Smith under Strain

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 3, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 455-463

  Berry, Christopher J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34248064093     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885104045915     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. A. Smith (1976) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. R. Campbell and A. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Hereafter in text as WN.
2. M. Ignatieff (1984) The Needs of Strangers. London: Chatto & Windus.
3. D. Winch (1996) Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual history of Political Economy in Britain 7750-1834. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. A. Smith (1982) Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759/90), ed. A. MacFie and D. Raphael, I. i. 1.2. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Hereafter in text as TMS.
5. J.J. Rousseau (1864) Suvres Complètes, vol. 1, p. 101. Paris: Hatchette. The Force quotation is from p. 99 of this edn. Of this passage Jean Starobinski remarked (appositely as we will see) that it is a variant of 'l'idéal stoicien d'autarchie':
6. ( 1971)J-J Rousseau: La Transparence et robstacle, p. 40. Paris: Gallimard.
7. The DI is not altogether consistent with other later accounts. T. O'Hagan - (1999) Rousseau, p. 41. London: Routledge
8. e.g. notes the link between pity and imagination in Origin of Languages and Emile. Though to O'Hagan in the later work imagination is 'morally neutral' (p. 78), Emile does also contain a negative assessment;
9. it is developmental (see Euvres Completes, vol. 1, p. 440
10. and when it does emerge it is a disruptive force (and the most powerful) -it upsets the natural equilibrium between desires and the means of satisfying them (Euvres Completes, ibid. p. 455).
11. N.J.H. Dent (1988) Rousseau, pp.129-30. Oxford: Blackwell. His context is Emile.
12. T.D. Campbell (1971) Adam Smith's Science of Morals, p. 95. London: Unwin. (Force cites this work.) For recent treatments of Smith's moral philosophy see (especially)
13. C. Griswold Jr (1999)Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This author teases out at great length the subtleties of Smith's argument and makes the point that in Smith sympathy is distinct from identification (p. 88).
14. J. Otteson (2002) Adam Smith's Marketplace of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15. M. Myers (1983) The Soul of Modern Economic Man: Ideas of Self-Interest Hobbes to Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Myers's major dramatis personae (in addition to the principals) are Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson, Bolingbroke and Priestley.
16. T.W. Hutchinson (1988) Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy 1662-1776, p. 101. Oxford: Blackwell.
17. The same passage is quoted by Jerry Muller (1995) Adam Smith in his Time and Ours, p. 51. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
18. For the Augustinian context of amour-propre (as in Nicole for example) as the counterpart to amor sui, in contrast to amor Dei, see A. Levi (1964) French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions 1585-1649. Oxford: Clarendon Press. I do not mean to suggest that Force is ignorant of this context, see his discussion pp. 58ff.
19. See e.g. V. Brown (1994) Adam Smith's Discourse. London: Routledge.
20. J. Dwyer (1987) Virtuous Discourse. Edinburgh: John Donald.
21. A. Maclntyre (1985) After Virtue, 2nd edn. London: Duckworth. The association is given an influential expression by the editors of TMS, pp. 5-10.
22. Recent work on Shaftesbury has concentrated on what Lawrence Klein has called his 'cultural polities' (1994) Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23. My citations are from Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl (1900) Characteristics (1711), 2 vols, ed. J. Robertson. London: Grant Richards.
24. Isabel Rivers judges Smith the 'most original heir of Scottish Shaftesburianism' (2000) Reason, Grace and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780 vol. 2, p. 258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Like many she sees him as a 'Stoic moralist' and similar to Shaftesbury in his treatment of religion (p. 260) -see n. 24.
25. N. Barbon (1905) Discourse of Trade (1690), ed. J. Hollander, p. 15. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
26. There is no full-scale study of his thought but see A. Finkelstein (2000) Harmony and Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth Century English Economic Thought, ch. 13. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
27. CJ. Berry (1994) Idea of Luxury, pp. 108-26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28. For a contrary view that Mandeville is sincere see S. Burtt (1992) Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England 1688-1740, ch. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Force toward the end of his book admits 'epicurean principles have a place' in Smith's moral philosophy, though even then they are said to be integrated within 'the Stoic perspective' (pp. 260-1). Cf E. Rothschild (2001) Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The latter sees 'distinctively Epicurean' traits in Smith (p. 304 n. 104).
30. D. Hume (1998) Enquiries concerning the Principles of Morals (1748), ed. T. Beauchamp, 6. 21, p. 125. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31. For an elaboration see C.J. Berry (2004) 'Hume and Superfluous Value', in C. Wennerlind and M. Schabas (eds) Essays on Name's Political Economy. New York: Routledge.
32. T.J. Hochstrasser (2000) Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment, pp. 62ff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33. Cf. I. Hont (1987) 'The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the "Four Stages Theory'", in A. Pagden (ed.) The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, pp. 253-76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. As his title intimates, he discusses the link with Smith.
34. A modern edn is now available (2002) J. Moore and M. Silverhorne (eds) Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment: The Writings of Gershom Carmichael. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.
35. These are conveniently collected in K. Haakonssen (1996) Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Gratins to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36. Rousseau's knowledge of and indebtedness to natural law has been acknowledged ever since R. Derathé (1950) Rousseau et la science politique de son temps. Paris: Vrin.
37. The particular (negative) impact of Pufendorf has been stressed by Robert Wokler (1994) 'Rousseau's Pufendorf: Natural Law and the Foundations of Commercial Society', History of Political Thought 15: 373-402. Wokler aligns Pufendorf with Force's Epicurean/Hobbesian genealogy.
38. Though see L. Turco who sees Smith as preferring Stoic and Ciceronian ethics 'in which respect he is rather closer to Hutcheson and Butler [than Hume]': (2003) 'Moral Sense and the Foundations of Morals', in A. Broadie (ed.) Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, p. 147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
39. See also, 'According to Zeno . . . every animal was by nature recommended to its own care and was endowed with the principle of self-love' (TMS VII. ii. 1. 14). However, as a natural preference this also means it is in accord with reason, judged against which, grief, fear, desire (epithumia) and pleasure are pathè - see Diogenes Laertius Life of Zeno 7. 87, 111. In the 18th century Cicero's De Finibus was an important conduit (5. 9; 3. 5). For the link between oikeiòsis and Rousseau's amour de soi, see C. Brooke (2001) 'Rousseau's Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins', in P. Riley (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, pp. 94-123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40. Force gives little account of the Stoics themselves, a couple of quotations from Cicero and one here from Epictetus (Discourses 1.19) but, again, this is misunderstood. Epictetus' point is independence and follows a passage where it is replied to a threat to lose one's leg that as a free being I can choose not to invest it with value.
41. Rothschild (n. 13), p. 116.
42. See further C.J. Berry (1997) Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment, pp. 44-5. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
43. E.J. Hundert (1994) The Enlightenment Fable: Mandeville and the Discovery of Society, p. 220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Force explicitly distinguishes his view from Hundert's.
44. See A. Sidney (1990) Discourses concerning Government (1698), ed. T. West, p. 254. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. '. . . poverty . . . is the mother and nurse of virtue.'
45. Smith's own beliefs are hard to discern (see appendix II of TMS for a discussion of Smith's excision). His most recent biographer I. Ross (1995) confined himself to saying 'there is no great evidence that Smith set stock in an after-life', (1995) The Life of Adam Smith, p. 401. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Among commentators who see in Smith an integral commitment to 'final causes' are Otteson (n. 6), pp. 245ff.
46. Jeffrey Young (1997) Economics as a Moral Science: The Political Economy of Adam Smith. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
47. (He forbears from pursuing theological resonances.) James Alvey (2003) Adam Smith: Optimist or Pessimist. Aldershot: Ashgate. In keeping with the theme of his book Alvey regards him as ambivalent (p. 267), though he, like Force, stresses a link between Smith's Stoicism and a conception of harmonious universal order. According to Athol Fitzgibbon Smith rejected Christianity because he was Stoic (p. 19), since he believed in Divine Nature (p. 193), but as Fitzgibbon also thinks Smith rejected empiricism and Hume's world-view (p. 88) his argument is even more strained than Force's:
48. (1995)Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth and Virtue. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
49. Force cites none of these works nor Peter Minowitz's (1993) Profits, Priests and Princes: Adam Smith's Emancipation of Economics from Politics and Religion. Stanford: Stanford University Press. The latter offers the most extensive ('Straussian') account of the place of religion in Smith's thought, where WN is 'atheistic' and the argument of TMS pushes 'toward atheism' (p. 14).
50. Others who detect civic humanism in Smith include (in a qualified way) J. Robertson (1983) 'Scottish Political Economy beyond the Civic Tradition', History of Political Thought 4: 541-82.
51. D. McNally (1988) Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
52. Donald Winch, influenced by Pocock, casts much of his exposition in these terms but his later writings make clear the limits of this interpretation: (1978) Adam Smith's Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
53. This is admittedly qualified. It only applies in those circumstances where the chief officers in the army are drawn from the 'principal nobility and gentry', who have, in consequence, the 'greatest interest in the support of the civil authority' (WN V. i. a. 41). In a nuanced account, published since Force, Leonidas Montes argues that Smith's defence of a standing army was in the 'framework of a clear civic humanist language': (2003) Adam Smith in Context, p. 11. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
54. A. Smith (1982) Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. Meek, D. Raphael and P. Stein (1766 version B331). Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Hirschman takes the quotation out of context. Smith is here listing and not as such endorsing the 'inconveniences' of commerce as part of a general assessment of the 'influence of commerce on the manners of a people'.
55. Hirschman on the basis of this declares Smith is 'totally espousing the classical "republican view"', Passions and Interests, p. 106.
56. J. Pocock (1975) The Machiavellian Moment, p. 499. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
57. The most recent treatment is M. Guena (2002) 'Republicanism and Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Case of Adam Ferguson', in M. van Gelderen and Q. Skinner (eds) Republicanism; A Shared European Heritage, vol. 2, pp 177-95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.