best for us, so we should be happy with whatever happens, even if it seems bad in the moment. Whatever is happening is the right thing for the right reason, even if we don't understand why. Which is interesting, and also not an argument I would have expected from the Wealth Of Nations guy!
Page 117:
Nature, too, has taught us, that as the prosperity of two was preferable
to that of one, that of many, or of all, must be infinitely more so.
That we ourselves were but one, and that consequently wherever our
prosperity was inconsistent with that, either of the whole, or of any
considerable part of the whole, it ought, even in our own choice, to
yield to what was so vastly preferable.
Again, this seems like a more explicitly collectivist sentiment. He isn't describing doing what's best for you and having it happen to work out well for society as a whole, but deliberately choosing actions that will create the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Page 191:
Against every account of the principle of approbation, which makes it
depend upon a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every other, I would
object, that it is strange that this sentiment, which Providence
undoubtedly intended to be the governing principle of human nature,
should hitherto have been so little taken notice of, as not to have got a
name in any language. The word moral sense is of very late formation,
and cannot yet be considered as making part of the English tongue. The
word approbation has but within these few years been appropriated to
denote peculiarly any thing of this kind. In propriety of language we
approve of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, of the form of a
building, of the contrivance of the machine, of the flavour of a dish of
meat. The word conscience does not immediately denote any moral faculty
by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience supposes, indeed, the
existence of some such faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness
of having acted agreeably or contrary to its direction. When love,
hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, with so many other passions
which are all supposed to be the subjects of this principle, have made
themselves considerable enough to get titles to know them by, is it not
surprising that the sovereign of them all should hitherto have been so
little heeded, that, a few philosophers excepted, nobody has yet thought
it worth while to bestow a name upon it?
It was interesting to encounter this near the end of the book, as I'd been thinking about words and language during much of my reading. I must say that the word "approbation" doesn't seem to have taken off like Smith thought it would: it's still a valid word today, but doesn't occupy the cornerstone position he believes it deserves. It's really interesting to see him consider his then-contemporary vocabulary options, trying to map concepts onto available words. Obviously language is a living thing, English even more than most. Words that were new to him may seem archaic to us now, and other words ("nice", "peculiar") have shifted their meanings over the centuries. Even without translating through another language, there is a slightly alien experience of speaking to someone who lived centuries ago.
As I said: Phew!
I'm glad to have read this book. I still intend to move on to The Wealth of Nations, but I will be taking a break before doing so! The Theory of Moral Sentiments took a lot of effort to read, and I wouldn't have stuck with it if I wasn't getting so much out of it. The core philosophical argument he's making is striking and compelling, noting an almost biological reflex we have and extrapolating from that to how we form societies based on mutual respect. It's also a trip into a time machine, and useful both for catching a glimpse of the British world in the pre-dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and more broadly for seeing how many things have changed in the intervening centuries: our language, our culture, our economy, many (but not all) of our mores and values. There are glimpses of the Adam Smith of libertarian fame, but far more of an unrecognizable one, who believes in sacrificing individual fortunes in favor of the greater good. As I grow older, I increasingly recognize that the complex picture is almost always more true than the simple one, and I'm enjoying this complex picture of Adam Smith that's coming into focus for me.
