Segundo Shaftesbury e seus sucessore (James Harris, Adam Smith, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing), uma obra de arte imitativa, corretamente produzida, exprime um conteúdo moral no sentido geral do termo (mental, intelectual, bem como ético). O que esses autores têm no espírito é a expressão não somente enquanto função geral da arte, mas também e sobretudo enquato estrutura particular de cada obra. A expressão não é somente o objetivo de uma obra de arte, mas também a maneira segundo a qual ela funciona. (...) Este artigo mostra como as reflexões de Shaftesbury em A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgement of Hercules abrem a via para uma nova maneira de considerar cada obra de arte individual como uma solução para um problema da expressão que não depende do meio empregado. No artigo se estuda também o contexto histórico desse escrito de Shaftesbury bem como de sua posteridade em Harris, Smith, e Lessing. (shrink)

The invisible hand image is at the centre of contemporary debates about capacities of markets, on which discussion of many other topics in business ethics rests. However, its meaning in Adam Smith’s writings remains obscure, particularly the religious associations that were obvious to early readers. He drew on Isaac Newton’s theories of divine action and providence, mediated through the moderate Calvinism of the eighteenth century Scottish circles in which he moved. I argue within the context of Smith’s general providential account (...) of markets, the invisible hand operates restrain inequality and capital flight, thereby stabilizing the market system. Such an understanding of the invisible hand raises questions for contemporary religious and secular discussions of the capacities of markets in the wake of the global financial crisis. (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)

In his late unfinished work on aesthetic theory, Adam Smith develops the concept of rythmus to explore such arts as music, dance and poetry. Smith argues that rythmus communicates emotion in a very specific way. For Smith, narrative arts, such as drama or the novel, predominately seek to recreate or represent in the minds of their readership or audience the emotions of the characters that are portrayed. But what we experience through rythmus, by contrast, is an original, and not a (...) sympathetic, feeling. Rythmus is the communicative medium of a paradoxical mode of collective feeling in which each person feels his or her own emotions, and yet all feel the same thing; in which social being is at once non-fungible and shared. (shrink)

Adam Smith's ethics have long been thought to be much closer to the Stoic school than to any other school of the ancient world. Recent scholarship however has focused on the fact that Smith also appears to be quite close to Aristotle. I shall attend to Smith's deployment of a version of the doctrine of the mean, shall show that it is quite close to Aristotle's, shall demonstrate that in its detailed application it is seriously at odds with Stoic teaching (...) on the passions, and particularly with their teachings on anger, and shall conclude that on a central issue of ethics Smith is a good deal closer to Aristotelian than to Stoic thinking. (shrink)

One of the more striking aspects of Adam Smith's moral theory is the degree to which it depends on and appeals to aesthetic norms. By considering what Smith says about judgments of propriety – the foundational type of judgment in his system – and by tying what he says in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to certain of his other writings, I argue that Smith ultimately defends an aesthetic morality. Among the challenges that any aesthetic morality faces is that it (...) seems to entail moral relativism. This problem is magnified by Smith's reliance on the judgments of the impartial spectator, which also seems to make his theory more vulnerable to a Euthyphro-type objection. I suggest that Smith can potentially get around these problems, given his presumption of aesthetic naturalism. While there is certainly some variation in our aesthetic judgments, Smith claims that we naturally find certain actions and sentiments odious, while others we find agreeable. The reason, he argues, is that any society that judged otherwise would not survive. (shrink)

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences (...) and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man. (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 is often falsely portrayed as having argued that radical selfishness is a force for the good and that this “invisible hand’ is his market mechanism. This paper argues that Smith’s real market mechanism, the sympathy manoeuvre, is a viable alternative to Schumpeterian and mainstream models of innovation in economics and also could help build a firmer theoretical basis for other approaches such as Responsible Innovation. To Smith all human activity was social and must be understood and explained in (...) terms of the sentiments involved. Discovery, for instance, is driven by three sentiments (wonder, surprise, admiration), economic activities by sympathetic imagination, the need for exchange, the need to better one’s position in life, and the need for gratitude. Through sympathetic imagination, his famous model of the impartial spectator, Smith elegantly connects the individual and society. Smith’s innovation process is thus an exercise in social construction and not a destructive process based on radical selfishness. The paper argues that this social innovation process is a viable alternative to the extant approaches that are essentially asocial and amoral (economism) or ideologically normative (Responsible Innovation). (shrink)

La filosofía moral de Adam Smith se fundamenta en el papel de la imaginación para explicar el orden social en un nivel macro, y como mecanismo de identificación afec tiva en un nivel micro. En ambos casos, el rol de la imaginación en nuestra psicología moral refuta la tesis de un _homo economicus_, o de que el ser humano está motiva do a entrar en sociedad por su interés personal. Esto sirve de premisa para refutar la posición hobbesiana de un (...) estado de naturaleza histórico que está en la base de nuestros juicios morales que fundan la sociedad civil y la necesidad del magistrado. (shrink)

This paper argues that economics, over the past 200 years, has become steadily more anti-philosophical and that there are three stages in the development of economic thought. Adam Smith intended economics to be a descriptive social science, rooted in an understanding of the moral and psychological processes of an individual’s decision-making and its connection to society in general. Yet, immediately after Smith’s death, economists made a clean cut and invented a totally new discipline: they switched towards a physicalist understanding of (...) human nature. Humans, like atoms, follow a natural law: they are driven by an emotion (defined as a non-emotion, rationality), namely selfishness. Thus economics became a ‘natural’ science. In the 20th century, the second reinterpretation removed all traces of humanity from the study of economics and declared economics to be a formal science like mathematics and logics. The actor in Phase 3 economics is homo economicus syntheticus, a postulate whose only connection to real humanity is the word homo. The paper asks what the results of this dramatic relocation are and why Phase 3 economics still claims descent from Smithian economics, despite the massive differences. (shrink)

Wonder’s significance is a recurrent theme in the history of philosophy. In the Theaetetus, Plato’s Socrates claims that philosophy begins in wonder (thaumazein). Aristotle echoes these sentiments in his Metaphysics; it is wonder and astonishment that first led us to philosophize. Philosophers from the Ancients through Wittgenstein discuss wonder, yet scant recent attention has been given to developing a general systematic account of emotional wonder. I develop an account of emotional wonder and defend its connection with apparent or seeming value. (...) Recently, several philosophers invoke wonder to back non-eudaimonistic value judgments. I introduce methods to incorporate these judgments into a eudaimonistic moral framework. On the analysis presented, wonder requires its object to seem valuable, but whether the object is in fact valuable remains an open question. Wonder enraptures us with objects that might be of true or merely illusory value, grounded either in our own well-being or in non-eudaimonistic value. (shrink)

Mandeville offers an evolutionary explanation of norms that pivots on the power of praise to affect individuals. Yet this sort of account is not mentioned by Hume or Ferguson, and only indirectly noted by Smith. Nonetheless, there are various similarities in the thought of Mandeville and these philosophers. After delineating some resemblances, the essay takes up the objection Hume poses to Mandeville: praise fails to motivate if individuals take no pride in moral conduct. To this challenge there is a Mandevillean (...) response that emphasizes how, in the evolutionary emergence of norms, the original praise need not be understood in moral terms. (shrink)

One way to show that text interpretation can be treated as a scientific problem is to show that the standards that are currently used in the natural sciences when dealing with problems not involving meaningful material can also be successfully employed in the case of text interpretation. These standards involve intersubjective intelligibility, testability with the use of evidence, rational argumentation, and making methodological decisions aiming at the attainment of truth, accuracy, simplicity and other epistemic values. In the case of text (...) interpretation—despite the fact that we deal with meaningful material—hypotheses can be formulated, consequences can be drawn by deduction, and these can be tested against empirical data. This claim is substantiated by the provision of an example of a scientific text. (shrink)

En este texto planteamos la pregunta por la inscripción de la sorpresa en la fenomenología de las emociones de Husserl. Pero antes de dar por supuesto que Husserl abordó el problema de la sorpresa, nos preguntamos si verdaderamente lo hizo y sí, incluso, se puede hablar de una "fenomenología de las emociones" en su obra. El texto está, así, motivado por dos interrogantes: ¿Es la sorpresa una emoción? ¿Husserl desarrolló verdaderamente una "fenomenología de las emociones"? Esto nos conducirá a 1) (...) plantear una redefinición de sorpresa y 2) avanzar por el camino de una fenomenología un poco reformada por el hecho de la sorpresa. En tres apartados desarrollamos este planteamiento: I. La fenomenología husserliana de las emociones, II. ¿La sorpresa es una emoción? Y III. La sorpresa, un proceso. In this paper we argue about the inscription of surprise in the phenomenology of emotions of E. Husserl. But before assuming that E. Husserl addressed the issue of surprise, we ask if he really did it and even, if it is possible to talk about a "phenomenology of emotions" his work. The paper is thus motivated by two questions: Is surprise an emotion? Did Husserl really develop a "phenomenology of emotions"? This will take us to, 1) outline a redefinition of surprise, and 2) advance through the path of a phenomenology that has been a bit reformed by the fact of surprise. This issue will be developed in three stages: I. the husserlian phenomenology of emotions, II. Is surprise an emotion? III. The surprise, a process. (shrink)

Nagel’s challenge is to devise an objective phenomenological vocabulary that can describe the objective structural similarities between aural and visual perception. My contention is that Charles Sanders Peirce’s little studied and less understood phenomenological vocabulary makes a significant contribution to meeting this challenge. I employ Peirce’s phenomenology to identify the structural isomorphism between seeing a scarlet red and hearing a trumpet’s blare. I begin by distinguishing between the vividness of an experience and the intensity of a quality. I proceed to (...) identify further points of structural isomorphism (a) between the experience of seeing a scarlet red and of hearing a trumpet blare and (b) between the qualities of those experiences. Lastly, I gesture towards how these distinctions can be an aid in describing what it is like to be a bat. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements (...) may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature. (shrink)

William James is remembered as the philosopher of pragmatism, but he was principally the founder of modern scientific psychology. During the period of his most intense scientific involvement James developed a trenchant critique of science. This was not a rejection of science but an attempt to identify limitations of the contemporary conceptualization of science. In particular, James emphasized the failure of science to understand its basis in human emotions. James developed a scientific theory of emotions in which the importance of (...) emotion in cognition and decision-making is central. James’ appreciation of the significance of emotions in science has continuing value. Nevertheless, his characterization of science in terms of its method introduces tensions in his account that an emphasis on the social dimensions of science, which he implicitly acknowledged, tends to resolve. (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)

Is realism in political theory compatible with utopianism? This article shows that it is, by reconstructing a highly restrictive realist approach to political theory for guiding legislation and public policy, drawn from the work of Adam Smith, and showing how it can accommodate Piketty’s utopian proposal for a global tax on capital. This shows not only that realism and utopianism are compatible; but how realist and utopian political theory can be carried out in concrete cases. This moves debates to more (...) interesting questions of which forms of utopianism are permissible within which forms of realism; contributes to moving the contemporary realism debates from a Methodenstreit to questions of how it can and ought to be done; and contributes to an important contemporary debate about the permissibility of utopian proposals for political and economic reform in general and Piketty’s proposed global tax on capital in particular. (shrink)

: This study is an analysis of the theological and ethical dimensions inthe writings of Adam Smith. It deals with aspects of philosophy and intellectualhistory. By revealing the theological and ethical roots of Smith’s writings in theformation of modern economics, arguments for an economics that is based onIslamic foundations become stronger. The study will therefore lay out the basicmoral project of Smith and then contextualize it in the Western Enlightenmenttradition. It shows how religious discourses were instrumental in shaping thethoughts and (...) ideas of Enlightenment in general, and economics in particular.The study will then give a brief overview of traditional Islamic theology andethics in order to give directions for future research. (shrink)

I attempt a reconstruction of Adam Smith's view of human nature as explicated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's view of human conduct is neither functionalist nor reductionist, but interactionist. The moral autonomy of the individual, conscience, is neither made a function of public approval nor reduced to self-contained impulses of altruism and egoism. Smith does not see human conduct as a blend of independently defined impulses. Rather, conduct is unified, by the underpinning sentiment of sympathy.

During the last few months of his life James Dundas, first Lord Arniston (c. 1620–79), wrote a monograph on moral philosophy. It appears never to have been mentioned in any work whether academic or otherwise. It includes a discussion promoting three doctrines against Hobbes. First, that something is simply good and something is simply bad, and that the first rule of morals is not self-love, but the glory of God. Secondly, the state of nature is not a state of war. (...) Thirdly, contra Hobbes, the chief point in natural law is not that each person has a right to use all ways and means to preserve himself. This paper probes Dundas's arguments for his three doctrines. (shrink)

How does the mind attribute external causes to internal sensory experiences? Adam Smith addresses this question in his little known essay ‘Of the External Senses.’ I closely examine Smith's various formulations of this problem and then argue for an interpretation of his solution: that inborn perceptual mechanisms automatically generate external attributions of internal experiences. I conclude by speculating that these mechanisms are best understood to operate by simulating tactile environments.

This article explores the influence of Stoicism and religion on Adam Smith. While other commentators have argued either that the main influence on Smith was Stoicism or that it was religion, the two influences have not been explicitly linked. In this article I attempt to make such a link, arguing that Smith can be seen as belonging to the strand of Christian Stoicism chiefly associated with his teacher, Francis Hutcheson. Finally, some comments are made about the implications of this interpretation (...) for current understanding of the work of Adam Smith. (shrink)

Formalization has led contemporary economics to turn its back on the study of capitalism as the social order to which it owes its origins and its intrinsic analytical focus. As a consequence, contemporary economics turns a blind eye to the empirical analysis of capital accumulation, the real‐world properties of markets, and the bifurcation of political power that endow capitalism with its unique historical properties. Instead, economics takes scientific, not social, analysis as its model, a view that gives an ideological cast (...) to its findings. (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)

Adam Smith is usually thought to argue that the result of everyone pursuing their own interests will be the maximization of the interests of society. The invisible hand of the free market will transform the individual''s pursuit of gain into the general utility of society. This is the invisible hand argument.Many people, although Smith did not, draw a moral corollary from this argument, and use it to defend the moral acceptability of pursuing one''s own self-interest.

CST is widely disregarded in the academic and public discourse. This essay argues that this is the case for two related reasons. Firstly, CST is based on the pre-Enlightenment approach to moral philosophy, virtue ethics, while the mainstream in business ethics favours the rule-based approaches consequentialism and deontology and their variants. Secondly, mainstream approaches also have adopted a positivist epistemology where theories represent the Truth that must not be questioned: they have become ideologies. This paper argues that CST, mainly through (...) the virtue ethical doctrine of the mean, is saved from having become an ideology and is much closer to the ideal of science as a self-questioning system than the mainstream in business ethics. This essay explains this counter-intuitive conclusion by tracing the history of CST and embedding it in an epistemic discussion and then suggesting what business ethics could take from CST to regain the all-important discursiveness it once had. (shrink)

The paper takes a fresh look at two essays that Adam Smith wrote at the very beginning of his career. In these essays, Smith explains his philosophy of science, which is social constructivist. A social constructivist reading of Smith strengthens the scholarly consensus that The Wealth of Nations needs to be interpreted in light of the general moral theory he explicates in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, as the two essays and TMS stress the importance of the same concepts: e.g., (...) moral imagination, the socially embedded individual, and humility. The connecting tissue between all three works is made up of sentiments and values. Smith regards the socially embedded human as the agent in all three realms, and humans are always driven by values. Smith not only conceives of economics as an applied moral philosophy, but also bases both research areas on a view of knowledge creation that stresses specific epistemic values. If mainstream economic theory wants to have any claim to Adam Smith, it would have to change not only what it argues but also how it argues. Economists would have to replace the language of mathematics with the language and logic of moral philosophy and give values centre stage. (shrink)

(2005). Wonder in the face of scientific revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 697-732. doi: 10.1080/09608780500293042.

Scholars have sometimes argued that we should conceive of social research as a form of moral inquiry, at least in part, but none have made clear exactly how and why observational research can make a distinctive contribution to moral insight. Returning to an era before the modern distinction between social science and the humanities became entrenched, this article argues that Adam Smith provided a clear and forceful rationale for the moral role of social research, especially history. Smith believed that moral (...) understanding relies on emotional reactions to richly described cases, preferably where our own interests are not at stake. These meditations on particular cases, in turn, provide the basis for moral generalizations that can inform future encounters with particular cases. This perspective led Smith (along with his friend David Hume) to the view that historical writing makes a more important contribution to moral understanding than abstract philosophy does. This article reconstructs Smith’s arguments about the role of empirical observation in cultivating moral sensibility in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his Lectures on Jurisprudence, and his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. It then connects his argument to contemporary ideas about the nature of moral understanding in philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

For more than a century, methodological diversity within the social sciences has been the source of recurrent paradigm wars, and no obvious winner seems to be in sight. The aim of this article is to explore the contingencies underlying this diversity. It is argued that the shared condition of complexity forces us to adopt a pragmatic perspective from which even relevant ontological and epistemological assumptions should be thought of as contextual rather than absolute. In particular, the extent to which social (...) causality is perceived as stable and universal vs. dynamic and contextual and the extent to which research-related reflexivity is an issue appear to set apart the different approaches. Towards the end of the article examples of methodological fit and misfit are provided to illustrate the relevancy of the “contingent eclecticism” observed in practice. (shrink)

Increasing the “truth per dollar” of money spent on science is one legitimate long-run goal of the economics of science. But before this goal can be achieved, we need to increase our knowledge of the successes and failures of past and current reward structures of science. This essay reviews what economists have learned about the behavior of scientists and the reward structure of science. One important use of such knowledge will be to help policy-makers create a reward structure that is (...) more efficient in the future. (shrink)

Adam Smith's metaphor of the "invisible hand" and its analogue in classical physics are investigated in detail. Smith's analogue was the mechanics of the solar system. What makes the analogy fail are not the idealisations in the caricature-like model of the rational economic man . The main problem rather is that the metaphor does not employ the correct analogue, which belongs to thermodynamics and statistics. In the simplest macro-economic model, the business cycle has the same formal structure as the heat (...) flow between two heat reservoirs and a business cycle of growing efficiency works like a refrigerator: it pumps money from the poor to the rich. More complicated models do not give a friendlier image. Due to technological push, an economic system behaves like a thermodynamic system far from the equilibrium, showing chaotic behaviour and developing into unpredictable states. (shrink)

A la luz de la ética de Lévinas, donde la muerte es presente y central en el concepto de responsabilidad fundamental para salvaguardar la humanidad, se puede observar la incidencia de la muerte en la formación del sentimiento y juicio moral en los escritos de Smith. La valoración del papel de la muerte en la teoría de los sentimientos morales mediante este estudio comparativo permite poner de relieve la función del cuidado de sí y del otro que subyace en su (...) teoría y percibir sus aportes posibles en las reflexiones y los debates éticos relacionados con la muerte y la vida. (shrink)