Smith's humean criticism of Hume's account of the origin of justice

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 47-63

  Pack, Spencer J ^a   Schliesser, Eric ^b,c,d  

^a Connecticut College

^b SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

^d UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 52049084870     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2006.0004     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. All quotes from David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). We cite book, part, section, paragraph, and page-number.
2. All quotes from Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984; a reprint of the Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith; v. 1, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976]). We cite part, section, chapter, paragraph, and page-number.
3. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals [Second Enquiry], ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998). We cite section, part (if any), paragraph, and page-number.
4. But for a different view of avarice, see "Of Avarice" in David Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary [EPS], rev. and ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985).
5. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education and the Conduct of the Understanding, eds. Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).
6. See, for discussion (although they do not supply the reference), Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, "Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations: an introductory essay" ["Needs and Justice"], 39, in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, eds. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1980).
8. See Knud Haakonssen, The Science of Legislator: the Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith [The Science of Legislator], (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 17-18, for excellent discussion of this tension in Hume.
9. Cf. "Of Public Credit," EMPL, 358, where Hume talks of the "hand of nature" that instituted "several ranks of men, which form a kind of independent magistracy in a state."
10. On the similarities between Hume and Hobbes see Jean Hampton, "The Hobbesian Side of Hume" in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, eds. Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, Christine M. Korsgaard. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 66-101.The importance of Smith for moral philosophers is that he attempts to answer some of the major problems discussed by Hampton in Hume's philosophy; Smith does this in a Humean manner and the effect is to move away from Hobbes.
11. For Hume, conventions can be necessary.
12. Locke admits that, in a just war, conquest can generate despotical power over the lives, but, somewhat counter-intuitively (as Locke admits), not the property, of those overcome (see John Locke Second Treatise of Government [Second Treatise], ed. C.B. Macpherson [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980], XVI, §180). Of course, for Hobbes governments can legitimately originate in conquest.
13. There seems to be surprisingly little scholarly literature on Hume's understanding of avarice. This will be discussed more at length in Eric Schliesser and Halley Faust, "Hume on Greed" (in progress). See also, Eugene Rotwein's introduction to David Hume: Writings on Economics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), xliv-xlvii.
14. (See Hont and Ignatieff, "Needs and Justice," 34-40.)
15. Nevertheless, Sam Fleischacker has called attention to several passages in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), that seem to push Locke into an opposite direction.
16. Locke seems to use the two terms almost interchangeably in the Second Treatise; see also his Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. W. von Leyden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 111.
17. Sam Fleischacker was kind enough to let us look at the manuscript for his On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion [Philosophical Companion] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), which has been extremely helpful.
18. Smith is providing a Humean critique of Hume. See Marie A. Martin, "Utility and Morality: Adam Smith's Critique of Hume," Hume Studies 16 (1990): 107-20. Along with Kant, Smith can be viewed as Hume's profoundest follower and critic. Of course, Smith should not be viewed as a mere follower of Hume.
19. In both his economic work (see Joseph Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis [New York: Oxford University Press, 1954], 181-94), and his philosophic work, Smith attempts to be an admirable systematizer and synthesizer.
20. For evidence that Smith may have misunderstood (or oversimplified) Hume's views, and that Hume nevertheless anonymously published a favorable review of Smith's book that silently corrected some of these misunderstandings or misrepresentations, see David R. Raynor, "Hume's Abstract of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments" Journal of the History of Philosophy 22 (1984): 51-80;
21. also D. D. Raphael and Tatsuya Sakamoto, "Notes and Discussions: Anonymous Writings of David Hume," Journal of the History of Philosophy 28 (1990): 271-81.
22. For insightful commentary on the contrast between Hume and Smith, see James Otteson, Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 50-58.
23. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [WN], eds. R.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner, and W.B. Todd (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984), IV.v.b.39, 539.
24. This is a reprint of the Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith, v. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), and reprinted with minor corrections in 1979.
25. See Elias L. Khalil, "Is Adam Smith Liberal?" Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 158 (2002), 674-83.
26. The imagination makes sympathy (TMS I.i.i.10, 12ff.), and, by extension, the workings of the Impartial Spectator possible (III.2.9, 188). And in Smith's "The History of Astronomy," II.10-12, 43-47, the imagination plays a positive crucial role in constructing theories of natural philosophers.
27. This essay can be found in Adam Smith's Essays on Philosophical Subjects [EPS], eds. W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982) (reprint of the Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith; v. 3, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980]).
28. For discussion, see Eric Schliesser "Realism in the Face of Scientific Revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's "Proof" of Copernicanism," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (2005): 697-732.
29. Actually, by itself this human proclivity can be a major source of injustice, as humans cater to the wishes and whims of their superiors, while casually abusing their inferiors (TMS I.iii.3. 66ff).
30. See John B. Stewart The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).
31. Ronald L. Meek's Social Science and the Ignoble Savage [Social Science] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 30-31, criticizes this, although helpfully calls attention to Treatise III.ii.8.
32. For an account and intellectual context of the (Marxist) reception of Smith's four-stage theory, see Meek, Social Science,
33. and Ronald L. Meek Smith, Marx and After: Ten Essays in the Development of Economic Thought (London: Chapman and Hall, 1977),
34. or Andrew S. Skinner, A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
35. For more discussion, see Eric Schliesser, "Some Principles of Adam Smith's 'Newtonian' Methods in the Wealth of Nations." in Research in History of Economic Thought and Methodology 23 (2005): 35-77.
36. Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 84-85, quotes Turgot as advocating "respect for the most sacred of all property...the property of man in the fruit of his labor."
37. We have consulted and slightly modified V. Gourevitch's translation in Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
38. Smith thinks that various forms of tranquility of mind can be available to prudent men (TMS VI.i.11-13, 215-16), and, especially, mathematicians and (natural) philosophers (III.2.20, 124). Smith believes the former can be tranquil because they live within their means and avoid upheaval. The latter can become tranquil because they are not dependent on "public opinion"; they are not withdrawn from the world, but experience the satisfaction of knowing that their success in it is justified (by the norms validated by their Impartial Spectators). Of course, not everybody in society can achieve tranquility; in TMS, Smith talks of the "vain splendor of successful ambition" (VI.i.13, 216) that causes men to elude tranquility, while in WN "the mean rapacity...of merchants and manufacturers" is singled out for such failure (WN IV.iii.c.9, 493).
39. It is a bit strange to see Smith denying that there is any benefit at all from harm to the reputation of others. After all, it does provide a situational benefit, although not a material benefit - which is perhaps what Smith had in mind. (On the frequent distinction between the passions and the interests, see Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977].)
40. Elsewhere, Smith is explicit about our need for status: "to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation" (TMS I.iii.2.1, 50; the whole of I.iii.2 is relevant). See also D.A. Reisman Adam Smith's Sociological Economics (London: Croom Helm, 1976), ch. 4, "Consumer Behaviour."
41. This essay is reprinted in EPS. See also "History of Astronomy," EPS, III.1-III.2, 48-50.
42. This is explored more fully in Eric Schliesser "Articulating Practices as Reasons: Adam Smith on the Conditions of Possibility of Property," The Adam Smith Review, Vol. 2, forthcoming.
43. Somewhat surprisingly, Smith calls Hume's position, without mentioning Hume by name, superficial: "When by natural principles we [humans] are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is the wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view, this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and the system of human nature seems to be more simple and agreeable when all its different operations are in this manner deduced from a single principle" (TMS II.ii.3.5, emphasis added). That simple principle is human reason, and it is indeed agreeable to us mortals to think that we are guided by reason rather than by various passions. Chapter three of Eric Schliesser's Ph.D. dissertation, Indispensable Hume: From Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy to Adam Smith's "Science of Man" [Indispensable Hume], treated the passage as exclusively relevant for understanding Smith's views on different kinds of causation and epistemology.
44. What follows has been inspired by Haakonssen, "The Science of Legislator" 83-87,
45. Samuel Fleischacker, Philosophical Companion,
46. and Stephen Darwall's presentation at the Eastern APA 2002 in response to Emma Rothschild's book, published as "Equal Dignity in Adam Smith," Adam Smith Review, Vol. 1 (2004): 129-34.
47. Thus, Smith's views of justice and injustice are concerned not merely with propriety. See Stephen Darwall, "Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 28 (1999), 142.
48. The importance of resentment for Smith's moral philosophy tends to be overlooked (but see T. Campbell [1971], Adam Smith's Science of Morals, ch. 9, 186-204), it is, nevertheless, discussed quite extensively in TMS. We have found the following occurrences: I.i.1.4, 10; I.i.1.6-7, 11; I.1.2.5, 15; I.i.3.1, 16; I.1.3.8-10, 18-19; I.i.4.5, 21; I.i.4.10, 23; I.i.5.4, 24; I.ii.Intro.1, 27: I.ii.i.3, 28; I.ii.2.1, 31; I.ii.3.1-8, 34-38; I.ii.4.3 & I.ii.5.1, 40; I.iii.2.2, 52; I.iii.2.6, 56; I.iii.3.8, 66 (67); II.i.1.2-7, 68-69; II.i.2, 69-71; II.i.3, 71-73; II.i.4.3, 73-74; II.i.5.4-8, 75-76; II.ii.1.2-5, 78-79; II.ii.2.1-3, 83-85; II.ii.3.3, 86; II.ii.3.7, 88; II.ii.3. 10-11, 90; II.iii.intro.4, 93; II.iii.1.1-7, 94-97; II.iii.2.3-10, 99-104; II.iii.3.1-2, 105; II.iii.3.4, 106-7; III.2.9-11, 118-19; III.3.5, 137; III.3.19, 144; III.4.4, 158; III.4.8, 159; III.4.12, 160; III.5.4-5, 164-65; III.5.9, 168; III.6.1, 171; III.6.5, 172; III.6.12, 176-77; IV.2.2, 188; V.2.9, 205; VI.ii.intro.2, 218; VI.ii.3.1, 235; VI.iii.18, 244; VI.iii.35, 255; VII.ii.1.4-7, 268; VII.ii.1.50, 294; VII.ii.2.2, 295; VII.ii.2.11, 297; VII.ii.3.4, 301; VII.iii.1.3, 317; VII.iii.3.9-13, 323-24; VII.iii.3.15-16, 326.
49. See Spencer Pack, "Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem," Journal for the History of Economic Thought 19 (1997): 128-30.
50. Smith would no doubt have shown in more detail in his book on justice exactly how the passion resentment works in human history ultimately to help develop the social institution of justice, thus enabling increasingly complex societies to get off the ground. As Smith wrote at the very end of TMS: "I shall, in another discourse, endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society, not only in what concerns justice, but in what concerns police, revenue,and arms, and whatever else is the object of law" (TMS VII.IV.37, 342). See also paragraph 2 of the advertisement to the 6th ed. of TMS. Smith never published that work. Nonetheless, it is clear from the student lecture notes of his course in jurisprudence that this account would have been intimately bound up with his four stage theory of socioeconomic development. This four stage theory in turn no doubt influenced Lord Kames's critique of Hume's theory of justice (see D. D. Raphael, Concepts of Justice [Oxford: Clarendon Press], 105-6). The relationship between Kames, who was instrumental in bringing about Smith's public lectures in Edinburgh in 1748, and Smith is deserving of further study.
51. There are, of course, other crucial differences between Smith and Hume. For example, on how the difference between Smith and Hume on sympathy connects to wider disagreements, see Stephen Darwall, "Empathy, Sympathy, and Care," Philosophical Analysis 98 (1998): 264-69;
52. see also David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart, "Sympathy and Approbation in Hume and Smith: A Solution to the Other Rational Species Problem," Economics and Philosophy 20 (2004): 331-50;
53. and finally, Eric Schliesser, "The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher: Smith's Reflections on Hume's Life," Hume Studies, 29 (2003): 327-62.
54. In Smith's political theory this is put in the service of some redistributionist policies; see Spencer J. Pack, Capitalism as a Moral System: Adam Smith's Critique of the Free Market Economy (Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1991),
55. Schliesser, Indispensable Hume, ch. 5,
56. and Fleischacker, Philosophical Companion, for details.