The Theory of Moral Sentiments - EconTalk Podcast series

This posting and the subsequent ones dealing with the EconTalk podcast of TMS is to prepare for a Liberty Fund colloqia in July on Adam Smith.

This posting deals with the introduction to TMS and the first podcast.

Introduction to Raphael edition of TMS - pages 1 -52

1. Influence of Stoic philosophy

2. 3 virtues of prudence, beneficence and self command

3. Self command permeates all virtue (great precept of nature)

4. Stoicism permeated range of ethics and social science

5. View nature as a cosmic harmony - informs metaphor of invisible hand - the Stoic idea of harmonious system

6. Impartial (indifferent) spectator - as related to conscience

7. Natural harmony and natural liberty

8. Role of prudence and how prudence works with self command to reinforce moral/ethical behavior

9. Sympathy or fellow feeling

10. Judge the agent's motive not the action

11. Ethics - criterion for determining right action - impartial spectator (preferred by Smith) and utility

12. TMS and WN compliment each other - TMS - argument to understand sympathy's role in moral judgment. WN deals with motives for action - which include self love.

From the first podcast:

"Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) first published in 1759, revised, final edition 1790; spanned publication of Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. Impression of TMS: richer version of Wealth of Nations. Caricature of Adam Smith is focus on greed and self-interest. By contrast, TMS focuses on a richer set of motivations: fame, glory, guilt, reputation, self-esteem. Is that a good characterization? Moral dimensions of our conduct. Sometimes people feel that there is a tension between the two books. Smith trying to explore moral considerations and understandings, but also engaging in a project to advance them, improve them. Not just social psychology or moral psychology; agenda driven, part of enlightenment movement, sees developments of all kinds around him. Smith sees that he needs to explore natural jurisprudence, includes political economy--what the laws ought to be, proper law, desirable law as opposed to the positive law of each nation. Larger project: exploring the moral sentiments, wisdom, virtue."


Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith

"In his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), he criticizes several philosophical theories of morality for not attending properly to the way moral sentiments are actually experienced. And in both TMS and WN he condemns those entranced by "the love of system," those who want to impose their own vision of how the human world should work on the people who actually live in that world. Smith's account of moral and political cognition is strikingly egalitarian: experts know less than they claim to know, and ordinary people know more than they seem to know, about what will best promote the human good.

This egalitarian view of human cognition provides the essential premise for Smith's arguments against government interference with the economy. Smith's teacher Hutcheson, Smith's rival James Steuart, and many other political economists, did not share Smith's confidence in ordinary people's judgment, and therefore looked to a government where the wise would guide investment, and control the labor- and consumption-choices of the poor. For Smith, by contrast, the decisions made by individuals in their own local situations—all individuals, even the poor and uneducated people regarded with so much disdain by Smith's contemporaries—will almost always more effectively promote the public good than any plan aimed directly at that good. And the decisions individuals make about their own moral problems will also normally be at least as wise as any they would come to if they were guided, morally, by their political leaders.

First, if Smith believes that good philosophical and scientific work should be rooted in common sense, then we should not expect him to approve of an economic science, like the one we have today, carried on in a highly abstract and technical jargon. Nor is his own work written that way. WN was admired in its day for its great clarity, and for its avoidance of detailed calculations in favor of historical narrative.

Second, a moral philosophy rooted in common sense is unlikely to endorse a counter-intuitive view of human nature, and Smith in fact combats the counter-intuitive views of his predecessors and colleagues. This is one reason why he rejects the notion that human beings are thoroughly selfish, put about by Hobbes and Mandeville. But for the same reason he rejects the idea that human beings ever were or ever will be capable of the passionate altruism or patriotism on which utopian thinkers pinned their hopes (Thomas More before Smith; Rousseauvians in his time; Marxists later on).

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Smith's distrust of the ability of "systems"—whether philosophical, religious, or political—to improve human beings goes with a belief that what really provides us with moral education are the humble institutions of everyday social interaction, including the market. The foundation of all virtue for Smith is "self-command," the ability to control our feelings, to restrain our passion for our own interests and to enhance our feelings for others. But we achieve self-command only after the disapproval of others has led us to develop a habit of dampening our self-love. The first great "school of self-command," says Smith, is the company of our playfellows, who refuse to indulge us the way our parents do; when we are adult, the major arena in which we need constantly to attend to the interests of others, and restrain our self-absorption, is the market."