The dissertation traces the development of what I call “the problem of partiality” through the work of certain key figures in the British Moralist tradition: John Locke, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, John Gay, David Hume, Joseph Butler, and Adam Smith. On the one hand, we are committed to impartiality as a constitutive norm of moral judgment and conduct. On the other hand, we are committed to the idea that it is permissible, (...) or even obligatory, to expend disproportionate resources promoting the good of our loved ones over the good of strangers. However, these two commitments conflict with one another. This problem challenges us to provide an account of the scope and limits of reasonable partiality that does justice to both commitments. I argue that confronting this tension is a central project of early modern ethics. I offer a rereading of the British Moralist tradition, centered on debates about partiality, and thereby shift discussion of the tradition away from concerns about meta-ethics and moral epistemology, to issues of practical ethics. The topic of partiality remains central in contemporary ethics, as is evident in ongoing debates about the place of empathy in moral judgment, and the role of love in shaping our moral commitments. Though the aim of the dissertation is not to settle questions about the scope and limits of reasonable partiality, the focus here remains fixed on how the concept of partiality was problematized in our ethical thought, and how it informs our discussions in normative ethics and moral psychology. Alongside building a bridge between early modern scholarship and recent work in ethics, the dissertation casts light on two understudied figures in the British Moralist tradition – Cockburn and Gay – who contributed greatly to debates about partiality. By examining their contributions, I reconsider their place in the history of modern ethics and therefore provide a more contextualized account of philosophical thought in the period. (shrink)

I build on Adam Smith’s account of the impartial spectator in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in order to offer a modest ideal observer theory of moral judgment that is adequate in the following sense: the account specifies the hypothetical conditions that guarantee the authoritativeness of an agent’s (or agents’) responses in constituting the standard in question, and, if an actual agent or an actual community of agents are not under those conditions, their responses are not authoritative in setting this (...) standard. However, in the account that I provide, the hypothetical conditions can themselves be constructed from the psychology and interactions of actual human beings. In other words, facts about the morally appropriate and inappropriate are determined from hypothetical conditions that––while agents in a given society might have yet to attain them––can be constructed from those agents’ shared experiences. Thus, the account offers both an attainable standard of moral judgment and a standard that can transcend the biases of the society which gave rise to it. I also defend the account against three challenges: (a) ideal observer theories do not offer the right kind of motivation to act on the verdicts of the ideal observer; (b) ideal observer theories cannot explain why the idealization in question is well-motivated and not objectionably ad hoc; (c) the standard used in ideal observer theories cannot be defended upon further reflection, because we would need a non-arbitrary, second-order standard to govern our reflection on the first-order standard of moral judgment. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

As founder of modern political economics and prominent theorist of the commercial society, Adam Smith’s importance is universally recognized. Little, however, has been done so far to develop Adam Smith’s virtue ethics in the context of modern business, characterized by digitalization. This article aims to rediscover Adam Smith’s virtue of prudence and its relevance for the “e-commercial society”: It presents a framework that considers the central place of prudence in the relationship between a prosperous e-commercial system and societal flourishing. In (...) Smith’s view of the commercial society, prudence enables people to develop habits of character related to industriousness, genuineness, spirit of sacrifice, and self-command, which help in the conduct of a prosperous business activity. This article translates Smith’s virtue of prudence into a language typical of consumers in the current e-commerce scenario, considering their development as persons and the contribution of their activities to the good of society. (shrink)

This article analyzes the relationship between competition and justice in Adam Smith in order to determine to what extent competition can promote and undermine justice. I examine how competition features in two basic motivations for human action, “the propensity to truck barter and exchange,” and “the desire of bettering our condition.” Both can be traced back to the desire for recognition, but they operate in very different ways. The former manifests itself in social cooperation, chiefly commercial exchange and the division (...) of labor, and while it can take a competitive form, competitive success produces benefits for everyone. In contrast, the latter may manifest itself in win‐lose social competition. Commercial society harnesses both motivations, and both have negative as well as positive effects. However, while Smith explicitly addresses the negative effects of excessive specialization in the division of labor, it is less clear how he thinks the negative effects of social competition can be addressed. I argue that competition can undermine justice when (i) it pits people against each other and (ii) leads to psychological corruption. I conclude with some reflections on what a focus on competition adds to our understanding of Smith's work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper has three main aims. First, to make good on recent suggestions that Adam Smith offers a genealogy of the origins of religious belief. This is done by offering a systematic reconstruction of his account of religion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, demonstrating that Smith there offers a naturalised account of religious belief, whilst studiously avoiding committing himself to the truth of any such belief. Second, I seek to bring out that Smith was ultimately less interested in (...) the truth of religious beliefs than in evaluating and understanding the place of religion in healthy ethical living. Third, I put Smith’s account into contrast with the more famous treatment offered by Nietzsche (as well as Bernard Williams’s later, Nietzschean, reflections), and suggest that Smith offers us the more plausible picture of both religion and morality, a finding of both historical and contemporary philosophical import. (shrink)

John Rawls raises three challenges – to which one can add a fourth challenge – to an impartial spectator account: (a) the impartial spectator is a utility-maximizing device that does not take seriously the distinction between persons; (b) the account does not guarantee that the principles of justice will be derived from it; (c) the notion of impartiality in the account is the wrong one, since it does not define impartiality from the standpoint of the litigants themselves; (d) the account (...) would offer a comprehensive, rather than a political, form of liberalism. The narrow aim of the article is to demonstrate that Adam Smith's impartial spectator account can rise to Rawls's challenges. The broader aim is to demonstrate that the impartial spectator account offers the basis for a novel and alternative framework for developing principles of justice, and does so in the context of a political form of liberalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I explore the complex and unappreciated relationship between the moral and political thought of Cicero and Adam Smith. Cicero’s views about justice, propriety, and the selfish love of praise find new expression in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I illustrate the important ways in which Smith adopts – often without attribution – Cicero’s precepts and moral judgments. I then go on to demonstrate how Smith strips those Ciceronian conclusions from their original justifying grounds in teleology and natural (...) law. In their place, Smith injects his own psychology based in sentiments as a new account of why it is that we prefer virtue and justice to their opposites. By exploring this relationship, I hope to shed light on an important dynamic whereby modern thought has creatively adapted classical moral and political concepts. (shrink)

This paper discusses Adam Smith's views of social justice. It first describes Smith's optimistic view of markets, for example with regard to the absence of negative externalities, which implies that he considered certain normative problems to be the exception rather than the rule. Then, Smith's views on redistribution are discussed: although he is sympathetic to progressive taxation, his main focus remains on free markets, which can partly be explained by his distrust of politicians. If one takes a closer look as (...) Smith's views of markets, however, it turns out that one of the reasons why he endorses them is their distributive features. He saw them as an antidote to the inequalities of the feudal age, offering all individuals an opportunity to work their way up to a decent standard of living and leading to more equality in the long run. Thus, Smith's account, while out-dated in certain ways, can serve as an inspiration for thinking about distributive justice not only as a question of redistributive taxation but also as a question of the institutional design of markets. (shrink)

This article shows the philosophical kinship between Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft on the subject of love. Though the two major 18th century thinkers are not traditionally brought into conversation with each other, Wollstonecraft and Smith share deep moral concerns about the emerging commercial society. As the new middle class continues to grow along with commerce, vanity becomes an ever more common vice among its members. But a vain person is preoccupied with appearance, status, and flattery—things that get in the (...) way of what Smith and Wollstonecraft regard as the deep human connection they variously describe as love, sympathy, and esteem. Commercial society encourages inequality, Smith argues, and Wollstonecraft points out that this inequality is particularly obvious in the relationships between men and women. Men are vain about their wealth, power and status; women about their appearance. Added to this is the fact that most middle class women are both uneducated and encouraged by the conduct literature of their day to be sentimental and irrational. The combined economic and moral considerations of Wollstonecraft and Smith show that there is very little room for love in commercial society as they conceived it. (shrink)

Here is an appealing position: one reason to pursue interaction with people from backgrounds that differ from our own is that doing so can improve our moral judgment. As some scholars have noticed, this position seems pedigreed by support from the famed philosophers of human sociability, David Hume and Adam Smith. But regardless of whether Hume or Smith personally held anything like the appealing position, neither might have had theoretically grounded reason to do so. In fact, both philosophers explain moral (...) judgment in ways that seem to present obstacles to the acceptance of the appealing position. This paper entertains the possibility that either of their moral theories contains resources to overcome these obstacles and implies the appealing position. I argue that Smith's theory does so more straightforwardly than Hume's does. This difference, I also argue, reveals something important about the Hume-Smith philosophical relationship. I close by sketching a way to fit the source of the appealing position in Smith's moral psychology with his focus on the desire for mutual sympathy. (shrink)

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen (...) music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core moral theory. (...) We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory. (shrink)

This essay analyses the ethical importance and religious implications of ‘the man within’ in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. Not introduced until the second edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, ‘the man within’ appears as the internalization of the impartial spectator. With the invention of the man within, Smith was able to explain how moral agents pursue virtues and behave morally beyond immediate and quotidian concerns with either praises or blames from society. Having complied with the general dictates of the impartial (...) spectator with conscience, humans become morally autonomous individuals whose moral judgements are derived from constant dialogues with the man within in an ethical microcosm within their breasts. The man within possesses a transcendent nature that preempts social judgements. Because of that transcendent nature, Smith also denominated the man within as ‘the substitute of Deity’. This essay also argues that even conscientious and virtuous individuals can be wronged and misjudged by socie... (shrink)

It is a commonplace that the writers of eighteenth century Scotland played a key role in shaping the early practice of social science. This paper examines how this ‘Scottish’ contribution to the Enlightenment generation of social science was shaped by the fascination with unintended consequences. From Adam Smith's invisible hand to Hume's analysis of convention, through Ferguson's sociology, and Millar's discussion of rank, by way of Robertson's View of Progress, the concept of unintended consequences pervades the writing of the period. (...) The paper argues that the idea of unintended order shapes the understanding of the purpose of theoretical social science that emerges from the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

What is the relationship between ambition and love? While discussions of happiness often mention romances, friendships, aspirations, and achievements, the relationship between these features is seldom discussed. This paper aims to fill that gap. It begins with a suggestive remark made by La Rochefoucauld and repeated by Adam Smith: ‘Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.’ To explain what accounts for such a pattern, I introduce a distinction between stage-setting emotions and master (...) emotions, which is useful for illuminating relationships between a number of emotions, including ambition and love. Drawing on things Smith says elsewhere in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, I conclude by highlighting one way the pattern might be reversed and ambition might lead to love. (shrink)

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith observed that we live in a fundamentally conflictual world. Although he held that we are creatures who sympathize, he also observed that our sympathy seems to be constrained by geographical limits. Accordingly, traditional theories of cosmopolitanism were implausible; yet, as a moral philosopher, Smith attempted to reconcile his bleak description of the world with his eagerness for international peace. Smith believed that commercial intercourse among self‐interested nations would emulate sympathy on a global (...) scale, balancing national wealth and international peace without a coercive apparatus to enforce compliance with international law. (shrink)

Adam Smith writes favorably about innovation inWealth of Nationswhile writing unfavorably about a figure associated with innovation: the projector. His criticism of projectors prompts many scholars to claim that Smith disapproves of entrepreneurship. But Smith criticizes the projector not because he acts as an entrepreneur but because he fails to meet Smith’s moral standards for entrepreneurship. InTheory of Moral Sentiments, Smith conceives of a framework for moral entrepreneurship based on prudence. The framework consists of two principles: first, approach everyday matters (...) with the general “tenor of conduct” that governs your life and trade, and second, approach life-changing matters with prudence and justice. Recognizing that Smith is concerned with the total effect that an entrepreneurial venture has on society beyond its immediate profits opens the door to engage with contemporary research that studies the ethical and moral externalities of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

This paper challenges the commonly held view that Smith's moral theory is a subjectivist theory. Smith's test for goodness and rightness – for propriety – is not the approbation of an impartial spectator, but the warranted approbation of such a spectator. Something is right or good not because an impartial spectator would approve of it, but because such a spectator would be warranted in so approving....

It has been claimed that Adam Smith, like David Hume, has a ‘reflective endorsement’ account of the authority of morality. On such a view, our moral faculties and notions are justified insofar as they pass reflective scrutiny. But Smith's moral philosophy, unlike Hume's, is also peppered with references to God, to divine law, and to our being ‘set up’ in a specific way so as to best attain what is good and useful for us. This language suggests that there is (...) another strategy available for accounting for the authority of morality, one that would align Smith with teleological accounts of human nature and theological accounts of morality. The authority of Smith's impartial spectator would, on such an account, be derivative – it would be derived from the supreme authority of God. Such a view poses a serious challenge for contemporary interpreters of Smith who seek to read him as an empiricist, naturalist, and sentimentalist moral philosopher. This paper examines the textual evidence for this view, focusing on the role of the explicitly religious language found in a key section of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that this language should neither be interpreted as merely ornamental, nor as providing a theological justification of morality. Rather, it is part of Smith's illustration of the psychological influence of religious beliefs, especially the beliefs in an all-seeing judge and in a just afterlife where all human actions will be accounted for and appropriately rewarded or punished. (shrink)

Francis Hutcheson es un reconocido proto-utilitarista. Sin embargo, Adam Smith, su discípulo más prominente y sucesor en la cátedra de Filosofía Moral de la Universidad de Glasgow, tomó otros aspectos de la ética sentimentalista de su maestro y fundó, sobre la base del mismo sentimentalismo, una teoría moral completamente distinta. En este trabajo exploraré qué rasgos de la ética de Smith -en particular, los de la simpatía y espectador imparcial- se encuentran ya en germen en la ética de Hutcheson y (...) cómo Smith desarrolló esas intuiciones para, introduciendo una instancia de racionalidad en los juicios morales y sin traicionar la tradición sentimentalista, incluir también en su teoría moral elementos propios de la razón práctica.Francis Hutcheson is known as a proto-utilitarian. Adam Smith, though, his most prominent student an successor on the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, focuses on some different trends of his teacher's ethics and founds, based on the same sentimentalism, a completely different theory of morals. On this paper I explore what aspects of Hutcheson's ethics -particularly those of ‘sympathy' and the ‘impartial spectator'- where already present in his theory, and how Smith develops those intuitions in order to introduce a moment of rationality in moral judgments, whereby he is able to construct a theory that includes practical reasoning, without betraying the Scottish sentimentalist tradition. (shrink)

Participants in the debate about the nature of folk psychology tend to share one fundamental assumption: that its primary purpose consists in the prediction and explanation of another person's behavior. The following essay will evaluate recent challenges to this assumption by philosophers such as Joshua Knobe who insist that folk psychology and its concepts are intimately linked to our ethical concerns. I will show how conceiving of folk psychology in an engaged manner enables one to account for the evidence cited (...) in favor of an ethical interpretation of folk psychology, without undermining the claim that it is primarily an explanatory practice. Nevertheless, I will suggest that the basic cognitive stance of folk psychology has ethical implications that have been insufficiently noted in the contemporary context. (shrink)

Smith thinks it possible to sympathize with certain non-sentient beings, such as the human dead. Consequently, some commentators argue that Smith’s theory supports ecocentrism. I reject that Smith’s theory has this implication. Sympathizers in Smith’s theory can imagine themselves as non-sentient beings, but they will lack the relevant evaluative concerns. The situation of a non-sentient being, as that being confronts the situation, remains inaccessible to the sympathizer. I will also address the limits of sympathetic concern within Smith’s theory,; highlight a (...) related problem about how our efforts to sympathize with others should be constrained,; and suggest a solution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Following recent scholarship, this article investigates the relationship among Adam Smith's lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, his Wealth of Nations, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his lectures on jurisprudence. According to Smith, the rhetorical theory regarding genre and style improves practical judgment that is central to both economic and legal affairs. Though Smith's lectures on rhetoric feature no overt mention of these legal or commercial applications, when we read these lectures alongside his lectures and writings on jurisprudence (...) and economics, we see that Smith had developed numerous applications for the practical judgment that he taught his students when, under his guidance, they analyzed literary texts. Noting the interrelation among Smith's work on rhetoric, law, and economics allows us to see that others in the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Hugh Blair and Henry Home Lord Kames, similarly found connections among jurisprudence, political economy, and rhetorical theory. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill based initially his conception of suicide on Hume's theory and on Bentham's moral arithmetic; nevertheless, he had a transforming experience in his youth, moment in which he longed for ending his life that he overcame reading the English romanticism. This article describes Mill's vision on the suicide, which he purposely silenced, through the conception of romanticism, of Hume and also of Adam Smith. Certainly, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith was bold enough to criticize Hume's famous (...) defense of the suicide; however, in spite of the fact that the influence of The Wealth of the Nations in Mill has been widely studied, the possible influence of Smith’s moral theory in the overcoming of his mental crisis has been overlooked. (shrink)

In this paper we seek to draw attention to some striking and heretofore unnoticed textual connections between Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. We find significant textual parallels between the parable of the poor man's son of TMS 4.1 and the famous conclusion to Book 1 of Hume's Treatise. These passages are often regarded as especially intense and moving parts of their respective works. We explore the nature and substance of these connections (...) and comment on their larger significance. The nature of the connections suggests that Smith consciously engaged Hume in his work through philosophical conversation. We suggest that these related passages show both Hume and Smith exploring and developing a particular dialectic between contemplation and action in human life. Both move to invert the classical relationship between contemplation and action through what we call the elevated imagination. (shrink)

Both Protestant theologians and “preference” economists believe that freedom is necessary for moral action, but such theologians and economists have seemingly irreconcilable accounts of freedom and, thus also, morality. Instead of learning from each other, they typically ignore each other or claim that one field reigns supreme over the other. This essay digs into the theological and economic traditions of each side to find points of similarity between them. It engages Adam Smith and Ernst Troeltsch to develop a view of (...) “ethical freedom” that pulls together the “libertarian freedom” emphasized by preference economics and the “egalitarian freedom” emphasized in much Protestant theology. The three-part view of freedom draws the disciplines together and opens possibilities for a more robust theory of moral action. (shrink)