IMAGINING OTHER
How Enlightened was the
Enlightenment?
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Imagining Other Index page
Week 6 Human Nature in Adam Smith
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Extracts from Adam Smith:
From The Wealth of Nations:
WN 1 As
every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his
capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry
that its produce may be of greatest value; every individual necessarily labours
to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally,
indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he
is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to foreign industry, he
intends only his own security; and by directing that industry insuch a manner
as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and
he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an
end which was no part of his intention.
Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By
pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more
effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much
good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an
affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need
be employed in dissuading them from it. [Wealth of Nations (1776) IV ii]
From the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS):
TMS 1. “How selfish soever man may be supposed,
there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the
fortune of others and render their happiness necessary unto him, though he
derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity
or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others when we
either see it or are made to conceive it in a lively manner… By the imagination
we place ourselves in his situation… we enter, as it were, into his body and
become in some measure the same person with him.” (Opening words of TMS)
TMS 2. Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to
manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own species,
he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his
own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of
the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these are objects which he cannot
easily see... and with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can
present them to his view. Bring him into
society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted
before. [from Raphael, D.D.: Adam Smith,
TMS 2b. The sentiment or affection of the heart from which any action
proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice must ultimately depend, may
be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations; first
in relation to the cause which excites it, or the motive which gives occasion
to it; and secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or the effect
which it tends to produce... In the
suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or disproportion which the
affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, consists the
propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent
action... in the beneficial or hurtful nature of the effects which the
affection aims at, or tends to produce, consists the merit or demerit of the
action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward, or is deserving of
punishment. [Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1759) I i (iii)]
TMS 3. We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour, and
endeavour to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only looking-glass by which we
can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety
of our own conduct. [TMS I iii (iii) (?)]
TMS 4. Self-preservation and the propagation of the species, are the
great ends which Nature seems to have proposed in the formation of all
animals... [TMS II i (v)]. Nature,
indeed, seems to have happily adjusted our sentiments of approbation and
disapprobation, to the conveniency both of the individual and of the
society… [TMS IV ii]
TMS 5. [The perfection of human nature is] to feel much for others
and little for ourselves... to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our
benevolent affections... As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the
great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love
ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or, what comes to the same thing, as
our neighbour is found capable of loving us.
[TMS I i (v)]
TMS 6. Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative
virtue, and only hinders us from harming our neighbour. The man who barely
abstains from violating either the person or the estate, or the reputation, of
his neighbours, has surely little positive merit. [TMS II ii (v)]
TMS 7. This
disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to
despise or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though
necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks in the
order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of
the corruption or our moral sentiments. [TMS I iii (iii)]
TMS 8. In
what constitutes the real happiness of life, [the poor and obscure] are in no
respect inferior 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. [TMS IV]
TMS 9. And it is
well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which arouses and keeps
in continual motion the industry of mankind...
It is to no purpose that the proud and
unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the
wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that
grows upon the. The homely and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the
belly, was never more fully verified than with regard to him. The capacity of his stomach bears no
proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than that
of the meanest peasant. The rest he is
obliged to distribute among
those who prepare [....] that little which he himself makes use of, among those
who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed [....] all of whom
thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life,
which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce of the soil maintains at all
times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of
maintaining. The rich ... consume little
more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity,
though they mean only their own conveniency, though 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 necessarily led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution
of the necessaries of life which would have been made, had the earth been
divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without
intending it, without knowing it, advance the interests of society and afford means to the
multiplication of the species. [TMS IV]