Leonidas Montes (Auth.) - Adam Smith in Context - A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2004) PDF

Adam Smith in Context
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Adam Smith in Context
A Critical Reassessment of Some
Central Components of His Thought
Leonidas Montes
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Santiago, Chile
© Leonidas Montes 2004
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Montes, Leonidas, 1966–
Adam Smith in context: a critical reassessment of some central
components of his thought/Leonidas Montes.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1–4039–1256–4 (cloth)
1. Smith, Adam, 1723–1790. 2. Economists – Great Britain. I. Title.
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For my parents
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements x
Abbreviations xii
1 General Introduction 1
1.1 Methodological framework 1
1.2 Summary of the book 8
2 Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins and the Debate 15

2.1 Introduction 15
2.2 A brief historical background 16
2.3 The origins of the ‘Smith Problem’ and some early
reactions 20
2.3.1 The German context and Das Adam Smith
Problem 20
2.3.2 Some early reactions 32
2.4 A review and assessment of the current debate 39
2.5 Sympathy and moral approbation 45
2.6 Conclusions 55
3 Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis Discourse and Civic Humanism 57

3.1 Introduction 57
3.2 The tradition of virtus 58
3.3 Smith’s vir virtutis narrative and the standing
army debate 61
3.4 The philosophical tradition behind the cardinal virtues 69
3.5 The Smithian virtues 75
3.5.1 Self-command 76
3.5.2 Prudence 86
3.5.3 Justice and beneficence 91
3.6 Conclusions 95
vii
viii Contents
4 Adam Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’: Its Meaning and

Philosophical Implications 97
4.1 Introduction 97
4.2 Propriety and its context 98
4.3 Propriety in the TMS 101
4.3.1 Propriety as the grounds for sympathy 101
4.3.2 Propriety and moral obligation 105
4.3.3 The nature of self-command 110
4.4 Philosophical implications 114
4.5 A reinterpretation of the classical source of Smith’s
‘propriety’ 122
4.6 Conclusions 128
5 Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues

Concerning General Economic Equilibrium Theory 130
5.1 Introduction 130
5.2 Was Newton a Newtonian? 132
5.3 Smithian Newtonianism 144
5.3.1 Some common views of Newton’s influence 144
5.3.2 Smith’s methodological stance and some
misinterpretations 146
5.4 Walras versus Smith 152
5.4.1 The Walrasian methodology of economics 152
5.4.2 Smith’s controversial chapter 7 of book I 156
5.5 Some possible methodological connections with
critical realism 159
5.6 Conclusions 162
6 Conclusions 165
Bibliography 168
Index 183
Preface
My interest in Adam Smith is quite recent. As a young scholar, I can only

acknowledge that what follows is no more than a footnote to the work of
all those intellectuals who have worked on Adam Smith. Mentioning all
the important past and present works on Smith would be a lengthy task,
but most of them will be present, explicitly or implicitly, throughout the
next chapters. Special mention is due to the editors of The Glasgow
Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, most notably
Andrew S. Skinner, David D. Raphael and Alec L. Macfie, who set a high
intellectual standard for those of us who have followed this challenging
path.
This book is a revised, expanded, updated and improved version of my
DPhil dissertation at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of
Cambridge. The chapters that follow share a common methodological
approach to different issues related to Adam Smith, as it is explained in
the following general introduction. My intention has been more focused
on context, and on reading the classical influences and some contempo-
raries of Adam Smith in order to establish plausible connections regard-
ing their influence, while challenging some widely held interpretations.
In brief, the main thrust of this book is to present a reconstruction of
some philosophical and methodological issues related to Adam Smith. Its
broader aim is to provide a better understanding of the Smithian foun-
dations of Political Economy, and therefore special emphasis is placed on
Smith’s ethical framework. In that sense I assume, in the tradition of
Smith, Keynes and others, that political economy is part of moral philos-
ophy, or at least that moral philosophy is necessary for economics.
Regarding the presentation of the book, after the general introduc-
tion, four chapters and some brief conclusions follow, but each chapter
can be read independently as a self-sustaining piece.
ix
Acknowledgements
My greatest debt are to Tony Lawson, who combining ‘the best head
joined to the best heart’ taught me how to face intellectual problems;
Geoff Harcourt, an example of academic ‘praiseworthiness’, who inspired
me in the history of economic thought, and taught me what academic
life is all about and how one should live it; and, Sheila Dow, who after
reading an earlier version of this book, warmly encouraged me to work
on it during that ‘cardinal’ moment. I have also profited greatly from
some conversations with Quentin Skinner, who has been very supportive
and encouraging in reading and commenting on part of this book. His
methodological approach to historical issues and his knowledge of the
subject will remain a source of inspiration. I have also greatly benefited
from stimulating dialogues with my friend Eric Nelson, who also read
some chapters of this book. Eric Schliesser not only read the whole man-
uscript, but greatly contributed to improve this book with his far-
reaching comments and appropriate criticisms.
I have also enjoyed endless discussions with Bob Rowthorn, whose
versatile interests and sharp opinions are always thought-provoking. In
addition, Ha-Joon Chang, my fellow Chilean Gabriel Palma, Warren
Samuels, Keith Tribe, Jerry Evensky, Glenn Hueckel, Deborah Redman
and Paul Ryan reminded me that economists can also think like the
political economists of the old days. Conversations and friendly discus-
sions with Emma Rothschild, Gay Meeks, Samuel Fleischacker, Knud
Haakonssen, Margaret Schabas, have been quite illuminating. In partic-
ular I am much indebted to Istvan Hont for his intellectual frankness,
his sharp criticism and his continuous and challenging encouragement.
Some colleagues have contributed to the shaping of this book through
comments, suggestions or criticisms. My warmest thanks to Roger
Backhouse, Marcelo Boeri, Vivienne Brown, Avi Cohen, John Dunn, Phil
Faulkner, Elias Khalil, Clive Lawson, David Levy, Peter Lipton, Deirdre
McCloskey, Adil Mouhammed, Ann Newton, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Sandra
Peart, Steve Pratten, Sir Martin Rees, Jochen Runde, Jonathan Scott,
Andrew Skinner, Oscar Velásquez, Alejandro Vigo, Donald Winch, Amos
Witzum, Jeffrey Young and Stefan Zabieglik.
Chapter 2 is an expanded version of an article that appeared in the
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 25, no. 1, and Chapter 5 is
a slightly modified version of a paper that was published by the Cambridge
x
Acknowledgements xi
Journal of Economics, vol. 27, no. 5. Earlier versions of Chapters 3 and 4

were presented and discussed at the annual History of Economics Society
Conferences in 2003 and 2002, respectively. I also appreciated the com-
ments of the referees of the abovementioned journals, as well as the dis-
cussants and participants in these conferences.
This book would not have been possible without the financial support I
received from the Chilean government, King’s College, Cambridge and the
Cambridge Political Economy Society. During the last year, Universidad
Adolfo Ibáñez has provided an ideal place for research, combining a won-
derful setting with an open and friendly academic atmosphere.
Finally I would like to acknowledge the continuous support and
warm encouragement throughout the process of gestation of this book
that I received from the editor Amanda Watkins. Also Mukesh V.S. did
an excellent job, and I am indebted to Sheeba Madhavan, Yegammai
Subramanian and Raji Nirmal for the editing and packaging of the title.
Abbreviations
I have used the LibertyClassics editions (Liberty Fund) of Smith’s works,

which are exact, although less expensive, photographic reproductions
of the editions published by Oxford University Press as the Glasgow
Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. I use its quotation
conventions with the following abbreviations:
TMS The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and

A. L. Macfie, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
WN An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited
by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Corr. Correspondence of Adam Smith, edited by E. C. Mossner and
I. S. Ross, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
LJ Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and
P. G. Stein, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
EPS Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by W. P. D. Wightman and
J. C. Bryce, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
LRBL Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by J. C. Bryce, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983.
The works of some classical authors have been quoted, and unless stated
otherwise, I have used editions from the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard
University Press. The following abbreviations have been adopted:
Ar.EN Aristotle’s Ethica Nichomachea

Ar.Pol Aristotle’s Politica
Cic.Div Cicero’s De Divinatione
Cic.Fin Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
Cic.Inv Cicero’s De Inventione
Cic.Off Cicero’s De Officiis
Cic.Or Cicero’s Orator
Cic.Tusc Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations
Pl.Lg Plato’s Leges
Pl.Rep Plato’s Respublica
Plut.Lives Plutarch’s Biographus et Philosophus
Plut.St Plutarch’s De Stoicorum Repugnantiis
Sen.Ben Seneca’s De Beneficiis
Sen.EM Seneca’s Epistulae Morales
X.Mem Xenophon’s Memorabilia
xii
1
General Introduction
1.1 Methodological framework
This book is the result of an intellectual journey, an expedition which

has led me into an area that I would describe as the history of ideas, an
interdisciplinary pursuit that includes history, philosophy, methodol-
ogy and, in my particular case, economics. I consider the history of ideas
to be an important way of understanding reality. It implies a particular
approach to the nature of things in terms of its emphasis on context,
and not only the text itself. In fact, there is a longstanding philosophi-
cal debate as to whether the historian of ideas should put greater empha-
sis on the text or the context. Some urge to ignore context altogether,
but I personally believe that it is difficult to gain a serious understand-
ing of a text without any consideration of the author’s circumstances.
Adam Smith, the subject of this book, clearly epitomises our modern
understanding of economics. One of the most important and intriguing
figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, he became famous with the pub-
lication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which reflects and is based
upon his moral philosophy lectures at Glasgow University.
Subsequently, in 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, was published. If the former situated Smith as an
important man of lettres, the latter won him an indisputable place in
history. But the importance of the TMS has been overshadowed by the
impact of the WN. Some have even wondered, what would have been of
the TMS if Smith had not published his WN. But this concern has
proved to be unwarranted. The TMS has been the object of an impres-
sive growth in academic research during the last years. This phenome-
non does not in any way mean that the study of the WN has been
1
2 Adam Smith in Context
exhausted, but simply evidences the fact that the TMS is a rich and
philosophically challenging work. In general, it is a sign that economics
and ethics are intertwined. As a result, today economists are paying
more attention to what Smith said in the TMS.
Smith’s influence, like that of any great thinker, has been enormous,
and diverse. Many current positions in economics not only adapt what
Smith said, but are also rather quick and uncritical in attempting to make
his words to fit into a particular framework of modern economic ideas.
Such a project, though possibly revealing, must involve more than the
selective quoting of phrases which seem to fit while disregarding the rest.
At the very least, it must rest on an attempt to understand Smith’s com-
plex conception as a whole. His legacy and the structure of his moral phi-
losophy lectures as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University,
comprising ‘theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy or
“expediency” ’ (EPS, pp. 274–5), reflect the range of his interests. The
widespread failure of most modern economists to appreciate this has led,
for example, to a biased conception of Adam Smith as the prophet of self-
interest and the forebear of neoclassical economics. Furthermore, on the
one hand, modern interpreters have fostered the familiar picture of
Smith as the ideologue of the economic foundations of capitalism. This
represents the most popular example of the numerous attempts to use
the father of our discipline as a means to an end. And on the other hand,
the alternative interpretation of Smith as a precursor of Marx, presup-
poses the same rational reconstruction. The history of ideas demands a
closer look at what actually influenced Smith’s thought, and the matter
of how we have received his influence, requires a more cautious
approach to what we think he would have thought today.
Retrospection, literally the act of looking back, is an intellectual exer-
cise that is in some senses similar to Smith’s sympathy. For Smith, sym-
pathy is not simply fellow feeling, as it demands a process of assessing
circumstances. Retrospection also requires an awareness of context. Just
as the impartial spectator is fundamental to understanding Smith’s con-
cept of sympathy, the significance of a text is also judged by an observer
who uncovers the meaning it had for the agent at the time of its writing.
That meaning, of course, is still relevant to us, but this impartial specta-
tor ought to assess the circumstances, changing place and situation, in
order to avoid being partial. A historian of economic thought, in my
view, is also like Smith’s impartial spectator, and the process of inter-
preting a text demands a sort of sympathetic process à la Smith.
Adam Smith has often been characterised as the father of liberalism. This
opinion, regardless of whether it is plausible or not (and I believe it is), uses
General Introduction 3
a framework that was not completely familiar to Smith himself. He

certainly had an idea of what it means to be a liberal, in the modern sense.
He even refers literally to the ‘liberal system’ (WN IV.v.b.39, p. 538),1 and
repeatedly stresses what he understands by perfect and natural liberty. But
what became of Smith’s liberalism, and we understand today by liberalism,
are different matters. It is not the question of the nature of liberalism, the
elusive issue of what it actually is, that concerns us here, but the simple
fact that our vantage point cannot completely reveal what Smith said, as
such a framework immediately gives a sense and a meaning to his legacy.
Our own standards cannot fully determine the meanings and intentions of
an author. This reductionism might simplify the task of the interpreter, but
risks misrepresenting the reality of an author and his or her legacy.2
The characterisation of Machiavelli as immoral or simply amoral, is a
wonderful example to illustrate the importance of the mistake of only
looking at the past through the eyes of the present, and also of the risk
of focusing mainly on one text. Is it possible to understand a writer like
Machiavelli without taking into account his life as a public servant, the
political events of Florence and Europe, the corpus of his writings
besides The Prince, the influence of the classics and what humanists were
writing at that time? It is difficult, indeed, and overlooking questions of
why and how Machiavelli said what he said, can lead to conclusions that
miss the real essence of his legacy. In context, the figure of Machiavelli
is far more complex and divergent from the common picture of the
‘teacher of evil’. Recovering the past is not only the exercise of inter-
preting it through the current social, cultural and political constructions
of our own minds, it also implies a thorough understanding of another
reality. Nor does it emerge from a literal understanding of the text only,
as historical interpretation involves more than what is simply manifest.
In brief, a careful reading of the legacy of an author in particular, and
history of ideas in general, should emphasise not only what the author
said, but why and how he said it, that is, text, context and language play a
significant and interdependent role. The success of intellectual history, in
1
Of course, what ‘liberal’ meant to Smith throughout his works, is very different
from what it means to us. It was mainly related to the Latin liberalis, not mean,
munificent or generous. However, in addition to the references to the ‘liberal
system’, while writing about Colbert in the chapter on the physiocrats, Smith
refers to the ‘liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice’ (WN IV.ix.3, p. 663),
and he also insists on ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty’
(WN IV.ix.51, p. 687).
2
From this point onward, I will avoid the he or she distinction, using simply a
general ‘he’ without any gender bias.
my opinion, lies in the combination of the specific weight of each

of these components. Emphasising only the text would run the risk of
reading an author as though the text were written by a contemporary.
Context and language matter. Focusing exclusively on the context might
mean missing the real essence of what the text says and what the author’s
intentions were in using particular words. Wittgenstein’s famous dictum
in Philosophical Investigations that ‘words are also deeds’, has had
a tremendous impact on philosophy and on the methodology of intellec-
tual history. It is a stubborn truth, apparently simple, but at the same time
deeply complex. Words do matter, and Chapters 3 and 4 of this book,
especially, reveal this concern. But an emphasis on hermeneutic
approaches only, would risk a process of decontextualisation in which the
author might disappear, in the face of the overwhelming and inevitably
subjective interpretative capacity of the reader.
What is said involves why and how it was said. The critical question for
the nature of what is said, implies an ontological approach to uncovering
reality. But this attempt is inadequate without a serious understanding of
the context, and the meaning of the text. What is said, why and how it is
said, are fundamental to our historical understanding. This trilogy repre-
sents a major concern in the development of the chapters that follow.
Jacques Derrida strongly questioned the role of textual interpretation,
since, according to him, it would be an error to believe in such a thing
as the meaning of a text; there are only different readings. The problems
of textual interpretation were soon overcome for some followers of the
hermeneutic revolution, or simply taken to an extreme for others, when
Michael Foucault announced the death of the author (Foucault, 1979,
pp. 141–60). This tradition, in my view, can mislead the objective of the
history of ideas. The nature of a text does matter, and we, as modest
readers, cannot just kill the author and become omnipotent readers.
I am not claiming that all hermeneutical attempts are useless. In fact, for
those of us involved in Smith scholarship, Vivienne Brown’s contribu-
tions are a good example of how original insights can emerge from
a dialogical approach that places the emphasis on how to read.3
Methodologically, for the interpreter there is always some truth that
waits to be uncovered. Different stories can be told about a text, but as
Quentin Skinner has argued, the writing of history ‘cannot simply
3
Vivienne Brown (1991, 1994) proposes a dialogical approach to interpret and
read Adam Smith. Recently Jan Peil (1999) has followed a more radical, and in
my view, more unsuccesful, hermeneutical approach. Curiously this book does
not even mention Brown’s pioneering work on how to interpret Smith.
consist of stories: a further feature of historical stories is that they are

supposed to track the truth’ (2002, p. 78).
To gain a better understanding of Smith, in my view, it is essential not
only to consider his writings as a whole, but also to assess them within
the context of his time, in particular within the fascinating context of
the Scottish Enlightenment. This has been accomplished by many of the
authorities who have illuminated our understanding of Smith and his
epoch, but such an endeavour also necessitates a recovery of the influ-
ence of the classical sources, which were widely known by the Scottish
philosophers. Although my main interest is in the relevance of Smith’s
writings for today, my position is that if some implications can be drawn
for the present and the future, they can only be uncovered on the basis
of a thorough understanding of Smith’s context, and, in particular, of the
classical influences that were so relevant during the eighteenth century.
Having already briefly referred to the efforts of many economists to
force Smith into a modern framework (and Chapter 5 of this book is a
good example of this exercise), I must acknowledge that I too, in my
assessment of Smith, have been influenced by a modern perspective and
orientation in economic methodology. I refer to that of critical realism.
Indeed, I even argue, in Chapter 5 of this book, that Smith’s project and
critical realism share a similar orientation (see Section 5.5). Although it
would be beyond the scope of this book to explain critical realism here,
one particular message of this movement in economics is its concern
with the nature of things, and the acceptance of the world as a open sys-
tem, which entails plurality, but does not deny the existence of truth.
Critical realism has provided me with a useful perspective and orienta-
tion from which to look at reality, and its ontological perspective, the
insistence on the question about the nature of things, is the starting
point of my inquiries on Adam Smith and his context.
I must emphasise though, that if the ontological focus of critical
realism – in other words, the concern with the nature of things – has
influenced my journey, the chapters which follow are not ontologically
explicit. However, all four chapters represent, paraphrasing Smith, ‘an
inquiry into the nature and the causes’ of certain phenomena: a prob-
lem (Chapter 2 dealing with Das Adam Smith Problem), a concept
(Chapter 3 investigating self-command and Chapter 4 examining
Smith’s ‘propriety’) or an interpretation (Chapter 5 questioning the
nature of the widely accepted view of Smith’s Newtonianism). It is
the perspective and critical orientation behind this research that
I attribute to critical realism. This indeed provides one central reason for
using the word ‘critical’ in the subtitle of the book. It must be
understood not only in its vernacular sense, but also in its grand Kantian
sense of transcending through an investigation of the nature of things.
All four chapters explore the nature of issues related to Smith in a ‘critical’
way. And all, I believe and hope, lead to original conclusions.
But if my perspective is ontologically informed and ‘critical’, my
method is ultimately historical. The historiographical orientation that
emphasises the intentions of the author – what they were doing while
they were writing – provides an essential, if also fascinating, framework
for understanding historical issues (which are necessarily philosophi-
cal), thus allowing an interpretation of the meaning of the text. As
I have already made explicit, Quentin Skinner’s seminal ‘Meaning and
understanding in the history of ideas’4 placed the importance of the
analysis on what an author may have intended or meant. His contribu-
tions to the methodology of intellectual history have produced amazing
results, but among historians of economic thought, his approach has
been rather neglected.5
Therefore, in the following chapters, I have attempted to recover
a text as an intended act of communication, written at a particular time
for the specific audience the author had in mind, giving special rele-
vance to the influences that might have shaped the author in using
some key concepts. According to Quentin Skinner, ‘if we wish to under-
stand any such text, we must be able to give an account not merely of
the meaning of what was said, but also of what the writer in question
may have meant by saying what was said’ (2002, p. 79). Meanings and
intentions are central components in the pursuit of historical truth. But
this exercise not only demands an understanding of the nature of the
text and its context, as ‘the study of what someone says can never be
a sufficient guide to understanding what was meant … We need, that is,
4
This classic paper was originally published in History and Theory in 1969.
Quentin Skinner’s recent Visions of Politics: Regarding Method (2002), includes
a shorter and revised version of that article. The same volume includes adapted
and developed versions of his most important contributions to the debate on
the methodology of intellectual history. For a sample of the debate this
approach has triggered in intellectual history, see Tully (1988).
5
Of course Donald Winch is much indebted to this approach, and Knud
Haakonsen’s serious emphasis on context shares some methodological similarities
with Quentin Skinner’s project. Hont and Ignatieff’s collection of essays in
Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment
(1983), is an excellent example of this historical approach. One recent
exception in the literature on the history of economic thought which explicitly
mentions, and applies, Skinner’s methodology is Dow (2002). In addition,
Blaug (2001) discusses, in a similar vein, the importance of context.
to grasp not merely what people are saying but also what they are doing
in saying it … As well as grasping the meaning of what they said, we need
at the same time to understand what they meant by saying it’ (2002,
p. 82). Once again Wittgenstein’s dictum is present. Text and context
interact while the author’s words imply a meaning and an intention
reflected in the act of writing at a particular time.
The question of where to draw the line between an approach that
presupposes the importance of hermeneutics, dusting off what other
authors have already said, is indeed, difficult. Subjectivism is certainly
inevitable, but an ontological approach helps the inquiry by forcing the
intellectual pursuit to keep sight of reality. In other words, at the very
least the author does not disappear in the act of reading, nor does the
existence of his ideas. The author’s intentions, reflected in the act of
writing, remain in the text, but within his context. My ontological
orientation assumes the importance of context, attempting to reach that
subtle combination of text and context.6 It is a dialectical exercise that it
is not incompatible with the ontological approach I have endorsed.
Understanding the nature of a problem, a concept or an interpretation
is also a historical pursuit. Therefore, I believe that both methodological
positions – the ontological and the historical one that I aim to follow –
complement and reinforce each other.
During the last four years, scholars interested in Adam Smith have
witnessed the appearance of different books and a large number of arti-
cles.7 It would take too long to mention all of the latter, but it is worth
mentioning a sample of the former. In 1999, Jan Peil published his Adam
Smith and Economic Science: A Methodological Reinterpretation, proposing a
hermeneutical model to reinterpret Smith’s texts. That same year,
Charles Griswold published his influential Adam Smith and the Virtues of
Enlightenment, an important work that addresses some issues that are
6
But there is another issue related to the relationship between text and context.
Donald Winch, acknowledging ‘[t]he indispensability of context to the
establishment of the meaning of texts’ stresses that he works from text to
context, and not the other way around, as ‘[t]he danger of an ideological
approach which moves from collective context to text is a tendency to stress
correspondences while overlooking dissonances’ (Winch, 1983, p. 269). Winch
is concerned about context determining text. It is not precedence which is at
issue, but rather pre-eminence. But I believe there is a permanent dialectical
relationship between text and context in which both interact, and neither text
nor context, determines the other.
7
The new Adam Smith Society Newsletter provides an updated summary of
scholarship on Adam Smith. It also announces the publication of The
Adam Smith Review.
mostly ignored in the literature, pointing out some persuasive links with
the classics. Also, Samuel Fleischacker published his excellent A Third
Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith, bring-
ing our attention back to the relationship between these two thinkers,
and pointing out its relevance for our own times. Two years later, Emma
Rothschild published her Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet,
and the Enlightenment, a suggestive book that underlines the importance
of context. That year Gloria Vivenza’s long awaited translation of her
Adam Smith e la Cultura Classica also appeared in English, as Adam Smith
and the Classics, with a new Postcript which basically confirms her earlier
conclusions.8 In 2002, James Otteson brought out his Adam Smith’s
Marketplace of Life, providing a persuasive view of how to look at Smith
and his relevance today. The same year, Knud Haakonssen edited and
introduced the new Cambridge edition of the TMS and a new collection
of essays in the Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, edited by the same
author, is slated to come out shortly.
All these books use different methodological approaches and show
a diversity of vantage points, taking on different issues related to Adam
Smith. All of them, however, reflect a single simple phenomenon: inter-
est in Smith has not dwindled, on the contrary, it is thriving.9
1.2 Summary of the book
At the beginning of this journey, my primary concern was to understand

Smith’s concepts of self-interest and sympathy. Both concepts, in the
hands of Smith, have a distinctive and original meaning for the modern
reader, although Smith relies heavily upon the classical tradition,
especially the Stoics (oikeíosis and sumpátheia, respectively). Today, the
8
I am sure that Vivenza’s contribution, now available to the English-speaking
community, will trigger a debate on this important aspect of Smith’s scholarship
that has been unduly neglected. Chapters 3 and 4 of this book deal with some
related issues.
9
Joseph Cropsey’s classic Polity and Economy (1957) was reprinted in 2001, Hont
and Ignatieff’s excellent collection of essays Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of
Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983), was digitally reprinted in
2001 and Haakonssen’s authoritative The Science of a Legislator: The Natural
Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith, was also digitally reprinted in
1999. In addition, in 2000 Mizuta published an updated Adam Smith’s Library.
A Catalogue, Haakonssen and Skinner published the Index to the Works of Adam
Smith (2001), and Tribe and Mizuta recently published a Critical Bibliography of
Adam Smith (2002).
familiar picture of Smith as the paradigmatic precursor of the doctrine of

self-interest, is widely acknowledged to be a caricature of major propor-
tions. But there is still room for understanding Smith’s concept of
sympathy. I believe that sympathy for Smith is not simply, à la Hume,
a means of communication, as has been argued by some commentators.
For Smith, sympathy is more complex. It is not only strictly linked to
the impartial spectator, especially the ‘supposed’ impartial spectator
that represents our inner conscience, but also to the sense of propriety
and the fundamental virtue of self-command. In my view, it is this triad
(supposed impartial spectator,10 propriety and self-command) that
constitutes another fundamental component of Smith’s sympathetic
process. Thus one aim of the next three chapters of this book is to
reconstruct sympathy as the foundation of Smith’s moral philosophy.
In this setting, an obligatory detour for anyone interested in the rela-
tionship between self-interest and sympathy, and, a fortiori, the nexus
between TMS and WN, is the famous Das Adam Smith Problem, the sub-
ject of Chapter 2. My impression from the start was that the literature on
this issue is insufficient in some aspects. First, I found that the treatment
of the sources that shaped the ‘Smith Problem’ was mostly perfunctory;
second, the question as to why the Problem emerged in Germany had
not been fully explored. In particular, being aware of the complex social,
political, economic and intellectual circumstances that surrounded the
shaping of the German Historical School, I thought that one simple and
very plausible explanation for understanding the rather generalised
anti-Smithian sentiment, was not only the German Historical School’s
reaction to the prevalent universal and deductive political economy of
the time, of which Smith was considered the father, but also the possi-
bility of an anti-British feeling occasioned by their hegemonic role in
the world trade and manufacture. This plausible explanation is reflected
in an interesting German intellectual tradition which precedes and
influences the German unification, and which shaped the formation of
the German Historical School. This intellectual context is a fascinating
chapter in the history of economic thought, that has been unduly neg-
lected, in spite of its contemporary implications. In fact, the German
Historical School’s critique of the then prevalent way of doing economics
shares many features with certain current dissident positions. But the
10
To avoid misinterpretations hereafter, ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ that
conforms with this triad must be understood as the ‘man within’, especially
throughout Chapter 4.
critique is also disconcerting, and at times unfair, especially when one

reads some of the odd comments about Adam Smith.
In addition to the perfunctory way in which the origins and causes of
Das Adam Smith Problem have been treated, the immediate reactions to
the Problem are a subject that has been almost completely ignored in the
literature, despite the fact that these reactions continue to underpin cur-
rent approaches to the ‘Smith Problem’.
Finally, it was surprising to discover that within the current debate
one could group three stages of almost sequential approaches to the
Problem. The revival of Das Adam Smith Problem was triggered by
the 1976 Oxford University Press Glasgow Edition of the TMS, in which
the editors, David D. Raphael and Alec. A. Macfie, too readily dismissed the
Problem as a ‘pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding’
(TMS intr., p. 20). Subsequently, some scholars began to question and to
think further about the Problem. I believe that Haakonssen (1981) best
exemplifies this phenomenon. In his influential The Science of a Legislator.
The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith, Haakonssen
referred to the problem as ‘that old hobby-horse’ (ibid., p. 197, note 19),
but in his introduction to the new Cambridge University Press edition of
Smith’s TMS, he concludes by saying that the problem ‘is still good for
another round’ (Smith, 2002 [1759], p. xxiv). The idea that the Problem is
worth looking at, seems plausible to me, as it simply encompasses the
intricate relationship between ethics and economics. But my claim is not
that there is a ‘Smith Problem’, as I agree with the traditional group of
scholars for whom Smith’s works form part of a system, and therefore the
TMS and WN should be read as part of that system.
While familiarising myself with the current positions on the ‘Smith
Problem’, I came across another problem, one related to the under-
standing of Smith’s concept of sympathy. The traditional Das Adam
Smith Problem, as a simple change of mind, proved wrong after Cannan
published the first set of Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence. But regarding
the consistency issue between the TMS and WN, that is, the apparent
divergence between sympathy and self-interest, it is generally accepted
that sympathy is not a motive to action, as self-interest is. The argument
is that ‘[s]ympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement’
(TMS intr., p. 21, emphasis in the original). It is correct that the social
nature of Smith’s ethics evolves around the idea of moral approbation,
but in my view, a proper understanding of Smith’s sympathetic process
implies a broader understanding of sympathy. This argument has led me
into endless discussions with colleagues, but I must stress that I am not
claiming that the editors of the 1976 TMS are wrong in their
understanding of sympathy, but simply that there is a point worth

looking at here. Recalling the triad composed of the supposed impartial
spectator, propriety and self-command, which the next three chapters
analyse, and placing it under the broader umbrella of sympathy, we
must first understand the uniqueness of Smith’s concepts in order to
properly understand what sympathy is. The troubling question, of
course, is the sense in which we are to understand the capacity for sym-
pathy as a ‘motive to action’. To answer this question with its opposite,
namely, in what sense we are not to understand sympathy as a ‘motive
to action’, is not satisfactory. But a proper understanding of Smith’s con-
cept of propriety and self-command leads, in my view, to a feasible
answer. Chapters 3 and 4 delve into this issue in order to complement
the argument at which I briefly hint at in the last section of Chapter 2.
The thrust of the sympathetic process that I try to uncover is that it
grants moral autonomy to the agent.
In Chapter 3, I examine the nature of self-command, in my opinion
the most important Smithian virtue. But in so doing, I develop my argu-
ment within the intuition of a dialogue between commerce and virtue,
that is, uncovering the civic humanism that still pervades Smith’s
thought. In general, the literature has privileged the natural jurispru-
dential law tradition in interpreting Smith. But how Smith inherits the
tradition of civic humanism is a matter that has been almost completely
neglected and sometimes bluntly dismissed. I re-examine Smith’s posi-
tion in the militia-standing army debate, concluding that if he endorsed
the cause of the standing army, this was done within the framework of
a clear civic humanist language in which words like manliness, coward
and effeminate appear quite often.
Next, I turn to the analysis of Smith’s four principal virtues, as it is my
opinion that his late addition of part VI of the TMS, entitled ‘Of the
Character of Virtues’, represents a shift towards an ethic of virtues. I
trace the tradition of the cardinal virtues in order to understand the clas-
sical forebears of the four Smithian virtues. Although Smith defines jus-
tice as a negative virtue, prudence as an inferior virtue and beneficence
in its broad literal sense of doing good to others, the nature of self-
command seems elusive. It has been traditionally argued that it is a Stoic
virtue, exclusively related to the control of passions. This interpretation,
however, is mistaken. The virtue of self-command is also pervasively
linked to the vir virtutis tradition. It is an expression of the classical virtus
that is recovered in the Rennaisance as virtù. In this sense it is linked to
the cardinal virtue of fortitudo, courage, as manly prowess in battle.
Smith gives abundant evidence for this interpretation. However, there is
one Socratic virtue that definitely corresponds to Smith’s broad defini-

tion of self-command: the Greek virtue of en-kráteia, literally the
command of oneself, which was an important classical virtue with
which Smith was undoubtedly well acquainted. This discovery has
important consequences, as enkráteia is also traditionally related to the
cardinal virtue of sophrosúne, implying that self-command is not only
a negative virtue, but also a positive one.
Chapter 4, perhaps the most philosophical, examines Smith’s concept
of ‘propriety’. I argue that, for Smith, ‘propriety’ has a distinctive philo-
sophical meaning, especially when it is considered from the perspective
of self-command and the supposed impartial spectator, as part of
Smith’s fundamental moral triad (propriety, impartial spectator and self-
command). Initially, I was surprised by the frequency of the word ‘pro-
priety’ in the TMS, as it appears more often than sympathy. So my
question became: what is the meaning of ‘propriety’ for Smith? He used
the concept in many ways. First, he used it as the stage prior to attaining
a concordance of sentiments, as the necessary step before reaching
mutual sympathy, which is the canonical understanding of ‘propriety’.
But he also used it as an expression of good manners, as the important
eighteenth-century idea of ‘politeness’. Yet Smith also used ‘propriety’ in
relation to moral motivation. More importantly, the sense of ‘propriety’
is closely linked to the virtue of self-command. If beneficence, prudence
and justice are judged by their consequences, entailing either merit or
demerit, it is the supposed impartial spectator that judges self-
command, as it relates to ‘propriety’. The examples Smith gives associ-
ating propriety and self-command, demonstrate the fact that for him
moral actions are not simply judged by their consequences, but more
importantly, by the motives for which they were undertaken. This is
extremely important, as it implies that Smith is not a proto-utilitarian,
as has been suggested by some scholars. Moreover, I argue that Smith is
anticipating some features of Kant’s ethics. To that end, I give textual
evidence that confirms Smith’s emphasis on duties when referring to
propriety. For Smith, ‘propriety’ relates to Cicero’s officia, and not to his
decorum, as has been accepted by those few scholars who have attempted
to trace Smith’s classical influences. This emphasis on duties situates
Smith on a moral ground that enjoys greater proximity to Kant, than to
any form of utilitarianism.
Chapters 3 and 4 shed light upon the nature of self-command and
propriety, as part of the moral triad I explore. A better understanding of
self-command and propriety has consequences for Smith’s sympathy.
A broader concept of sympathy, in turn presupposes a proper
understanding of this triad. Although much has been written about the
supposed impartial spectator, the sense of propriety and the real nature
of self-command are questions that have been relatively neglected. In
this light, Smith’s sympathetic process acquires a new dimension, as
granting moral autonomy to human beings necessarily implies that we
ought to consider sympathy also as a motive to action, since the sense of
propriety implies a sense of duty underpinned by self-command, the
foundation of moral conduct.
Finally, Chapter 5 provides a clear example of the risks involved in
looking at Adam Smith through the eyes of modern economics.
Mainstream economists sometimes quote one or two sentences of
Smith, usually out of context, in order to give their findings greater pres-
tige. Yet there is also a generalised view among economists that Smith is
the forebear, if not the founder, of general economic equilibrium theory.
The invisible hand is held to be the metaphor par excellence, that
reflects the market mechanism, and Smith’s account of prices in chapter
VII of the first book of the WN, would theoretically confirm the intu-
ition behind his famous metaphor. In addition, it has been generally
argued that Newton’s influence on Smith led him to believe in this har-
monious order. Evidence of Smith’s admiration for Newton’s achieve-
ments would reinforce this argument. Although some authors have
convincingly argued against the view of Smith as the father of general
economic equilibrium theory (see especially Blaug, 1997; Winch, 1997),
to my knowledge the nature of Newton’s influence on Smith is a subject
that has only received cursory treatment.
Newton’s philosophy of science is very complex, but it does not nec-
essarily foster an axiomatic deductive approach to reality, to be emu-
lated by economic theory. This, in my view, is simply a consequence of
the spectacular nature of Newton’s discoveries. Newton’s image as the
father of the Age of Reason was accompanied, I suggest, by a particular
methodological position that became accepted from the French
Enlightenment onward, that is, a positivistic interpretation of Newton’s
methodology. But the real Newtonian method emphasises the method
of resolution (analysis) as prior to the method of composition (synthe-
sis). The Scottish Enlightenment clearly perceived this distinction. I
argue that the overemphasis on reason and deduction is a consequence
of focusing on Newton’s spectacular results and not a consequence of
his actual method.
This intuition has some important implications for our understanding
of Newton’s methodology, and any kind of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’.
Smith’s aim was to uncover the concealed connections, and for this
purpose neither mathematics nor pure deduction constituted the only

method nor the most appropriate one. In fact, the architect of general
economic equilibrium theory is Leòn Walras. But one feature of his
philosophical thought that has been almost completely ignored, is that
Walras considered himself to be an idealist. By showing that Smith was
a realist, Walras would be in radical opposition to Smith’s view of the
world in general, and to political economy in particular. Smith’s realism
allows me to state some possible connections between his methodolog-
ical approach and critical realism. Therefore the view of Smith as the
father of general economic equilibrium theory is mistaken, ironically
because his Newtonianism was probably closer to the actual nature of
Newton’s methodology.
In the last section of this book, Chapter 6, I briefly underline some
conclusions.
2
Das Adam Smith Problem:
Its Origins and the Debate
2.1 Introduction
Scholars have long been interested in the apparent dichotomy between

sympathy and self-interest in Smith. The question of the consistency
between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations – the famous Das Adam Smith Problem – is
definitely still relevant for anyone attracted to Smith scholarship.
Although there is some agreement that the two works are consistent
and, furthermore, parts of an incomplete system, it seems that the
Problem continues to attract interest, not only for its historical and
philosophical appeal, but also perhaps for its implications for the
current economics and ethics debate.
This chapter is structured as follows. In the next section some basic
historical facts about Adam Smith will be briefly revisited in order to
establish the context of the formal debate on Das Adam Smith Problem.
Section 2.3 will trace the shaping and early sources of the alleged
Problem in Germany. I argue that, well before the formation of the
German Historical School, the economic hegemony of Great Britain
might have played an important role shaping the reception of Smith in
Germany as the founder of the school of self-interest and laissez faire.
Then, after uncovering the sources of Das Adam Smith Problem, the views
of two very influential historians of the last half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, that is, Henry Thomas Buckle (History of Civilisation in England,
published originally in two volumes in 1857 and 1861) and Leslie
Stephen (History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 1876),
15
together with some early reactions to the Problem, are briefly analysed as
a necessary background for understanding later positions. Section 2.4 of
this chapter provides a concise review and critical assessment of the cur-
rent debate on Das Adam Smith Problem. I identify three stages in the
‘Smith Problem’ debate during the last quarter of the twentieth century:
(i) as radically surmounted, (ii) as an issue that must not be overlooked
and then (iii) simply as a problem for which there are either only partial
solutions or definitely no solution. The editors of the 1976 Glasgow
Edition of the TMS, David Raphael and Alec Macfie (Smith, 1984 [1759]),
triggered the first stage by categorically dismissing Das Adam Smith
Problem as ‘a pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstand-
ing’ (TMS intr. p. 20). In the second stage, Richard Teichgraeber stated
that the treatment of it had been ‘perfunctory’ (1981 p. 106) and Laurence
Dickey considered that the Problem ‘is still very much alive today’ (1986,
p. 609), setting in motion a succession of novel approaches that implic-
itly or explicitly suggested that Das Adam Smith Problem ought not be
overlooked. Finally, in the third stage, Pack (1997) has defended the idea
of ‘partial resolutions’, and recently Otteson (2000) has argued for the
‘real’ Adam Smith Problem, contending that some proposed explanations
for solving it rest on insufficient grounds.1
In Section 2.5 of this chapter the concept of sympathy is briefly
reassessed. I shall contend, pace the editors of the Glasgow Edition of the
TMS, and specifically Raphael (1985), that by suggesting that ‘misunder-
standing’ the meaning of sympathy was the cause of the ‘Smith Problem’,
and by too readily dismissing sympathy as a motive for action, they have
failed to understand Smith’s broader sympathetic process. To understand
sympathy as being merely related to moral judgement narrows Smith’s
concept of this principle as a capacity and disposition. The sympathetic
process, in its broad sense, can and ought to be understood as fundamen-
tal to moral judgement and, more importantly, to morality itself, as a
motivation for action that does not entail a simple means-to-ends per-
spective towards the concordance of sentiments, but also a sense of moral
autonomy. Finally in Section 2.6, I present a brief conclusion for this chap-
ter underlining the social nature of the Smithian sympathetic process.
2.2 A brief historical background
Between 1752 and the beginning of 1764, Adam Smith was Professor of
Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University. His lectures on this subject, as
1
Although recently Otteson (2002) has sketched a new solution to the Problem.
Das Adam Smith Problem 17
reported by his student and friend John Millar, basically comprised natu-
ral theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy (the last called
expediency, see EPS, pp. 274–5). They constitute the basis not only for his
TMS, but also for his influential WN. In fact, the eleventh British edition
of the WN, published in 1803, with an introduction by William Playfair
(1759–1823), already explicitly acknowledged that ‘[i]t was during his
Professorship that he published the first edition of the Theory of Moral
Sentiments … and it was then also that he probably collected many of the
materials, and laid the plan for the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations’ (2000 [1803], p. 9). This evidence would be ignored by
the German proponents of the formal Das Adam Smith Problem.
Smith’s intellectual prestige initially derived from his lectures at
Glasgow and the favourable reception of the TMS. Early in 1764 he set off
for France, invited to be personal tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch. Mainly
owing to Hume’s influence, Smith had the chance to meet Helvetius,
Holbach, D’Alambert, Turgot, Voltaire2 and Quesnay to whom, according
to his early biographer Dugald Stewart, ‘Mr. Smith had once an intention
(as he told me himself) to have inscribed to him his “Wealth of Nations”’
(EPS, p. 304). In the summer of 1764 Smith mentioned to Hume that he
felt homesick and thus had ‘begun to write a book in order to pass away
the time’ (Corr., p. 102), probably the germ of the WN. The death of the
Duke’s brother forced them to return after almost three years abroad, and
Smith retired, with the exception of a few visits to London and
Edinburgh, to his birth town of Kirkcaldy, where he remained for the next
10 years until he published the WN.3 Finally, in 1776, the WN appeared
and Hume congratulated Smith with his famous letter: ‘Euge! Belle!
2
The poet Samuel Rogers not only ventured to treat Voltaire as a superficial
writer, triggering Smith’s anger (striking the table with his hand Smith said,
‘there has been but one Voltaire’ (Clayden, 1887, p. 111) ), but also reported
that Smith ‘had been in Voltaire’s company five or six times’ (ibid., p. 95).
Faujas de Saint Fond, in his A Journey through England and Scotland to the
Hebrides in 1784, reports that ‘[t]he animation of his [Smith’s] features was strik-
ing, when he spoke of Voltaire, whom he had known and whom he greatly
liked’ (Saint Fond, 1907, p. 245). There is also a letter to Smith from the niece,
and later mistress of Voltaire, Marie Louise Denis, who sends him Voltaire’s
respects (Corr., p. 110). On Smith’s acquaintance with Voltaire, see also Rae
(1965 [1895], pp. 188–93) and Ross (1995, pp. 208 and 399).
3
Smith’s intellectual seclusion animated Hume to write to him: ‘I shall not take
any Excuse from your own State of Health, which I suppose only Subterfuges
invented by Indolence and Love of Solitude. Indeed, my Dear Smith, if you
continue to hearken to Complaints of this Nature, you will cut Yourself out
entirely from human Society, to the great Loss of both Parties’ (Corr., p. 160).
Dear Mr. Smith: I am much pleased with your performance’, acknowledg-

ing after some comments ‘but these, and a hundred other points, are fit
only to be discussed in conversation. I hope it will be soon; for I am in a
very bad state of health, and cannot afford a long delay’ (Corr., pp. 186–7).
Nearly five months later, Hume, probably Smith’s best friend and ‘by far
the most illustrious philosopher’ (WN V.i.g.3, p. 790), died peacefully.4
In 1777 Smith, abandoning his condition of ‘that unprosperous race of
men commonly called men of letters’ (WN I.x.c.37, p. 148), was appointed
to the Board of Customs at Edinburgh, a profitable position that he
retained until his death, at a cost: ‘my present situation is therefore fully as
affluent as I could wish it to be. The only thing I regret in it is the inter-
ruptions to my literary pursuits, which the duties of my office necessarily
occasion’ (Corr., p. 253).5 Early in 1785 Smith had agreed to publish a sixth
edition of the TMS, about which he said, ‘I have a few alterations to make
of no great consequence’ (Corr., p. 281), but almost three years later he
made a more realistic assessment of the size of this task: ‘I have now taken
leave of my Colleagues for four months and I am at present giving the
most intense application. My subject is the theory of moral Sentiments to all
parts of which I am making many additions and corrections’ (Corr.,
p. 310). After a year of ‘labouring very hard in preparing the proposed new
edition’ (Corr., p. 319), Smith apologised to his editor: ‘I am very much
ashamed of this delay; but the subject has grown upon me’ (Corr., p. 321).
During Smith’s lifetime, the TMS went through six editions (1759,
1761, 1767, 1774, 1781 and 1790, which appeared a few weeks before
his death), and the WN went through five (1776, 1778, 1784, 1786 and
1789). Although the two last lifetime editions of the WN did not suffer
any major alterations,6 the sixth edition of the TMS contained substantial
4
Smith’s beautiful account of his friend’s death is expressed in a letter to his
editor William Strahan (Corr., pp. 217–21), which was published soon after
Hume’s death, provoking a reaction from religious quarters as a consequence of
Hume’s skeptical views (Smith reports that that ‘very harmless Sheet of paper …
brought upon me ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made
upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain’ (Corr., p. 251) ). Probably
for that reason, against Hume’s will, Smith did not want to publish posthu-
mously his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (cf. Corr., pp. 211–12).
5
Anderson et al., (1985) investigate the 12 years Smith spent at the customs
service concluding that he took it seriously, and not simply as a sinecure. They
also show that there is no evidence to defend the thesis that Smith would have
promoted any de-regulatory policies.
6
Some ‘Additions and Corrections’ (approximately 24 000 words) to the WN
were added to the third edition in 1784, but for the fourth and subsequent
editions, Smith acknowledges in the Preface ‘no alterations of any kind’.
revisions and extensive additions. Indeed, Smith far exceeded his plan
of a ‘few alterations’, as almost one third of the definitive TMS corre-
sponds to his late work. But it is important to point out that there ‘is
development but no fundamental alteration’ (TMS intr., p. 20) in the
last edition, though this development is, in my opinion, significant.7 It
is noteworthy that Smith dedicated the last years of his life to the TMS,
ignoring further revision to his treatise on political economy. This is
important, especially considering that within the academic discipline of
economics the TMS has been overshadowed by the WN.8 Modern econ-
omists have lost sight of the importance of the TMS, inheriting a notion
of self-interest devoid of its ethical framework. For example, Galbraith
disregards the TMS as ‘a work now largely forgotten and largely
antecedent to his interest in Political Economy’ (1989 [1987], p. 60), and
Stigler, simply ignoring the TMS, narrowly conceives self-interest as ‘the
crown jewel’ of the WN that has ‘became, and remains to this day, the
foundation of the theory of the allocation of resources’ (1982, p. 147).
7
Dickey (1986) has underlined clear differences between the first and the sixth
edition. Eckstein (2000 [1926]), in his excellent introduction to the 1926
German translation of the TMS, compared Smith’s six lifetime editions. In my
view this development is significant, especially regarding his completely new
addition of Part VI, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, as will be suggested in
Chapter 4. Therefore I disagree with authors such as James Otteson who, in his
very recent Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (2002), while acknowledging dif-
ferences between the sixth and the other editions, believes that ‘the additions
and revisions [to the sixth edition of the TMS] mainly concern less important
details and cosmetic aspects of the presentation’ (ibid., p. 14).
8
Not surprisingly, during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth
century, the TMS only ‘had four reprint editions without new introductions or
notes’ (Mizuta, 2000, vol. I, p. xxvi), and the WN had more than 10. Moreover,
in the twentieth century, up to the publication in 1976 of the Glasgow Edition
of the TMS, there is not any edition published in Great Britain, but three in
America in 1966, 1969 and 1971 (see Tribe and Mizuta, 2002, pp. 276–308).
Ironically it seems that Smith was not quite confident about the WN’s recep-
tion. In a letter to his editor, William Strahan, two months before the appear-
ance of the WN’s second edition, Smith was anxious to know ‘Does it sell well?
Does it sell at all?’ (Corr., p. 229) and almost two years later, requesting three
copies of his second edition, he jests ‘I suspect I am now almost your only cus-
tomer for my own book’ (Corr., p. 249). In general, the issue of the WN’s early
influence is still controversial. For example Richard Teichgraeber considers that
‘the notion that the Wealth of Nations had an immediate impact on its time cer-
tainly ought to be put at rest’ (1987, p. 364). See also Rothschild (1992; 2001,
pp. 52–71) and Rashid (1998).
2.3 The origins of the ‘Smith Problem’ and

some early reactions
2.3.1 The German context and Das Adam Smith Problem

The famous Adam Smith Problem,9 put forward by the German Historical
School, is still a subject of controversy. The Problem as such states that
there is an irreconcilable difference or inconsistency between the TMS,
with its sympathy-based concept of human nature, and the WN,
founded on an egoistic theory of self-interest. It is true that self-interest
is an important motive in both works, but it is at least intriguing that
nowhere in the WN Smith refers to sympathy, neither does he emphasise
the four Smithian virtues (prudence, justice, benevolence and self-
command), so prominent in the last edition of his TMS. Yet if this and
other puzzles add to the relevance of the Problem, its nature must be
combined with an interpretation on why and how it actually emerged.
Although the German context during the first half of the nineteenth
century is extremely complex in its political and social dimensions, the
shaping of the ‘Smith Problem’ can also be seen as the result of an intel-
lectual context hostile to the British laissez faire doctrine that influenced
not only some important predecessors of the German Historical School,
but also its foremost representatives. Let me briefly elaborate this point.
A year after the publication of the WN in English, and a few months
after the publication of the first volume of Johann Friedrich Schiller’s
German translation,10 the reviewer Johann Georg Heinrich Feder
(1740–1821), who taught at Göttingen, wrote in the Göttingische gelehrte
Anzeigen (10 March, 1777):
On the whole Dr. Smith seems to trust too much to the harmony of
individual interests as producing naturally by their free action general
good. Many of his propositions cannot be accepted as principles of
universal policy; they are adapted only to a particular stage of
industry, wealth, and civilisation. (Quoted in Cohn 2000 [1873],
p. 64, emphasis in the original)
9
For a brief historical account of Das Adam Smith Problem see (TMS intr., pp.
20–5) and Raphael (1985, pp. 87–90). Other basic sources are Oncken (1897,
2000 [1898]), Morrow (1969 [1923], 1927), Nieli (1986, pp. 612–16) and
Otteson (2002, pp. 134–6). On the emergence of the Problem, see Tribe and
Mizuta (2002, pp. 137–48) and for a very good account of the canons in the
debate on the problem see Peters-Fransen (2001).
10
Books I, II and III of the WN appeared translated into German the same year of
the original publication. The second volume (Books IV and V) of Schiller’s
translation appeared in 1778.
This early assessment of the WN reflects a view that was basically carried
forward, with a few exceptions, for more than a hundred years.
The Germans, a nation defined by its culture (Kulturnation) but not
a state, had been seeking their own identity since well before the unification
in 1871. For example, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s (1762–
1814) Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation, 1968
[1808]), an important influence on the final unification of Germany,
represents a clear indication of the cultural tension between German
nationalism and ‘foreignness’. This nationalistic spirit was, for example,
clearly reflected in the fraternity of university students (Burschenschaften)
that was founded in Jena in 1815. Furthermore, historical evidence
suggests that this search for identity was combined with a strong German
nationalism that was sometimes closer to chauvinism with racist over-
tones. In this nationalistic setting, Britain, in spite of its common history
opposing Napoleon, was no exception. In addition, the achievement of
a unified and centralised German Empire occurred within an economic
environment in which Great Britain had attained clear dominance in
world manufacturing and trade. In these circumstances, the industrialis-
ing process in Germany developed its own distinctive character (Milward
and Saul, 1977, pp. 49–50). Indeed, this process was in general quite
cautious compared to the more liberal British policies.
Initially, Smith entered into Germany through the universities, and of
course the University of Göttingen, in Hanover, which was established in
the English king’s territories, was the place to study Smith and the breeding
ground for the followers of his ideas. Considering that the cameralists, who
taught Cameralwissenschaft – named in allusion to the Kammer, in which
the administrative political power of the states deliberated economic and
political issues –, held a nationalistic and protective viewpoint, it is not
overly bold to assume that the dissemination of Smith’s liberal views was
generally seen by traditional academics and politicians as a threat to the
status quo. Yet, if Smith’s doctrines, aside from Göttingen, remained
rather dormant in Germany just after the WN’s first German translation,
Christian Garve’s popular translation, published in two parts in 1792 and
1794, definitely revived an interest in Smith.11
11
The announcement of Garve’s new translation suggested in passing that
Schiller’s was deficient, and Garve’s introduction explicitly complains about
its style. This, in addition to some comments by Sartorius, has led commenta-
tors to consider Schiller’s translation as worse than Garve’s. Recently Keith
Tribe has questioned this generally accepted view, suggesting that it is more
likely that the intellectual context of the 1790s influenced the success in sales
of Garve’s new translation, which was soon reprinted and some pirate versions
were sold (see Tribe and Mizuta, 2002, pp. 125–30).
August Ferdinand Lueder and Georg Sartorius12 both studied and

taught at Göttingen, and were quite effective in spreading Smith’s views.
Lueder was not only influenced by Smith, but also by the ideas of the
French Revolution. Therefore it is not surprising that later authors like
Bruno Hildebrand, as we will soon see, conflated the ideals of the French
Revolution with Smith’s legacy. But Sartorius did not follow Smith’s lib-
eral views on commerce, as he was aware of the limits and dangers of
laissez faire, proposing the intervention of the state in different situa-
tions, a theme that pervaded a complex intellectual process that would
reach some important exponents of the German Historical School. As
already mentioned, the dissemination of Smith’s doctrines was insured
in western Germany by the influential University of Göttingen; in the
east, however, it was the task of Christian Jacob Kraus,13 a fervent
admirer of Smith who had spent a year at Göttingen and studied and
later taught at the University of Königsberg. He referred to the WN
declaring that ‘certainly since the times of the New Testament no
12
Georg Sartorius (1765–1828), a Lecturer at Göttingen’s Faculty of Philosophy
since 1792, was one of the most influential of those who advocated Smith’s
political economy in Germany, especially through his Handbuch der
Staatswirthschaft zum Gebrauche bey akademischen Vorlesungen, nach Adam
Smith’s Grundsätzen ausgearbeitet (Handbook of Political Economy for the use in
academic lectures, according to the basics of Adam Smith, 1796), though in 1806
he ‘returned to this work in a more critical frame of mind’ (Tribe and Mizuta,
2002, p. 131). August Ferdinand Lueder (1760–1819) analyses Smith’s WN,
from a universal-historical perspective (Tribe, 1988, p. 168), in his bulky three-
volume Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft. Nach Adam Smith bear-
beitet (On National Industry and Political Economy. According to Adam Smith,
1800–04). Although Lueder studied at Göttingen, he only returned as
a Professor of Philosophy in 1810, after 14 years at the Carolinum in
Brunswick. Thoemmes Press has recently republished the former and the latter
(1998), with an introduction by Hiroshi Mizuta. Nevertheless, as Tribe (1988,
p. 148) persuasively suggests, the WN’s influence during the last decade of the
eighteenth century cannot be overstated, despite there having been a change
in economic discourse. However, in my view, if the transition to
a Nationalökonomie in Germany was not determined by the reception of the
WN, it was certainly influenced by it through a debate, amongst other things,
on the nature of homo œconomicus and its implications for political economy.
13
Christian Jacob Krauss (1753–1807), student and later colleague and friend of
Immanuel Kant at Königsberg, was the most influential academic figure who
introduced and lectured on Smith’s economic thought in Germany. Although
he published little, his works in Political Economy were published posthu-
mously as Die Staatswirtschaft von Christian Jacob Kraus. Nach dessen Tode
herausgegeben von Hans von Auerswald (The Political Economy of Christian Jakob
Kraus. Edited after his Death by Hans von Auerswald, 5 vols, 1808–11).
writing has had more beneficial results than this will have’ (quoted in
Hasek, 2002 [1925], p. 87).
Another important political influence in Prussia, which also reflects
the point I am trying to uncover, was Baron Karl vom Stein, who became
first minister in 1807. He stated in private notes, probably during his
exile in Austria, that:
If a nation enjoys a fortunate government, which directs it to

independence of action, and assures it freedom and property; if its
geographic position is advantageous and it possesses in rivers and seas
an easy connection with other developed nations; and if, finally, it has
already gained a general fund of technological and commercial knowl-
edge, its government can without fear leave it to free choice of occupa-
tion and undertakings, for it will choose the most suitable and
profitable. If, however, the greater part of the nation is in a state of rude-
ness and low development; if its position in the middle of a continent
makes communication with its neighbors difficult; if freedom and
property are the lot of only the privileged classes; then the government
must guide, instruct, encourage, by laws, rewards, schools, advances of
money and by travel. (Quoted in Hasek, 2002 [1925], p. 106)
Yet the idea of shaping a Nationalökonomie in combination with a

Staatswirthschaftslehre was part of a slow process of profound social,
political and economic change in Germany during the nineteenth cen-
tury (Tribe, 1988, pp. 175–6). Adam Smith played an important role in
this process. For example, Adam Heinrich Müller (1779–1829), although
acknowledging Smith as a most learned economist, saw him as a ‘one-
sided’ (einseitig) representative of English economic interests.14 Another
earlier source of the tradition leading to the German Historical School’s
hostility towards British political economy is again Fichte, who in his
Der Geschlossene Handelstaat. Ein Philosophischer Entwurf als Anhang
zur Rechtslehre (The Closed Commercial State. A Philosophical Outline as
an Appendix to Law, 1800), argued against laissez faire policies. For this
influential philosopher it was the duty of government not only to
restrict and regulate foreign commerce, but also to prohibit it. When
14
Müller’s works include Die Elemente der Staatskunst (Elements of the Art of State,
a set of lectures presented in Dresden during the winter of 1808–09), Theorie
des Geldes (Theory of Money, 1816) and Von der Nothwendigkeit einer theologischen
Grundlage der gesammten Staatswissenschaften und der Staatswirthschaft insbeson-
dere (Of the Necessity of a Theological basis of the Entire Sciences of State, and
Political Economy in Particular, 1819).
Friedrich List (1789–1846) published his Das Nationale System der

Politischen Ökonomie (The National System of Political Economy, 1841)
both arguments were synthesised in a serious critique of what was later
called Smithianismus. But one important underlying cause that moti-
vated the latter is explicitly stated:
It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the
summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has
climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up
after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of
Adam Smith … and all his successors. (List, 1904 [1841], p. 295)
Not surprisingly, in this setting Smith became known as the founder of the
materialistic ‘Manchester School’ that preached the gospel of individual
interest and free competition, in clear opposition to the older cameralistic
tradition that assumed that society and its members needed guidance.
List considered that laissez faire would benefit Great Britain but not
the then developing economies, for which he proposed protective tariffs
and an infant industry promotion strategy. His argument is quite
explicit: ‘[i]n order to attain freedom of trade to operate naturally, the
less advanced nations must first be raised by artificial measures to that
stage of cultivation to which the English nation has been artificially ele-
vated’ (ibid., p. 107). Accusing Smith, ‘the founder of the prevailing eco-
nomic school’ (ibid., p. 108), and his successors of Kosmopolitismus,
might be in part a consequence of the fact that the German states lagged
far behind the spectacular economic achievement of Great Britain. List,
as an influential precursor of the German Historical School’s emphasis
on the context of each country, argued that every man belongs to a
nation, which has its own circumstances that cannot be ignored. But
List’s famous and pervasive comment about development, which is also
a heated subject of contemporary debate,15 has a long intellectual pedi-
gree that is inherited from the twilight of Camerilism while it was giving
rise to Nationalökonomie.
15
Recently Ha-Joon Chang has published a book entitled Kicking Away the
Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002), with an explicit ref-
erence to List’s abovementioned passage. Chang criticises the Washington
consensus regarding the current approach to developing countries, showing
that developed countries historically did not follow what they preach today.
This German tradition has notable similarities to dependency theories à la
Singer-Prebisch, a Latin american movement (so-called cepalinos) that was
actually influenced by the German Historical School.
Although it has been generally accepted that Wilhelm Roscher’s

(1817–94) Grundri␤ zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft. Nach
geschichtlicher Methode (Outline for Lectures on Political Economy. According
to the Historical Method, 1843) at least marks the programmatic founda-
tion of the German Historical School,16 its formation, as has been briefly
suggested, was the result of a long intellectual process.17 In this, we can-
not ignore the complex social, political and economic circumstances
since the appearance of the WN. Years of war, riots, famine and radical
social and political reforms witnessed and bred the formation of the
German Historical School.
To generalise briefly, the German Historical School proposed econom-
ics as a broader science that must take into account the interactions
between ethical, political and historical issues in order to understand
social phenomena. Political economy, understood as Nationalökonomie in
combination with a Staatswirthschaftslehre, should not merely constitute
an independent discipline focused on the production of wealth, based on
self-interested individuals. Its scope is broader, entailing the notion of
individuals as social beings, and taking into account the historical and
political circumstances of a particular nation at a particular time. The
methodological stance of the German Historical School is in opposition
to that of a universalised scheme of deductive natural laws, as reflected
16
For Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich List was not only ‘a national hero’ (1994
[1954], p. 504) but also a ‘forerunner of the historical school of economics’
(ibid., p. 505). Geoff Hodgson argues that the inception of the school coincides
with List’s publication of Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841)
(2001, p. 58), but Karl Pribram considers that List ‘does not belong to it [the
German Historical School]’ (1983, p. 213) and for Mark Perlman and Charles
McCann ‘the actual foundation of the German Historical School can be traced
to the publication in 1843 of Grundri␤ … ’ (1998, p. 416).
17
In my personal view there is much research to be done on the historical, politi-
cal, social and economic circumstances, from Cameralism and Romanticism,
that shaped the German Historical School. I am sure there are many German
sources that I am unaware of, but Tribe (1988; 1995, pp. 1–65; 2000) presents
very good accounts. For some background on the German Historical School,
see Cohn (2000 [1873]; 2000 [1894]), Cossa (1880, pp. 192–201), Ingram
(1888, pp. 200–15), Scott (1915, pp. 256–66), Gide and Rist (2000 [1915],
pp. 266–89), Schumpeter (1994 [1954], pp. 501–10 and 809–24), Pribram (1983,
pp. 209–15), Perlman and McCann (1998, pp. 409–16) and Hodgson
(2001, pp. 56–64). Some proceedings from conferences in Koslowski (1995, 1997)
are interesting, although the quality of the contributions varies. This last judge-
ment also applies to Shionoya (2001). On the question whether there was actu-
ally ‘a’ German Historical School, see Pearson (1999) who gives a challenging,
and insightful view. Recently, Caldwell (2001) has challenged Pearson’s position.
by the then predominant classical view of political economy. This later

became the source of the famous Methodenstreit in which Menger
(Untersuchungen über die Methoden der Sozialwissenschaften und der
Politischen Ökonomie insbesondere, Investigations into the Method of the
Social Sciences with special reference to Economics, 1883) did not simply
reject historical economics, but argued that it could neither replace nor
improve our knowledge in theoretical economics (Tribe, 1995, pp. 77–9).
Roughly speaking, it can be argued that for the ‘Older School’ (mainly
Roscher, Hildebrand and Knies)18 there was also a practical emphasis on
how, in the so-called ‘early stages of industrialization’ (Trebilcock, 1981,
p. 37), and in many cases in opposition to the laissez faire favoured by
the British economic hegemony, to develop the appropriate commercial
policies for successful industrialisation. The 1840s, just after the
Zollverein and the railway expansion,19 can be seen as witnessing the
industrialising ‘take-off’ of the German states, which was essentially car-
ried out relying upon an agricultural revolution. Then, once Germany
had attained, after unification, an increasing level of economic growth,
18
Schumpeter (1994 [1954], p. 507) considered that the ‘Older Historical School’
does not constitute a school (see also ibid., p. 808).
19
The implementation of the Zollverein, or Customs Unions, between most of
the 39 German states in 1834, influenced by List, and the impressive railway
construction that began in 1835, were determinant in the German proto-
industrialising process. It all began in 1818, when all tariff barriers between the
Prussian provinces were abolished and the final Zollverein opened up a
common market of 25 million Germans under the leadership of the Prussian
bureaucracy. Then, just after the Zollverein, the first steam-driven railway was
opened in 1837, following a rapid railway building expansion. But it was only
in 1860 that there was actually a ‘German’ market area (Trebilcock, 1981,
p. 41), and the peak of construction and investment in transportation was
reached in the 1870s (ibid., p. 38), giving rise to the prosperity of the German
Empire. Although after unification, between 1871–73, there was a bonanza
(Gründerzeit), ending in the financial collapse of 1873 (Gründerkrise), in general
Germany witnessed steady and rapid economic growth up to the First World
War. In fact, per capita income in Great Britain grew by 44% between 1870 and
1910 (from $904 to $1302, in 1970 US dollars), but in Germany it grew 65.5%
(from $579 to $958, in 1970 US dollars. See Table 3.2, Crafts 1985, p. 54).
Certainly it is very difficult to situate and explain the German economic take-
off, as has been convincingly argued by Tipton (1974), but Milward and Saul
are right when they state: ‘[w]hereas in the early nineteenth century econo-
mists, statesmen and social reformers in the less developed countries in Europe
sought for clues to the future of their own society by analysing that of Britain
and France, by the end of the nineteenth century this interest had rightly
become focused on Germany’ (1977, pp. 65–6).
the emphasis of the ‘Younger Historical School’ was more on how to solve
the social problems brought about by industrialisation. It was not simply a
coincidence that this group of German political economists, dominated by
Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917),20 established the Verein für Sozialpolitik
(Society for Social Policy) in 1872–73 to tackle social problems,21 claiming
a ‘realistic’ approach to economic problems (Pribram, 1983, p. 216).
In Germany, Smith’s reception – as the natural father of classical polit-
ical economy – might appear rather peculiar to a modern scholar.
Indeed, the familiar charge of being the prophet of self-interest and free
competition was combined with some odd claims. He was seen as a
philosopher of the French Revolution and at the same time as a theorist
who tried to create:
a Political Economy for the world and humanity (Welt und

Menschheitsökonomie) by deducing general axioms from the specific
circumstances of single nations and stages of development.
(Hildebrand, 1848, p. 27)
Although there is a longstanding tradition in Germany of Adam Smith

as the anti-hero of Nationalökonomie, which might also relate to
Göttingen’s peculiar situation in Hanover, as I have already hinted, it
was certainly Bruno Hildebrand (1812–78) in his Die Nationalökonomie
der Gegenwart und Zukunft (The National Economy of the Present and
the Future, 1848),22 published the same year as Marx and Engels’s
The Communist Manifesto, who successfully re-launched the attacks on
Smith. Following Müller and List, Hildebrand also complained about
20
He was the indisputable leader of the school during the last three decades of
the nineteenth century, and the one who once publicly declared, in his
address as Rector of the University of Berlin, that ‘Smithians’ and ‘Marxists’
were unfit to occupy university chairs (Oncken, 2000 [1898], p. 103; Ascher,
1992 [1963], p. 284). Lionel Robbins referred to Schmoller’s overwhelming
authority in appointing chairs in Germany (1998, pp. 47 and 245). Hutchison
(1988) provides a brief but very insightful account on Schmoller; see also Nau
(2000) and Peukert (2001), who in addition to recovering his importance,
presents an extensive survey of the literature on Schmoller.
21
This project was ironically labelled by a liberal journalist in 1871 as the
Katherdersozialisten, a term usually translated as ‘socialists of the chair’ (see
Sheehan, 1966, p. 59; Cohn, 2000 [1894], p. 134, Oncken, 2000 [1898],
p. 103). For a recent history and analysis of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, see
Hagemann (2001).
22
Bruno Hildebrand projected a second volume about the future that,
unfortunately, never appeared.
Smith’s ‘one-sidedness’ (einseitigkeit) and his ‘abstract cosmopolitanism’

(Abstrakter Kosmopolitismus), concluding that ‘the problem of the Adam
Smith School is that it tries to monopolise manufacturing for England’
(ibid., p. 328).23 But his project was more ambitious, as he attempted to
overcome the ‘rationalistic Enlightenment’ of which Adam Smith (like
Rousseau, according to Hildebrand) was a representative, restoring polit-
ical economy as a historical discipline. Hildebrand not only pointed out
the materialism of the Smithsche Schule, with its emphasis on the atom-
istic nature of human beings, but also criticised self-interest and egoism
as the central features of Smith’s economic system. According to
Hildebrand, Smith and his followers would like to ‘transform political
economy into a mere natural history of egoism’ (ibid., p. 275; also
quoted in Gide and Rist, 2000 [1915], p. 394). And for Hildebrand, as a
representative of the German Historical School, the ‘deification of pri-
vate egoism’ (ibid., p. 275) had serious consequences for political econ-
omy as a social science which is essentially ethical.
A little later, Karl Knies (1821–98), who considered Smith an
‘outstanding thinker’ (Knies, 1853, p. 21), criticised his ‘theoretical abso-
lutism’ (ibid., 22) and attacked the classical notion of self-interest in his
Die Politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode (The
Political Economy From the Point of View of Historical Method, 1853).24 But
he also cunningly suggested that ‘it does not seem like an accident that
between the publication of his Theory of Moral Sentiments and his
economic Inquiry occurred his stay in France’ (ibid., 180). He is the orig-
inator of the so-called ‘French connection theory’ (Nieli, 1986, p. 612),
that Smith’s mental shift between the TMS and the WN was a
consequence of his acquaintance with the French materialists.
23
Regarding the English economic hegemony, Hildebrand, like List, is aware that
‘a system of prohibitions was introduced by the government under which the
English industry could grow’ (Hildebrand, 1848, p. 4). But he defended, under
certain circumstances, free trade policies. Another interesting case to point out
(as I have already mentioned Fichte) is the philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) who in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History
(1827–31) thought that ‘England’s material existence is based on trade and
industry, and the English have taken on the major vocation of acting as mis-
sionaries of civilisation throughout the world’ (Hegel 1999 [1827–31], p. 222).
24
In 1883 Karl Knies republished this book, with some minor additions, under
the new title Die Politische Oekonomie vom Geschichtlichen Standpuncte (The
Political Economy From the Historical Point of View). In the new preface he not
only complains about the book’s poor reception, it having been ignored even
by Roscher, to whom the book had been dedicated, but also spends some
paragraphs explaining why this new title is better than the previous one.
If Karl Knies, as a representative of the ‘Older School’, set up the

so-called Umschwungstheorie as the source of Das Adam Smith Problem, it
was the task of the ‘Younger School’ not only to defend and develop this
intuition, but also to undermine Smith’s reputation further.25 Lujo
Brentano (1844–1931) in Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss dem heutigen
Recht. Geschlichtliche und ökonomische Studien (The Relation of Labour to
the Law of Today. Historical and Economic Studies, 1877) was the next
German economist to tackle the Problem. Brentano again criticises
Smith’s individualism, and explicitly argues that his acquaintance in
France with Helvétius and his circle ‘can be seen in the revolution
(Umschwung)26 that it exerted upon his basic ideas’, since in the WN ‘he
adopts completely the views of Helvétius concerning the nature of men
and selfishness as the only motivating force in human action’
(Brentano, 1877, p. 61).
Only a year later, Witold von Skaṙzyński (1850–1910), a Polish noble-
man who failed in his academic career at Breslau University, published
Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph und Schöpfer der Nationalökonomie. Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nationalökonomie (Adam Smith as a Moral
Philosopher and Creator of National Economy. A Contribution to the History
of National Economy, 1878). He was definitely Smith’s fiercest critic. In
more than 450 pages on Smith, Skaṙzyński attempted to prove that he
was neither an original philosopher, nor the creator of political econ-
omy, but simply ‘a vain teacher and an honest man’ (Skaṙzyński, 1878,
p. xvii), concluding that the physiocrats ‘are the founders of political
economy’ (ibid., p. 201). His thesis, calling Smith a ‘subject of idolatry
(Abgötterei)’ (ibid., p. vii),27 was that neither the TMS nor the WN came
from the mind of an original thinker. Both works were the result of
external influences, that of Hume in the TMS and of Smith’s acquain-
tance in France with the Physiocrats, in the WN. Incidentally,
Skaṙzyński , following List and Hildebrand in their attacks upon England,
complained ‘how far is the English economic policy from the practical
application of that basic idea, that high wages are a blessing for a nation,
since that country has been trying without pause, to be the merchant
and manufacturer of the whole world’ (ibid., p. 126). He also referred, as
25
In 1898 August Oncken justly complained about the ‘low estimation of Adam
Smith, particularly in Germany’ (2000 [1898], p. 85).
26
A better translation of umschwung could be drastic shift or radical change.
27
In fact F. L. W. P. Vincke, Stein’s favourite advisor, and a fervent admirer of
Smith, at one time applied to him the term ‘godlike’ (göttlich, cf. Hasek (2002
[1925]), p. 107). Skarżyński may have had this anecdote in mind.
Müller did, to the ‘one-sidedness (einseitigkeit) of the Smithian School’

(ibid., p. 27). But regarding Das Adam Smith Problem, Skaṙzyński put for-
ward the idea that Smith’s acquaintance with Helvétius motivated him
to adopt the principle of self-love (ibid., p. 189).28 This intuition was
finally expressed as follows:
Smith was an Idealist, as long as he lived in England under the influ-

ence of Hutcheson and Hume. After living in France for three years
and coming into close contact with the Materialism that prevailed
there, he returned to England a Materialist. This is the simple expla-
nation of the contrast between his Theory (1759), written before his
journey to France, and his Wealth of Nations (1776), written after his
return. (Ibid., p. 183)
The Umschwungstheorie, perceived by Knies (1853), then suggested by

Brentano (1887) and finally expanded on by Skaṙzyński (1878), did not
accept the reliability of Stewart’s Account of the Life and Writings of Adam
Smith in two respects. First, it contained John Millar’s report on Smith’s
lectures, in which the part labelled expediency, which we know to be the
source of his political economy, ‘contained the substance’ (EPS, p. 275)
of the WN. Second, Stewart wrote about, and quoted some sentences
from a 1755 manuscript by Smith (EPS, p. 321).29 In this document
Smith allegedly asserted the originality of his opinions, ‘without any
considerable variation’ (EPS, p. 322) from a lecture some six years earlier,
that is, back to his days at Edinburgh in 1749. According to Stewart, in
this manuscript ‘many of the most important opinions in The Wealth of
Nations are there detailed’ (EPS, p. 322). For Skaṙzyński, as for his prede-
cessors, neither reports contradicting any French influence could be
accepted as concrete evidence.30
28
Luigi Cossa (1831–96) considered that ‘this writer [Skarżyński] is too ready to
depreciate Adam Smith in comparison with the Physiocrats’ (1880, p. 163).
Indeed, Skarżyński not only argued that the Physiocrats were the founders of
political economy and Smith simply a compiler, but that his WN was full of
contradictions.
29
Unfortunately, this manuscript did not survive. The editors of EPS suggest that
the original manuscript might have been ‘destroyed with Stewart’s own papers
by his son when suffering paranoia’ (EPS, p. 266). It certainly does not corre-
spond to the early draft or any of the other fragments discovered by Professor
W. R. Scott, originally published by him (in Adam Smith as Student and
Professor, 1937), and now published in Lectures on Jurisprudence (LJ).
30
Another generally ignored early source in the literature, corroborating the fact
that the WN was part of Smith’s lectures, is in Samuel Rogers’s Early Life, where
Ironically perhaps, Skaṙzyński’s attacks on Smith were influenced by

Henry Thomas Buckle’s (1821–62) controversial and widely read History
of Civilisation in England, published originally in two volumes in 1857
and 1861, respectively.31 Skaṙzyński (1878) criticised Buckle’s account of
Smith. Buckle not only showed an unconditional predilection for
Smith, but also presented a rather naïve explanation of the consistency
issue. He refers to ‘the illustrious Adam Smith’ (Buckle, 1970 [1861],
p. 20) or to ‘this mighty thinker’ (ibid., p. 286) or ‘to that most profound
and original thinker’ (ibid. p. 259), considering Smith ‘by far the greatest
of all Scotch thinkers’ (ibid., p. 255). Moreover, although Hume is ‘a
most accomplished reasoner, as well as a profound and fearless thinker,
[he] had not the comprehensiveness of Adam Smith, nor had he that
invaluable quality of imagination’ (ibid., p. 278). Buckle is very clear in
stating that both works of Smith must be taken together, and considered
as one. However, by insisting that Smith adopted the deductive method,
an assumption detected and rejected by Skaṙzyński, he is misled into
defending this flawed assumption.32 In his defence of the consistency
between both works, Buckle asserts that:
Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, simplified the study of human

nature, by curtailing it of all its sympathy. But this most comprehensive
thinker was careful, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, to restore to
the writer Henry Mackenzie, in 1791, is reported as sustaining this thesis (see
Clayden, 1887, p. 167). Cossa rightly suggested, regarding the idea of the WN
as part of Smith’s lectures, that ‘it is much to be wished that some critic should
consult the manuscripts of his lectures … so as to discover what truth there is
in this assertion’ (1880, p. 164).
31
Arnold Ruge (1802–80) translated Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England into
German in 1859 and 1861.
32
A year after the publication of the first volume of his History of Civilisation in
England, Buckle was elected member of The Political Economy Club in 1858. If
we remember the influence of John Stuart Mill’s Principles (first published in
1848), Buckle’s emphasis on the deductive nature of Smith’s WN in the second
volume of his History, to be published in 1861, is not surprising. In fact, when
the editors of the TMS, Raphael and Macfie, assert that ‘Buckle had a curious
obsession with methodology’ (TMS intr. p. 21, emphasis added), they are sim-
ply ignoring this context, which was essentially different to the German
Historical School programme, that is, regarding the deductive and inductive
nature of Political Economy. Incidentally, Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie (1827–82),
who laid the foundations of the British Historical School, had already pin-
pointed Buckle’s two main mistakes: ‘Selfishness was not the fundamental
principle of Adam Smith’s theory; and his method … was in large measure
inductive’ (1879 [1870], p. 150).
human nature the quality of which the Wealth of Nations had

deprived it; and, by thus establishing two different lines of argument,
he embraced the whole subject. (Buckle, 1970 [1861], p. 351)33
Skaṙzyński simply detected the error that the TMS, based on sympathy,
and the WN, based on self-interest, together comprise a complete, inde-
pendent and almost additive picture of human nature. Against this
peculiar interpretation, Skaṙzyński stated that both books gave divergent
and irreconcilable views of human conduct.34
2.3.2 Some early reactions

A few years after Skaṙzyński, an important English intellectual historian,
Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), published his influential History of
English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). In this, he gibes at
Buckle’s fondness for Smith, and reacts against his account, stating that
the TMS is ‘apt to disappoint us by a certain superficiality’ (Stephen,
1991 [1876], vol. 2, p. 71), suggesting that ‘it is impossible to resist the
impression … that we are not listening to a thinker really grappling with
a difficult problem, so much as to an ambitious professor who has found
an excellent opportunity for displaying his command of language, and
making brilliant lectures’ (ibid., p. 77). His position regarding the
inconsistency of the two works is different, and like Skaṙzyński’s more
33
Cf. ‘In the Moral Sentiments, he investigates the sympathetic part of human
nature; in the Wealth of Nations, he investigates its selfish part. And as all of us
are sympathetic as well as selfish; in other words, as all of us look without as
well as within, and as this classification is a primary and exhaustive division of
our motives to action, it is evident, that if Adam Smith had completely accom-
plished his vast design, he would at once have raised the study of human
nature to a science, leaving nothing for subsequent inquirers except to ascer-
tain the minor springs of affairs, all of which would find their place in this
general scheme, and be deemed subordinate to it’ (ibid., p. 255).
34
It is interesting to note the influence of Buckle’s interpretation in Great
Britain, although this might also be a reflection of the prevalent deductive tra-
dition of political economy that the German Historical School was reacting
against. For example, in the 1887 English introduction to the WN, Joseph
Shield Nicholson (1850–1927) reflects Buckle’s view: ‘[t]he foundation of the
“Theory of Moral Sentiments” is sympathy – the natural complement to the
self-interest and expediency of the “Wealth of Nations”’ (2000 [1887], p. 620).
In the 1910 edition of the WN, Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (1861–1939),
an American economist who studied under Karl Knies at Heidelberg, follows
a similar line: ‘[i]n his Theory of Moral Sentiments he posits the doctrine of
sympathy … But what he was concerned with in The Wealth of Nations was an
analysis of the economic situation’ (2000 [1910], p. 723).
familiar charge, it was also formed as a response to Buckle’s earlier

characterisation of the relationship between Smith’s two books.
Stephen considers self-interest in the WN as a motivating force, and
sympathy in the TMS as a regulative force. The TMS is regarded:
as an answer to the question: given man as a predominantly selfish

animal, how does he come to condemn actions which are prompted
by his selfishness? The answer is substantially that morality is a kind
of reflected selfishness … [reflex selfishness] exerts a regulative power
which restrains purely mischievous actions. (Ibid., p. 320)
In a way Stephen, as a later convert to what today might be called evo-

lutionary ethics, was an innovator looking at the ‘Smith Problem’
through evolutionary glasses, considering the sympathetic process of
the TMS as a reflection of natural human selfishness propounded in the
WN. His approach to sympathy as reflected selfishness has remained
influential within the current debate, although its roots can be traced
back to the Scottish philosopher of common sense, Thomas Reid
(1710–96). Reid’s criticism of Smith’s sympathy, in his 1778 letter to
Lord Kames, was simply that it ‘is indeed only a Refinement of the self-
ish System’ (quoted in Reeder, 1997, p. 66).
There are two more positions in the early debate that are also worth
mentioning as they were influential at the time.35 Albert Delatour
(1858–1938) in Adam Smith, sa vie, ses travaux, ses doctrines (1886), which
won the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Award,
assumes the concordance between the TMS and the WN as part of
a more ambitious intellectual system, preceding, if not in content at
least in scope, Andrew S. Skinner’s (1976) influential view of Smith as a
‘system builder’.36 Delatour refers to Smith’s works as a whole, as an
attempt to describe the history of civilisation, in which the TMS deals
35
Oncken (2000 [1898], p. 88) also mentions Richard Zeyss’s Adam Smith und der
Eigennutz. Eine Untersuchung über die Philosophischen Grundlagen der älteren
Nationalökonomie (Adam Smith and Self-interest. An Analysis of the Philosophical
Grounds of National Economy, 1889) and Wilhelm Hasbach’s (1849–1920)
Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der politischen ökonomie
(An Analysis of Adam Smith and the Development of Political Economy, 1891).
Paszkowsky is reported to have presented a normative and descriptive distinc-
tion between the TMS and the WN, the former concerned with man as he
should be, the latter with man as he is (Morrow, 1969 [1923], p. 6, Oncken,
2000 [1898], p. 88).
36
Jacob Viner, in the first paragraph of his influential ‘Adam Smith and Laissez
Faire’, also suggests the importance of Smith’s ‘system-building’ for English
economics (Viner, 1927, p. 198).
with the moral development of man, Smith’s Essays deal with the intel-
lectual development, and the WN with the material development of
humankind (Delatour, 1886, p. 79). Finally, Friedrich Albert Lange
(1828–75), a founding member of the Marburg School of Neo-
Kantianism, in his monumental History of Materialism (1865), quoting
Buckle’s proof as ‘conclusive’, defends the unity of both works, acknowl-
edging sympathy and self-interest as different impulses for human
actions: ‘[s]ympathy and Interest were with him the two great springs of
human actions’ (Lange, 1925 [1865], vol. 3, p. 234). Nevertheless, he cor-
rectly deems that both motives cannot be added, and views self-interest as
the bridge between the two works, as in the TMS ‘we can everywhere read
between the lines that the actions of man are essentially egoistic, and only
modified by the effect of sympathy’ (ibid., p. 235, note 1). For Lange, the
sympathetic process indirectly provides a corrective for guiding
self-interested behaviour through ‘the protection of right by the state’
(ibid.). He precedes Stephen (1991 [1876]) with the idea of sympathy as a
regulative force, an interpretation that sets out a common theme that is
fundamental to some current approaches to Das Adam Smith Problem.
In 1896, Edwin Cannan (1861–1935) published some lectures that
had been given by Smith.37 The lecture notes provided irrefutable
evidence that the alleged French materialist influence was not a reason-
able explanation for the differences between the WN and the TMS, as
they demonstrated that Smith’s ideas on political economy were quite
clear before his trip to the Continent. Stewart’s words in his Account of
the Life and Writings of Adam Smith were confirmed by this finding, and
all explanations based on a shift of mind after Smith’s stay in France
were nullified. This discovery further encouraged the thesis that the
TMS and the WN are not only a comprehensive exposition of his
moral philosophy lectures but, moreover, that they form part of an
incomplete system that lacks a theory of jurisprudence,38 which Smith
37
Edwin Cannan’s Lectures (1896, Oxford University Press) are currently pub-
lished as LJ(B), lectures between 1763–64, generally known as Report dated 1766
(as Smith left Glasgow in January 1764, the year 1766 might correspond to the
copy date of the original manuscript), together with LJ(A), lectures between
1762–63, generally known as Report of 1762–3. The former lecture notes had
been in the hands of the Machonochie family before Edwin Cannan confirmed
its authenticity and published them in 1896. The latter, LJ(A), were found later
in 1958 by Professor John. M. Lothian, and both are published in (LJ).
38
Smith instructed his executors to burn 16 folios containing his lectures and notes
(see Clayden, 1887, p. 167; Rae 1895, p. 434). Only a few essays were allowed to
survive and they are published as Essays on Philosophical Subjects (EPS).
himself recognises in the Advertisement to the sixth edition of the

TMS.39 Oncken (1897), reacting against the position of the German
Historical School, defended the consistency thesis just a year after the
publication of Smith’s Lectures. He concludes by urging English political
economists:
to set themselves the task of inquiring fully into the Smith problem,
and thus to protect their great master once and for all from detrac-
tion, by presenting his teaching in its entirety, as a system of Moral
Philosophy, in which Political Economy forms but a part. (Oncken,
1897, p. 449)40
It is interesting to note, however, that the leading British political econ-

omists of that time, for example John Rae (1796–1872), James Bonar
(1852–1941) and Edwin Cannan (1861–1935), did not ‘directly touch
39
The often-quoted passage reads: ‘In the last paragraph of the first Edition
of the present work, I said, that I should in another discourse endeavour to
give an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the
different revolutions which they had 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. In the
Enquiry Concerning the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I have partly
executed this promise; at least so far as concerns police, revenue, and arms.
What remains, the theory of jurisprudence, which I have long projected,
I have hitherto been hindered from executing, by the same occupations which
had till now prevented me from revising the present work. Though my very
advanced age leaves me, I acknowledge, very little expectation of ever being
able to execute this great work to my own satisfaction; yet, as I have not alto-
gether abandoned the design, and as I wish still to continue under the obliga-
tion of doing what I can, I have allowed the paragraph to remain as it was
published more than thirty years ago, when I entertained no doubt of being
able to execute every thing which it announced’ (cf. TMS VII.iv.37, p. 342).
See also his correspondence with the great-grandson of La Rochefoucauld
(Corr., p. 287).
40
It is worth mentioning that August Oncken (1844–1911) in fact followed an
umschwungtheorie by actually changing his mind, as earlier in Adam Smith und
der Kulturgeschichte. Ein Vortrag (Adam Smith and Cultural History. A Lecture,
1874) he had criticised Smith for his materialism and his laissez-faire doctrines
very much in the spirit of the German Historical School. Other German his-
torical economists advocating that there was no ‘Smith Problem’ were
Wilhelm Hasbach, Emanuel Leser and later, more importantly, the translator
of the TMS to German, Wilhelm Eckstein, who gives a very good account of
the consistency position in his excellent introduction to the TMS.
the question [Das Adam Smith Problem] at issue’ (Oncken, 1897,

pp. 445–6).
Thirty years later, in his classic and seminal ‘Adam Smith and Laissez
Faire’, Jacob Viner (1892–1970), not only challenged the traditional view
of Smith as a precursor of economic laissez faire, but also revived the
inherent discrepancies between the TMS and the WN. Viner complains
that the extensive revisions and additions to the TMS did not diminish
‘in any particular the points of conflict between the two books’, even
allowing that ‘he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217)41 when he
revised it. Although this point is worth considering, since in part VI of
the TMS, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, newly added to the sixth edition,
Smith’s memory fails him when referring to some classical anecdotes (see
TMS, especially pp. 251–4), in my opinion this should not be taken as a
serious reason for disregarding his last additions. On the contrary, the
additions are very relevant to understand Smith’s mature views on
virtues. But Viner’s main point, regarding the conflict between both
works, is that ‘there are divergences between them [TMS and WN] which
are impossible of reconciliation’ (Viner, 1927, p. 201).
A few months later, Morrow’s lecture to commemorate the 150th
anniversary of the WN at the University of Chicago was published.
Morrow here suggests we should understand self-interest as one of the
inferior virtues summed up under the name prudence, namely ‘frugality,
industry, self reliance’ (Morrow, 1927, p. 330). In an earlier work, Morrow
had praised a monograph by Zeyss, ‘which should once for all dispose of
Das Adam Smith Problem’ (Morrow, 1969 [1923], p. 8, note 12), in which
Zeyss attempted to recover the role of virtues in the TMS, explaining self-
interest as part of prudence. This rightly led to the conclusion that
‘Morrow’s solution of das Adam Smith Problem was to a great extent
a restatement of Zeyss’s position’ (Teichgraeber, 1981, p. 108, see supra
note 35), but I would like to add that he is also following Stephen’s expla-
nation in two major points. First, the assumption that self-interest in the
WN has to be understood as a motivation regulated by the TMS’s ethical
view, at least in the sense that ‘self-interested activities must be regulated
by justice’ (Morrow, 1927, pp. 330–1). And second, Morrow attributes, as
does Viner, a leading role to the apparent theological background of
41
Wilhelm Hasbach in his Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der
Politischen Öekonomie (An Analysis of Adam Smith and the Development of Political
Economy, 1891) anticipating Viner’s famous remark, maintains that Smith’s sixth
edition of the TMS contains ‘among a number of outstanding points much
senile, sentimental garrulousness’ (quoted in Eckstein, 2000 [1926], p. 26).
Smith’s ethical, social and economic views, extending the role of sympa-
thy as a ‘necessary presupposition of the doctrine of the natural order
expounded in the Wealth of Nations’ (ibid., p. 341). It seems to me that the
first point needs no more explanation (self-interest as a motivating force
and sympathy as a regulating force), but that the second deserves some
attention.
For example, Viner, in his iconoclastic paper, relies heavily on a con-
troversial, although highly influential account of the TMS’s harmonious
order as guided by God.42 He is probably following Stephen, who con-
sidered Smith a ‘thorough representative of that optimistic deism … , the
doctrine of final causes as essential part of his system … , human nature
as a mechanism skillfully contrived to carry out the divine purposes’
(Stephen, 1991 [1876], vol. 2, p. 71). Morrow also emphasises the role of
natural order, writing ‘Nature, spelt with capital N, equals God’
(Morrow, 1927, p. 334), which is very similar to Stephen’s account of
Smith’s word Nature being ‘the polite term for God’ (Stephen, 1991
[1876], vol. 2, p. 72). The relationship between Nature and God was very
complex during the eighteenth century, but it can be argued that if in
the context of the influence of Newton’s spectacular discoveries nature
was deified, that does not necessarily entail that God was naturalised.
The role of natural order, as optimistic deism, certainly shapes the
development of society and tends to the happiness of mankind in the
TMS, but, in my personal view, its relevance must not be overstated, and
it has to be understood in the context of the Stoic tradition. It is clear
that in the WN there is no reliance on Nature (except WN V.ii.k, p. 870),
or any other metaphor (disregarding the elusive invisible hand) with a
theological or deistic connotation, whereas the TMS is full of them.43
42
Jacob Viner was consistent in underlining the role of theological elements in
understanding Smith’s legacy, especially in his 1966 Jayne Lectures The Role of
Providence in Social Order (1972), but later he was also aware that ‘it is hard for
some people today to believe that Smith’s optimistic deism was completely
sincere’ (Viner, 1994 [1968], p. 114). Recently, Hill (2001), following Viner, has
defended the importance of theology for Smith.
43
In the TMS, Nature with capital ‘N’ appears 53 times, God with capital ‘G’ 25,
Deity with capital ‘D’ 20, Divine Being 8, Providence 5, along with others: All-
powerful Being, Supreme Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power, Creator, Great
Superior, the Lord our God, all-wise Being, Great Director of the Universe, Great
conductor of the Universe, Great Superintendent of the universe, Being of infi-
nite power, The great Director of nature, the Author of nature, divine benevo-
lence, all-seeing Judge of the world, that all-wise Author of Nature, all-powerful
Being, great Judge of the world, great Judge of the Universe.
However, if one omits these references, widely used at the time, the
structure and content of the TMS remain unaltered. Whether Smith
merely drew on the widely used deistic language, or whether his use of
this language was deeply felt, will probably remain a subject of contro-
versy; just another Smith Problem. On the one hand, those arguing for the
former would say that the explanation for their appearance is simply that
they form part of Smith’s lectures aimed mainly at young men destined
to follow an ecclesiastical career. Therefore the interpreters, following
Stephen (1991 [1876]) or Viner (1927, 1994 [1968], 1972), who have
maintained the thesis that Smith’s religious beliefs are fundamental to
his philosophical system, would be merely exaggerating this simple fact.
On the other hand, pace those who stress Smith’s deism, it could also be
argued that within the social context of his time, Smith was too cautious
and mindful of public opinion to ignore the use of deistic rhetoric.44
This, in a nutshell, is the background to Das Adam Smith Problem.
Oncken (1897, 2000 [1898]), in reaction to the German Historical
School, presents a solution to the formal Problem based mainly on facts.
Stephen (1991 [1876]) and Lange (1925 [1865]) view sympathy as a reg-
ulative force. Morrow (1969 [1923], 1927) tackles the issue of self-
interest as an inferior virtue, which falls under the umbrella of
prudence, which in turn leads to an understanding of the TMS as a reg-
ulating basis for economic behaviour. He also highlights the fact that
Smith’s recurrent idea of self-interest, as a precursor of liberalism,
‘merely means that Smith was preaching, in the economic world, the
same gospel of individual rights and individual liberty which in one
form or another was the burden of eighteenth-century social thought’
(Morrow, 1927, p. 331). With different nuances, these accounts have
dominated most subsequent interpretations. However, Viner’s view of
the irreconcilability of the TMS and the WN remains influential. But if
the controversy was rich in content, for almost the next 50 years Das
Adam Smith Problem remained relatively dormant until its revival after
the bicentenary of the publication of the WN.45 Today, although the
44
John Dunn, by labelling Smith as a ‘practical atheist’ (1983, p. 119), has made
a characterisation which is, in my opinion, worth bearing in mind.
45
Within this period, regarding the consistency issue, Joseph Schumpeter
thought that ‘both the Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations are blocks
cut out from a larger systematic whole’ (1994 [1954], p. 141). Alec Macfie in
his ‘Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments as Foundation for his Wealth of Nations’
(1967) and Lamb (1974) persuasively defended the consistency of both works.
One exception, to my knowledge, is Anspach, who thought, like Viner, that
‘the controversy aroused by the two conflicting images of Smith has however
been by no means resolved’ (1972, p. 176).
formal ‘Smith Problem’ has been clearly surmounted, the Problem is a

subject that continues generating further discussion, so that it is worth
analysing some current positions.
2.4 A review and assessment of the current debate
For the bicentenary of the publication of the WN, Oxford University

Press published the WN and the TMS as the first part of their grand
project: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam
Smith. The tremendous effort made by the editors in introducing and
revising the original texts, proved to be an invaluable basis for further
academic research on Smith. The Journal of Economic Literature’s review
commemorating the WN’s bicentenary already perceived that ‘a kind of
Smith renaissance seems to be in process’ (Recktenwald, 1978, p. 56). The
next review of Smith in the same prestigious journal acknowledges that
‘since the Wealth of Nations’ bicentenary celebrations in 1976, the rate at
which commentary on the work of Adam Smith appears has quickened’
(Tribe, 1999, p. 609).46 Under these circumstances, Das Adam Smith
Problem was revived.
Analysing the so-called Das Adam Smith Problem, the editors of the
1976 TMS, David Raphael and Alec Macfie (Smith, 1984 [1759]), not
only followed Oncken’s line of defence, rebutting Buckle and
Skaṙzyński, but dismissed the Problem as a ‘pseudo–problem based on
ignorance and misunderstanding’ (TMS intr., p. 20). The editors’ argu-
ment that sympathy should not be confused with benevolence relies
upon the intuition already developed by Eckstein (2000 [1926],
pp. 33–9), summarised in his assertion that ‘it must above all be said that
Smith never equates “sympathy” with “benevolence”’ (ibid., p. 36). Just
after Oxford University Press published the Glasgow Edition of the TMS,
Terence Hutchison, taking the same line as the editors, considered the
Problem of consistency ‘as exaggerated or even imaginary’ (1976, p. 482).
Amongst others, one of the editors of the WN, Andrew S. Skinner, a pro-
ponent of Smith’s system building approach, also supported the point of
view that the ‘Smith Problem’ is based on a ‘misunderstanding of sym-
pathy and self-interest’ (1976, p. 112). This generally accepted position
was clearly reflected in the review in the Journal of Economic Literature,
celebrating the WN’s bicentenary. This, briefly stated, that ‘it is now
conventional wisdom that the so-called “Adam Smith Problem”… is
passé’ (Recktenwald, 1978, p. 66). Again, Winch’s view coincides with
46
See Brown’s (1997) survey of the literature to corroborate this impressive
growth.
‘what most scholars accept, that there is no Adam Smith problem’

(1978, p. 10)47 and Haakonssen, taking the same position, deems as
‘futile to take any more rides on that old hobby-horse “sympathy v. self-
interest” in Smith’ (1981, p. 197, note 19). Thus suddenly scholars’
attention to the Problem seemed to have dwindled, as was reflected in
Heilbroner’s reference to the ‘once-heated, now largely quiescent prob-
lem’ (1982, p. 427). In general, all these accounts represent the first stage
of the debate, considering the ‘Smith Problem’ as basically surmounted.
The message was very clear: there is no need to delve into meaningless
controversy.
However, the subject had not yet been fully exhausted. A second stage
in the debate, also defending the consistency position, argues, that the
Problem must not be overlooked. For example, Richard Teichgraeber
attempts to draw attention to the Problem’s humanistic normative
assumptions in order to understand the TMS and consequently the
‘Smith Problem’ as ‘a document in the history of early modern human-
ist thought’ (1981, p. 122). His assumption is that the treatment of the
Problem has been ‘perfunctory’ (ibid., p. 108). But, in the same task of
recovering the importance of the ‘Smith Problem’, Laurence Dickey,
challenging the view that the sixth edition of the TMS is basically an
extension of the first, considers that the problem ‘is still very much alive
today’ (1986, p. 609). Both authors agree that to ignore the Problem
would constitute an oversight for Smith scholarship, and both would
also encourage a reappraisal of Das Adam Smith Problem as a natural
inheritor of the civic humanistic tradition, an intuition that will be
developed in the next chapter. Soon after, successive approaches
acknowledged some kind of a solution, and therefore presupposed,
explicitly or implicitly, the importance of the Problem as a subject of
research. I shall now undertake a concise review and critical assessment
of the relevant literature on this issue.
Russell Nieli (1986), after briefly reviewing the history of the ‘Smith
Problem’, calls our attention to what he labels the ‘spheres of intimacy’.
According to the author, we treat those within our sphere of intimacy
differently to those outside it, in a manner that is right and just. Within
this framework, Smith’s ethical views do not conflict with his political
economy, as the latter, represented by self-interested acquisitiveness,
applies to economic relations with people outside our sphere of
47
It is noteworthy that later Donald Winch is more sceptical, briefly referring to
the ‘Smith Problem’ as ‘the problem of establishing consonance, if it exists’
(1996, p. 35, emphasis added).
intimacy. Therefore the market is regulated by self-interest in its pursuit

of prosperity, with the necessary and important virtues of prudence,
economy and industry, but ‘the higher virtues of love and benevolence,
Smith believed, are regularly practiced only between people who have
some intimate “connexion” with one another’ (ibid., p. 624). This is an
interesting insight, especially if we take into account the influence of
the ‘famous sect’ (TMS, Adv.), the Stoics. It is possible that the Stoics’
idea of oikeíosis is embedded in Smith, and Hierocles’s famous account of
the ‘concentric circles’ constitutes reasonable evidence for this percep-
tion.48 However, Nieli’s solution presupposes benevolence as underlying
the TMS, practically ignoring the sympathetic process.
Subsequently, the Problem has been tackled at a hermeneutic level,
leading to some novel approaches. For example, Jerry Evensky convinc-
ingly argues that the TMS is dominated by the voice of the moral
philosopher, and the WN by a practical-prescriptive voice. Therefore the
confusion ‘lies not in the pen of Adam Smith, but in the eyes of those
who profess to see an Adam Smith Problem’ (1987, p. 464). More
recently, Charles Griswold has praised the ‘protreptic we’ of the TMS
48
Hierocles, according to Stobaeus, stated: ‘Each one of us is as it were entirely
encompassed by many circles … the first and closest circle is the one which a
person has drawn as though around the center, his own mind … . Next … -
contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it uncles
and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins … The next circle
includes other relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local residents,
then the circle of fellow-tribesmen, next that of fellow-citizens, and in the
same way the circle of people from neighbouring towns, and the circle of fel-
low-country men. The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the
rest, is that of the whole human race … it is task of a well tempered man … to
draw the circles together somehow towards the center’ (Long and Sedley, 1987,
vol. 1, p. 349). I must add that Smith probably knew this piece of doxography
quite well (Mizuta, 1967, p. 143). Vivenza (2002, pp. 204–5) has recently ques-
tioned the Stoic origins of oikeíosis, underlining the Aristotelian pedigree of
the concept. I believe she is wrong. Oikeíosis is a Stoic concept, and pace
Vivenza, who claims that ‘[i]t is therefore unlikely that Smith could have inter-
preted it as such as early as the seventeenth century’ (sic., 2002, p. 204), I believe
that Smith was aware of the concept of oikeíosis through his readings of
Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch and Stobaeus, for example, not only through
Marcus Aurelius as she suggests (ibid., p. 204, note 62). Marcus Aurelius refers
only once oikeíosis, and compared to the other classical authors just men-
tioned, he does not develop the conception of oikeíosis as a primary impulse of
human beings to what is familiar, what belongs to oneself. He also refers to
oikeíotes, an etymologically related word that only implies affinity of the
different parts, in a cosmic or physical context.
(1999, pp. 48–52), also emphasising the narrative aspects of the spectator–
actor interplay. In general, these hermeneutic views, although original
and refined, are an extension of the fact that Smith’s book on moral
philosophy originates more directly from his lectures on the subject,
and thus have a narrative structure quite different to that of his more
elaborate work on political economy.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy exploits the reflective nature of sympathy in the
relationship between spectator and actor and attempts to show that self-
love for Smith is simply a reflection of sympathy. He follows Thomas
Reid and Lange-Stephen in considering that ‘self-love is in reality the
reflexive modality of sympathy’ (Dupuy, 1990, p. 116; see also 1993,
p. 56). His thrust is to prove an alternative approach to the consistency
issue, not as the ‘generally admitted … “specialisation” of domains’, as
‘in the sphere of moral sentiments, sympathy reigns supreme; in that of
the economy, selfishness has the field to itself’ (ibid.). However, he
makes the mistake of considering ‘une logique de l’autoréferénce indirecte’
(Dupuy, 1987, p. 336), a redoubling of sympathy that contains envy as a
dominant principle. Dupuy elaborates a sort of deconstruction of sym-
pathy towards economics, in which envy is also governed by the princi-
ple of sympathy. Furthermore he claims to have shown that ‘Smith
ended up, despite himself, with a system which is essentially the same as
Mandeville’s: a mixture of self-love and envy produces public prosperity’
(Dupuy, 1990, p. 118; see also Dupuy, 1987, p. 337). Certainly there is a
misinterpretation of the sympathetic process at this point, and Dupuy’s
theory in my opinion is flawed where he views ‘sympathy as utilitarian
to the end’ (Dupuy, 1987, p. 331; see also 1993, p. 55).
Patricia Werhane introduces her book by acknowledging that ‘the
question of how to read the TMS and the WN as consistent texts remains
a serious issue in Smithian scholarship’ (1991, p. 10). Her analysis,
breaking down the selfish, unsocial and social passions in Smith, is
developed to rebut all interpretations of Smith as expounding an egois-
tic theory of human nature, or as propounding any kind of method-
ological individualism. She reveals the nature of self-interest, which is
present in both works, and in assuming that the TMS lays the ground for
the WN, she concludes that they are ‘not contradictory works’ as ‘Adam
Smith is consistent in his use of self-interest throughout the two texts’
(ibid., p. 108, emphasis in the original).
Geoff Harcourt, in a brief but suggestive essay on Smith and his rele-
vance for modern economists, also defends the significance of the TMS
as a framework for developing a market economy by saying that ‘the
thrust of the argument of TMS is the need to design institutions which

allow altruism, or “sympathy”, to prevail’ (1995 [1994], p. 230). However,
whether or not this conclusion is correct (and I think it is), it is inaccu-
rate to conflate altruism with sympathy. More recently Amos Witzum
(1998) has suggested that attempts to solve the Problem have been
misled by method. Stating three different ways in which Smith might
have tackled the issue of understanding the nature of human character,
he proposes a ‘particular indirect method’, which, as a synthesis of the
other two flawed methods of description, would help to explain the
own-regarding/other-regarding dichotomy. Unfortunately, this process
misleads him, I believe, into concluding that ‘Smith presented sympa-
thy and utility as substitutes’ (ibid., p. 511).
Finally, what I have defined as the third, most recent and still nascent
stage of the debate in the literature proposes either that the Problem has
only partial resolutions or simply that no solution has been found, tac-
itly fostering more research on this issue. Vivienne Brown attempts to
transform the question of the ‘Smith Problem’ from ‘how could Smith
have written two such works’, to ‘how are those works to be read’ (1994,
p. 24, emphasis in the original). She advances the thesis that the TMS
should be understood as a dialogical text and the WN as monological,
owing to the difference in subject matter, recasting the Problem through
a radical twist that underlines the role of self-command and benevo-
lence in the former and the public virtues of justice and prudence in the
latter.49 Spencer Pack (1997), analysing the role of justice and prudence,
shows that the TMS presents an ethical defence of the acquisitive com-
mercial society, but concludes that this approach constitutes only a par-
tial resolution of Das Adam Smith Problem. He even suggests,
persuasively, that Smith might not have wanted to complete his prom-
ised system, and in his view ‘the Adam Smith Problem will always
remain, or rather it can be only partially resolved’ (ibid., pp. 137–8). One
recent contribution to the debate contends that there is a real Adam
Smith Problem, and tries to show that the few attempts to solve it ‘are
unsatisfactory’ (Otteson, 2000, p. 53). Although James Otteson’s
account of the literature on the issue is not exhaustive, his conclusion
49
Strictly speaking, Brown (1994) transcends the traditional Das Adam Smith
Problem by arguing that Smith’s account of virtues makes it impossible to read
his works as a unified intellectual programme. The new Problem for Brown
would be how to read Adam Smith. For a good review of Brown (1994) see
Collings and Ortmann (1997).
that ‘there is a problem worth addressing, and that much of the current
scholarly consensus rests on insufficient grounds’ (ibid., p. 70) deserves
consideration, as we shall see in the next part of this chapter.50
Not only does it seem that ‘unlike old soldiers, old Adam Smith prob-
lems neither die nor fade away’, but also that the Problem remains ‘a
worthy enterprise’ (Young, 1997, p. 203). An implication of this brief
review is that the ‘Smith Problem’ per se and its diversity of interpreta-
tions, has presented a rich source for novel approaches that shed light
upon an old issue, although many of these current interpretations are a
reshaping of some early reactions. One reason for this interest is that the
Problem is quite contingent, as it entails the relationship between indi-
vidual and society, and more specifically, the interdependence of ethics
and economics. Not surprisingly Knud Haakonssen, for whom Das
Adam Smith Problem had been ‘that old hobby-horse’, now thinks that it
‘is still good for another round’ (Smith, 2002 [1759], p. xxiv), and
certainly Otteson (2002) is a good answer to this challenge.
Das Adam Smith Problem has not been completely overcome, and
probably never will be. The common view of the TMS as foundational in
relation to the WN, that is, a moral basis grounding Smith’s political
economy, still pervades the debate on the Smith Problem, but even if
sympathy is not dealt with in the WN, Smith’s political economy, as it is
widely acknowledged, is not devoid of moral content. The TMS not only
precedes the WN, but the title of the former begins with a definite article
50
Very recently Otteson (2002) has defended the complementarity of the WN
and the TMS based on his market model and familiarity principle. Regarding
the latter, though James Otteson explains his position in a very suggestive way,
Nieli’s (1986) article about the spheres of intimacy, which relates to what
Otteson is arguing, is not discussed. Otteson argues that if we understand that
Smith intends a combination of morality and markets, both books are consis-
tent as far as they represent a single conception of human institutions.
Moreover, he originally expands this point for Smith’s essay on languages, and
suggests explicitly the ambitious task of proving that his thesis could cover the
whole of Smith’s legacy, that is, including LJ and his essay The History of
Astronomy (see Otteson, 2002, p. 289). The pre-assumption that Smith could
have been thinking in terms of markets while working on his TMS, is a strong
one. Therefore whether we can assemble a ‘marketplace of morality’ model to
understand Smith’s TMS as a plausible interpretation, relies on a rational
reconstruction. Another question pertaining Otteson’s recent contribution is
what did Smith actually understand by market behaviour and equilibrium (see
Chapter 5 of this book), as Otteson (2002) assumes that Smith ‘wanted to
make a study of human relations in the same way Newton made a study of
heavenly bodies – by observing the phenomena and attempting to generate
rules that describe their regular behaviour’ (ibid., p. 101).
(The Theory of Moral Sentiments), and the latter simply begins with an
indefinite one (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations). This simple detail, together with Smith’s dedication during his
last years to the corrections and additions of ‘the’ TMS, could be a sign
of what he was thinking while he wrote his two books, and what he
might have thought during his last years. My contention is only a
seedbed for further speculation, but with this fascinating and distinc-
tively Smithian unintended consequence, that is, the debate about the
consistency between TMS and WN, Smith not only left us with a puz-
zling question, but also with another elusive conundrum. Any attempt
to defend the concordance of the TMS and the WN, will finally depend
on a broader understanding of sympathy and an appropriate one of self-
interest. There is general consensus on the latter, but as far as the former
is concerned, it seems to me that the argument of the editors of the TMS,
David Raphael and Alec Macfie, underpinning the so-called ‘misunder-
standing’ on sympathy, has added a new problem in trying to dismiss
the old ‘Smith Problem’. In my view, to restrict the concept of sympathy
to moral judgement alone distorts Smith’s position. I shall attempt a
reassessment of this issue.
2.5 Sympathy and moral approbation
The editors of the TMS have strongly defended the thesis that the TMS
and the WN complement each other. But after dismissing the ‘Smith
Problem’ as ‘a pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstand-
ing’ (TMS intr., p. 20), they deal with Skaṙzyński and Buckle. Rebutting
the latter they argue:
He [Buckle] cannot have ‘studied’ TMS if he thinks that it ‘ascribes

our actions to sympathy’. Sympathy is the core of Smith’s explana-
tion of moral judgement. The motive to action is an entirely different
matter. (TMS intr., pp. 21–2, emphasis in the original)
Later, Raphael not only maintains, but also develops this position by
stating that ‘the role of sympathy in his book [TMS] is to explain the ori-
gin and the nature of moral judgement, of approval and disapproval’
(1985, p. 29). My argument is that Smith’s sympathy not only explains
‘the origin and nature of moral judgement’, but also explains the origin
and the nature of morality itself. Even though Raphael stresses the fact
that ‘sympathy in Adam Smith’s sense is a socialising agent’ (ibid., p. 31),
he is adamant in defending the nature of sympathy only in terms of
moral approbation. This view of sympathy, as just a criterion for appro-

bation, follows the rebuttal of Buckle’s position, whereas sympathy
ought not be considered as a natural motivation in human conduct. In
this setting, the explanation avoids the issues that the German
Historical School had pinpointed by too readily dismissing the cause of
Das Adam Smith Problem. But as Elias Khalil has, in my view, rightly
argued, confining sympathy to being a criterion of approbation and not
a motive for conduct is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’
(1990, p. 255).51 In addition, Samuel Fleischacker probably perceived a
similar uneasiness with this issue when he wrote that ‘Raphael and
Macfie rightly correct those who say that Smith uses sympathy as the
basis of moral action, but they go on to claim, equally misleadingly, that
he does use it as the basis of moral judgment’ (1991, p. 258, emphasis
added).
Certainly, it is right to say that sympathy is not an altruistic or benev-
olent motive for action, as had been already maintained by Walther
Eckstein (2000, [1926]), in what is the traditional view for dismissing
Buckle’s account. However, in my opinion it is a mistake to confine the
broader sense of Smithian sympathy to moral judgement alone. Raphael
insists, paraphrasing Hume, that sympathy ‘is the cement of society’
(1985, pp. 5 and 93) but persists in confining sympathy to being a
source of moral approbation or disapprobation. Curiously, he states that
sympathy in its vernacular sense, meaning ‘when one feels compassion
for the sorrow or the need of other’ (ibid., p. 31) is a motive for action. If
sympathy in this narrow sense (as compassion) is a motive for action,
why in its broader ‘circumstantial’ or ‘situational’ Smithian sense is it
not? If sympathy is a disposition and capacity inherent in human nature
that requires an imaginative leap, and leads society to form some gen-
eral rules for behaviour, why is it not a motive for action? Sympathy,
understood within the framework of Smith’s broader sympathetic
process, is also a motive for action. Let me briefly elaborate.
The first, and very well known sentence in the TMS, ‘[h]ow selfish
soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his
nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their
happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except
the pleasure of seeing it’ (TMS I.i.1.1, p. 9), already defines sympathy as
51
Khalil (1990), taking Smith’s account of the nature of virtues, defends an
‘interactionist’ against a ‘functionalist’ approach, giving a convincing
argument against the idea that sympathy is not a motive to action.
an inner principle in human nature.52 Smith is aware that common lan-

guage might mislead readers to what he actually means by sympathy, as:
Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-

feeling with the sorrows of others. Sympathy, though its meaning
was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much
impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any
passion whatever. (TMS I.i.I.5, p. 10)
This passage is interesting not only for its significance regarding how to
interpret Smith’s concept of sympathy, but also because it provides a
clue by clarifying what he did not mean by it. After stating that sympa-
thy is not simply fellow-feeling related to pity, as it pertains to ‘any pas-
sion whatever’, Smith reiterates that it has to do with ‘joy and grief’.53
The Greek word sumpátheia was very important for the Stoics.54 For
them, sumpátheia had a clear cosmic significance that also entailed
social overtones, and though it was a fundamental word for the Stoic’s
tradition, it had already been used by Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus. The
Greek prefix sun, which means together or with (as symposium means
drinking with), is joined to páthos, and therefore there is an obvious
analogy with the Latin com-passion (the Latin prefix cum is the equiva-
lent of the Greek sun), as Smith duly recognised in the passage just
quoted. The etymological origin of the word sumpátheia would simply
imply feeling with, or together with; merely sharing a fellow-feeling. But
Smith does not mean this kind of sympathy, so it is wrong to conflate
sympathy with fellow-feeling, as has been sometimes done.
Smith stresses the importance of the causes of the passions, conclud-
ing that ‘[s]ympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of
52
Before rebutting, once again, Hume’s account of sympathy, Smith defines it as
a ‘power … with which the mind is manifestly endowed’ (TMS VII.iii.3.3,
p. 321).
53
After the first edition of the TMS’s was published, Hume wrote a letter to Smith
arguing ‘I wish you had more particularly and fully prov’d, that all kinds of
Sympathy are necessarily Agreeable. This is the Hinge of your System … . Now
it would appear that there is a disagreeable Sympathy, as well as an agreeable … .
An Hospital would be a more entertaining Place than a Ball’ (Corr., p. 43).
54
Gloria Vivenza, argues that ‘[a]n immediate point to make is that despite the
similarity of terminology Smith’s “sympatheia” has little in common with clas-
sical sumpátheia apart from the basic sense of taking the part of, or “suffering
together with”, another person’ (2002, p. 41). In fact, Cicero refers to the Greek
sumpátheia, especially in his De Divinatione, and translates the Greek word as
consensus (cf. Cic.Div II.xiv), and then as a natural connexion.
the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it’ (TMS I.i.1.10,
p. 12). Therefore sympathy is different from fellow-feeling, or from its
literal etymological sense, as it implies not only to be in the person’s
shoes, but also requires knowing where those shoes are standing. Of
course I will have fellow-feeling with any passion, but I cannot sympa-
thise ‘ … till informed of its cause’ (TMS I.i.1.8, p. 11). Etymologically,
I could sympathise with you if you start crying, regardless the cause, but
according to Smith, I could not symphatise with you if you start crying
bitterly because you cannot find your pencil to underline this passage.
In other words, I can feel and share your passion, but that does not nec-
essarily mean that I can sympathise with it.
Perhaps the most important concept for Smith in the process of
explaining sympathy, is the role of imagination. The faculty of imagina-
tion enables the process and it is by the ‘very illusion of the imagina-
tion’ and ‘the idea of those circumstances’ that this broad concept of
sympathy takes place. No wonder we can even feel ‘the dread of death’
(TMS I.i.1.13, p. 13). In sum, it is the role of imagination in combination
with a circumstantial deliberative process that finally allows the agent to
sympathise. The nature of the sympathetic process is determined by ‘the
imaginary change of situations from which it arises’ (TMS I.i.4.1, p. 19).
Strictly speaking, Smith’s sympathy would be a special kind of
empátheia, as the Greek prefix en means in, into, towards or within,
reflecting a change of places.
The actual sentiments of the person principally concerned become
feelings of the spectator through an imaginative changing of places. But
the way in which this change of situations takes place, is not trivial. We
face the problem of how the imaginary change is performed. Certainly
the sympathiser feels with the sympathisee, in what sym-pathy means,
but some commentators have found a problem as there is a clear differ-
ence between what one would feel if one were in the other’s shoes and
what it actually implies to imagine oneself as the other person. The lat-
ter applies to Smith’s sympathy, and anticipating an answer to Reid’s
criticism that his sympathy was simply a refinement of a selfish system,
he clearly states contra Hobbes, in this long proleptic passage, that:
Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle.

When I sympathize with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be
pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in self-love, because
it arises from bringing your case home to myself, from putting myself
in your situation, and thence conceiving what I should feel in the like
circumstances. But though sympathy is very properly said to arise
from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally

concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in
my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sym-
pathize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only son, in
order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I, a person of
such a character and profession, should suffer, if I had a son, and if
that son was unfortunately to die: but I consider what I should suffer
if I was really you, and I not only change circumstances with you, but
I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon
your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore,
in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion,
which does not arise even from the imagination of any thing that has
befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person and char-
acter, but which is entirely occupied about what relates to you? A man
may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impossible that he
should conceive himself as suffering her pains in her own proper person and
character. (TMS VII.iii.I.4, p. 317, emphasis added)55
The change of situation implies a change of person, as I may sympathise

with a pregnant woman, though I have never experienced that particu-
lar situation, nor will I. If Hume considered sympathy a means of com-
munication related to contagion or infection, as an impression that
becomes an idea, Smith transcends Hume by demanding, in addition, a
change of person. In this sense Hume’s account of sympathy would be
more Hobbesian, as it depends on the sympathiser. Fontaine (1997, pas-
sim) has explored the nature of sympathy, investigating what modern
economists understand by sympathy. According to him we should dis-
tinguish between ‘empathetic identification’ and ‘partial empathetic
identification’. The former, which represents Smith’s understanding of
55
Confusion might arise in contrasting this with the following passage: ‘[b]y the
imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves endur-
ing all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in
some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his
sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not
altogether unlike them’ (TMS I.i.1.2, p. 9). James Otteson interprets the latter
as meaning that ‘we imagine –contrary to what might have thought – not
what our brother feels, but rather what we would feel in his situation; we then
assume our brother is feeling what we would feel’ (2002, pp. 19–20), as we
have no experience of the other. I believe the latter is fundamental, as sympa-
thy for Smith necessarily involves a rational process in assessing the other’s sit-
uation. What the person considered actually feels is only part of the process, as
we must check what we should feel if we were him in his situation.
sympathy, implies an imaginary change of circumstances and person-

hood, while the latter implies only a change of circumstances.56 The cir-
cumstances surrounding any passion are a necessary condition to
attaining Smith’s sympathy, but they are by no means always sufficient.
Yet the principle of sympathy is aimed at attaining mutual sympathy;
if the natural affection of sympathy requires a spectator and an agent, it
is the process of the concordance of sentiments that finally uncovers the
social nature of Smith’s project. In this sense sympathy relates to
Cicero’s translation of the Stoic’s word sumpátheia as a ‘natural connex-
ion’ (see infra note 54). If sympathy for Smith presupposes human
beings’ social nature, it is the sympathetic process, through the first
stage of mutual sympathy, that finally determines an ethics of social
interaction. As will be explained later, in Chapter 5, Smith would not
conceive an economic Robinson Crusoe; for Smith a human without
society would simply not be a human being.
Though it is clear that sympathy entails moral approbation, as ‘[t]o
approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects,
is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them’
(TMS I.i.3.1, p. 16), the ‘suitableness to their objects’ is fundamental to
understanding the situational character of sympathy. This point
demands the fundamental distinction between ‘the cause which excites
it [the sentiment of affection of the heart from which any action pro-
ceeds], or the motive which gives occasion to it’ and ‘the end which it
proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce’ (TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18; cf.
II.i.intro.2, p. 67),57 a distinction that will be treated and discussed more
extensively in the next two chapters.
Sympathy, as a situational capacity, deals with causes and effects, with
the proportioned nature of what triggers a passion and the manifestation
56
Sugden (2002, p. 75, note 7) has recently questioned Phillippe Fontaine’s
position, arguing that Smith’s sympathy only acccounts for partial identifica-
tion. But there is an identify problem as it seems that there is a contradiction
in Smith regarding the self. In my opinion Smith’s sympathy would generally
take place without the need of denying the self, but some special situations
would require a complete self-denial that actually implies a change of person-
hood. In this case, imagination would act as a necessary but not always suffi-
cient condition. On a very perceptive account of Smith’s originality compared
with Hutcheson and Hume see Harman (1986). I am indebted to David Levy
and Sandra Peart for their intuition that Smith’s sympathy, contrary to Hume,
presupposes an egalitarian stance.
57
Smith immediately defines cause and effect, regarding the former ‘[i]n the
suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or disproportion which the
affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, consists the pro-
priety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action’
of that passion. And for the purpose of assessing any situation, the only
possibility is for us to bring the case ‘to our own breast’ (TMS I.i.3.9, p. 18).
This would apparently contradict sympathy as a change of situation and
person, leaving Smith’s sympathy only as a ‘partial empathetic identifica-
tion’, but Smith is here thinking in terms of moral approbation, with sym-
pathy as a canon for approval. The introduction of the impartial
spectator, and then the supposed impartial spectator, as the man within,
that represents our inner conscience, poses the question on how moral
assessment should be carried out. Smith believes that ‘[e]very faculty in
one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another.
I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by
my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my
love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them’
(TMS I.i.3.10, p. 19). But if the spectator is blind, deaf, a clinical idiot or
pathologically insensitive, it does not necessarily mean that mutual sym-
pathy cannot be attained, or that Smith is presupposing an ideal society
of perfect beings. It only confirms that he assumes the importance of
social experience, which is closely related to the faculty of sympathy.
Although utility is pleasing in aesthetic terms, Smith is aware that ‘we
approve of another man’s judgement, not as something useful, but as
right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality … . The idea of the
utility of all qualities of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not
what first recommends them to our approbation’ (TMS I.i.4.4, p. 20).
The idea of utility as an ‘after-thought’ (contra Hume), and the thesis
that Smith can be labelled as a proto-utilitarian, will be discussed later in
Chapter 4, but for my current line of inquiry, it suffices to understand as
a preliminary stage that sympathy for Smith is a complex phenomenon,
and though it entails judgement, that does not mean that morality,
under the sympathetic process, should just be determined by moral
approbation. Sympathy as an imaginary change of circumstances and
personhood, presupposes a rational process that sometimes entails
a kind of self-denial, as it would require a change of persons. This capac-
ity of imagining oneself in the position of someone else, changing
places and personhood, constitutes the main pillar of Smith’s moral
philosophy. Yet the impartial spectator, together with the concept of
propriety and the virtue of self-command, play a fundamental role in
shaping the sympathetic process. It is this process, by uncovering the
(TMS I.i.3.6, p. 18), and regarding the latter ‘[i]n the beneficial or hurtful
nature of the effects which the affection aims at, or tends to produce, consists
the merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which it is entitled to
reward, or is deserving of punishment’ (TMS I.i.3.7, p. 18).
nature of propriety and self-command, as will be shown in the next two

chapters, that sheds further light on the sympathetic process.
We learn from experience to sympathise, and this implies that the
sympathetic process might take place in our minds, independent of the
actual occurrence of the event of a spectator being face to face with an
agent (cf. TMS I.i.3.4, pp. 17–18), that is, sometimes sympathy does not
actually take place, but in reality it occurs. In that sense I believe that
Griswold has originally referred to Smith’s account of human behaviour
‘ … like moral realists who focus primarily on the particular case rather
than a consequentialist’ (1999, p. 54); indeed there are more grounds to
consider Smith’s ethical position as realist, than relativist. The emphasis
Smith places on different contexts does not necessarily mean that he is
a moral relativist.
An understanding of sympathy only in terms of moral judgement
implicitly assumes a consequentialist view of the sympathetic process,
in terms of mutual sympathy. Moral approval requires actions or situa-
tions already exercised to be judged, and sympathy, if it were only
restricted to the realm of moral approval, would play no part in the gen-
erating process per se. But sympathy as a principle in human nature is
not only a capacity, but also a disposition, and therefore it pertains to
both the origin of moral judgement and to the process of attaining it. It
is this process that grants moral autonomy. Indeed, the instrumental
feature of the sympathetic process, as directed towards a concordance of
sentiments, does not tell the whole story as a final cause to which all
efficient causes tend. The fact that there is a natural tendency towards
mutual sympathy does not necessarily mean that the sympathetic
process will only take place when considering the future pleasure that
the concordance of sentiments will produce. For Smith, human beings
would sympathise not only when foreseeing pleasure, or any outcome
(to avoid a utilitarian or hedonistic connotation). The final cause of the
sympathetic process could be seen as a télos, but understood in the
Aristotelian sense, not as a simple attainment of an end, but also as
‘contributing to it’, for its own sake. It is in this grand sense that the sym-
pathetic process is actually teleological, and not simply consequentialist.
In fact, I believe that it is not correct to restrict sympathy as a concept of
means-to-ends, as the process is not merely instrumentally related to the
concordance (or non-concordance) of sentiments,58 and therefore it cannot
58
This teleological bias that presupposes sympathy as a vehicle leading to
concordance, or to the utility of mutual sympathy, which although always
pleasurable, is not an end, also leads Witzum (1998) incorrectly to conflate
sympathy and utility.
be simply reducible to moral approval (or disapproval). Sympathy, under-

stood as the sympathetic process, also entails a motivational force that is
shaped by a continuous process of transformation inherent in human
interaction, and a pleasurable end does not exclusively determine it.
To assume that sympathy is not related to moral motivation invalidates
the sympathetic process in its broad sense. Sympathy narrowly under-
stood as the exercise of moral judgement would in practice render the
individual devoid of any moral autonomy. For Smith, moral judgement is
socially embedded since moral codes emerge from social interaction, but
the ethical role of moral autonomy, represented by the ‘supposed impar-
tial spectator’, is fundamental to Smith’s ethical system. The TMS not
only concentrates on the consequences of our behaviour that allow moral
judgement, but also, and more importantly in my view, on the motives
that trigger our conduct. Propriety, in contrast with merit, morally works
as a motive for action (see TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18 and II.i.intro.2, p. 67). For
Smith, in a proto-Kantian insight that will be explored in Chapter 4,
morality also evolves at an ad intra level of consciousness.59 The Smithian
distinctive meta-virtue of self-command, that ‘is not only a great virtue,
but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre’ (TMS
VI.iii.11, p. 241), is the paradigmatic example of propriety in this sense.
Indeed, self-command is related to propriety, since ‘the effects are too
often but too little regarded’ (TMS VI.concl.7, p. 264). The philosophical
meaning of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of self-command, and
the role of conscience introduced by the supposed impartial spectator, sit-
uates the sympathetic process within a philosophical tradition that seems
closer to Kant than to utilitarianism. Indeed, for Smith moral actions are
not simply determined as such by their outcomes, but also by the motives
for which they were undertaken. In this sense, sympathy grants moral
autonomy to the individual.
Surprisingly, the assumption of sympathy as merely associated with
moral judgement has been common in the literature, perhaps, as I sug-
gest, as a consequence of the TMS editors’ authoritative emphasis on
jettisoning the ‘Smith Problem’. For Werhane ‘sympathy and self-
interest are different kinds of phenomena. Self-interest is a motivating
force. Sympathy … is the means through which we understand (but do
not feel) the passions of others and ourselves. Therefore, sympathy has
no role in motivation’ (1991, p. 97). Jeffrey Young (1997), quoting
59
I believe that David Raphael’s distinction between propriety as related to
right and wrong, and merit as related to praise and blame (Raphael, 1985,
pp. 29–30) is correct, as propriety is firmly linked to moral autonomy, and
merit to moral judgement.
Raphael and Macfie’s remark, thinks that this is a valid explanation of

the difference between self-interest and sympathy, implying that the
former is a motive to action, and the latter is not. For him, also, this is
one important reason for explaining the ‘Smith Problem’ and once
again the TMS editors ‘effectively deal with this’ (ibid., p. 24). Even
James Otteson, the most radical contemporary interpreter of Das Adam
Smith Problem before the publication of his book, agrees, stating that
‘Raphael is right to point out that Smithian sympathy is not a motive to
action at all; rather, Smith means by ‘sympathy’ a harmony or concor-
dance between the sentiments of an actor and of an observer’ (2000, p. 64).
The ‘sympathy problem’ needs reassessment, since we cannot reduce
the sympathetic process solely to moral approval. Fortunately, Knud
Haakonssen, in his introduction to the new Cambridge edition of the
TMS, has briefly tackled the issue of sympathy and moral autonomy. He
sees sympathy as ‘practical imagination’, asserting that:
We spontaneously see people as purposeful and this is the central act

of practical imagination [sympathy] … . We cannot get to the stage of
either approving or disapproving of a standpoint until we see it is a
standpoint. Sympathy in the most important Smithian usage is this
latter process which is preparatory to any assessment of people, it is
not assessment itself … he [Smith] often uses sympathy in both the
traditional sense of ‘approval’ and in the more original sense
explained here. (Smith, 2002 [1759], p.xiv, emphasis in the original)
The sympathetic process precedes and directs our behaviour, relying not
only on its consequences or effects, but also on the antecedent causes
which trigger our conduct. Fleischacker (1999) has greatly contributed
to this debate, and I believe that Smith’s ethical account also implies
a deontological stance in which conscience plays a leading role.60
60
To avoid confusion, let me explain what I understand here by deontology.
Based on the Greek to deon, that which is binding, right and even needful,
implying not only a sense of moral obligation, but also one of being in want,
Bentham coined the word deontology in 1814. Moreover, he wrote his
Deontology between that year and 1831. However, Bentham’s deontology is
based on duties towards an end, as act-consequentialism. But in the case of
Smith’s deontology, it would be agent-relative. It implies duty, not determined
by the consequences, but motivated within the agent, by the supposed impar-
tial spectator. The fact that Bentham’s Deontology is focused towards ends, does
not mean he did not regard motives. Indeed, Bentham was very aware of the
importance of motivation, as shown by his A Table of the Springs of Actions
The fact that this view has been practically ignored is, ironically, a
consequence of Das Adam Smith Problem, as I have attempted to argue.
Its major implication is that the role of moral autonomy in Smith’s TMS
has been relatively neglected.
2.6 Conclusions
Das Adam Smith Problem continues to be a source of debate. Ironically its

history and the variety of interpretations shed light not only on an issue
that is still pervasive, but also on our understanding of sympathy. The
traditional interpretation of the Problem as a misunderstanding of the
meanings of self-interest and sympathy has led some scholars to con-
sider the latter not as a motive for action, but simply as entailing moral
judgement. After an analysis of the sources and the debate, it has been
argued that this instrumental position narrows Smith’s concept of sym-
pathy. The TMS presupposes sympathy as a principle in human nature
that fosters a continuous relationship between spectators and agents, a
natural interdependence among social beings. Sympathy, for Smith, not
only accounts for moral judgement, but more importantly perhaps, it
influences human behaviour ex ante. The emphasis on propriety, on
what is ‘praiseworthy’, distances Smith from his successors, especially
from the utilitarian tradition. His moral system also involves a process of
self-transformation within the praxis of interaction through the moral
autonomy of the ‘supposed impartial spectator’.
However, the process of sympathising is also part of a complex social
phenomenon in which human beings take part in a continuous recipro-
cal interplay. In this natural process of human beings within society the
individual is even led to form ‘certain general rules concerning what is
fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided’ (TMS III.4.7, p. 159).
Morality depends on social experience, as the TMS ‘looks upon the indi-
vidual not as an absolute and irreducible entity existing prior to social
experience, but as a product of his social environment’ (Morrow, 1927,
p. 179).61 Propriety for Smith, in contrast with the effects or
(1817). But motives to action are determined by a desire for pleasure and an
aversion to pain. Certainly Smith would react against the idea of pleasure and
pain as the sole motivational determinants.
61
Glenn Morrow was probably the first to notice an agency-structure dichotomy
in Smith. He suggests that in the TMS society determines the ethical man, but
that in the WN it is the individual’s self-interest which determines the economic
structure (1927, pp. 335–6). Lamb (1974) explicitly tackles the relationship
consequences of merit, not only entails an innate human faculty, but it

is also the result of social psychology. Smith’s ethical view of human
being’s nature is mainly social, and may be expressed by paraphrasing
Kant’s celebrated metaphor that ‘society without agents is empty, but
agency without society is blind’ (Kant, 1990 [1787], p. 93).
The famous and frequently quoted passage of ‘the butcher, the brewer, or
the baker’ (WN I.ii.2, pp. 26–7) as a dominating force in exchange, together
with the well-known passages about the invisible hand, have given rise to
a narrow and biased perception of Smith’s thought within neoclassical eco-
nomics, either distorting or simply ignoring his moral views. It is not neg-
ligible that Smith wrote: ‘those general rules of conduct, when they have
been fixed in our mind by habitual reflection, are of great use in correcting
the misrepresentations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be
done in our particular situation’ (TMS III.4.12, p. 160, emphasis added). He
knew the power of self-love, especially in the economic realm, but he was
also aware that ‘general rules’ ought to guide us as to what is fit and proper.
Self-interest, and virtues in general, cannot be detached from the social
implications underlying the concept of sympathy.
For the bicentenary of Smith’s death, in 1990, 10 Nobel laureates
either presented or prepared papers in order to commemorate their
debt to ‘the father of the science’. Their contribution was published as
Adam Smith’s Legacy. His Place in the Development of Modern Economics
(1992). Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, there is not a single
reference to the TMS among the 10 essays. But earlier, 1998 Nobel
Laureate Amartya Sen,62 a healthy exception among economists, and
well aware of Smith’s philosophy, had rightly affirmed: ‘Indeed, it is
precisely the narrowing of the broad Smithian view of human beings,
in modern economies, that can be seen as one of the major deficiencies
of contemporary economic theory’ (Sen, 1987, p. 28). A promising sign
in our discipline is that, during the last two decades, interest in the
whole of Adam Smith has been growing rapidly. Indeed, it can now be
said to be flourishing.
between the individual and society in Smith. More recently Patricia Werhane
has suggested this line of inquiry (1991, pp. 144–5), but criticises it. Jean-Pierre
Dupuy also sees that in the TMS ‘Smith apparaît beaucoup plus en effet comme le
précurseur du Durkheim’ (1987, p. 329).
62
Vivian Walsh suggests there has been a revival of classical theory, represented
especially by Sen, who not only has campaigned against ‘the vulgar (and inter-
ested) misunderstanding of what Smith meant by “self-interest”’ (2000, p. 22),
but has also fostered a renewed ‘second wave’.
3
Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis
Discourse and Civic Humanism
3.1 Introduction
Adam Smith added a new section entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’ to
the sixth and last edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this late
addition, he mainly discusses what I will call the four Smithian virtues:
self-command, prudence, beneficence and justice. Scholars have long
recognised the centrality of these virtues in the articulation of Smith’s
moral theory. What has gone relatively uncommented, however, is the
fact that these four virtues constitute a fundamental aspect of his ethics,
and that they are a theory in and of themselves. As part of this larger
project, the present chapter provides a broader context for Smith’s TMS
by analysing and outlining its possible reliance on the classical tradition
of the ‘cardinal virtues’. It will make the case that the ‘civic humanist’
paradigm represented a central feature for Smith’s recasting of these
virtues, and that, accordingly, the ideology of civic humanism remained
a powerful influence during the Scottish Enlightenment. I argue that
Smith has too readily been assimilated to the natural jurisprudential tra-
dition, neglecting the prominence of self-command, as a virtue with
civic humanist overtones, within his four principal virtues. A proper
understanding of this crucial virtue, and of Smith’s narrative, reveals
that his account was motivated by a far more humanist tradition of
thought.
The next part of this chapter will briefly explicate the peculiar nature
of virtue as ‘manliness’ in the Greek and Roman tradition. During the
Renaissance, the idea of the vir virtutis was revived, and the contest
between virtù and fortuna became a central feature of humanist
discourse. In Section 3.3, I argue that this civic humanist legacy signifi-
cantly shaped Smith’s position on the question of standing armies, as
57
well as his concept of self-command. The fourth part of this chapter will
briefly characterise the classical tradition of the four cardinal virtues
(prudence, courage, temperance and justice), a set of ideas which, from
Plato up through the scholastics, remained the essential ‘excellences’ of
moral character. Section 3.5 examines Smith’s interaction with this tra-
dition, paying special attention to the virtue of self-command. I make
the case that the widespread scholarly practice of identifying this virtue
as essentially Stoic is mistaken. Smith’s use of the idea of self-command,
the only Smithian virtue related to propriety, coincides precisely with the
Socratic virtue of enkráteia, which, in turn, is firmly linked to the cardi-
nal virtue of sophrosúne. Lastly, I argue that Smith’s understanding of
these concepts relies heavily on the humanist vision of the vir virtutis.
The Smithian theory of virtues combines the natural jurisprudential
language of rights and duties with a humanist tradition of thought. The
virtus of self-command exalts the consequentialist nature of the other
Smithian virtues, which are complemented by its all-encompassing
nature. In short, this chapter is a vindication of a dialogue between
virtues and commerce in Smith, between the twilight of a civic human-
ist tradition and the rise of political economy.
3.2 The tradition of virtus
One of J. G. A. Pocock’s central aspirations in The Machiavellian Moment

is to give an account of the development of the idea of ‘virtue’ from the
revival of the Greco-Roman tradition in quattrocento Florence up to the
American Revolution. Pocock investigates the concept of ‘virtue’, not
only as the correlative antagonist of fortuna, but also as an independent
term with its own richly defined content. Yet a central tenet of Pocock’s
argument is that virtue ‘cannot be satisfactorily reduced to the status of
right or assimilated to the vocabulary of jurisprudence’ (Pocock, 1985,
p. 41), and that we should, therefore, look for a predictable opposition
between ‘republican’ and ‘liberal’ discourses. Accordingly, much recent
scholarship, noting the significant influence of natural jurisprudential
thought on Smith’s enterprise, and accepting Pocock’s dictum that lib-
eralism and republicanism cannot coexist, has failed to recognise the
essential role of humanist ideas in the development of Smith’s theory.1
1
See, for example, Forbes (1976) and Haakonssen (1981). On Smith and civic
humanism, research includes Pocock’s own work (1975, 1983, 1985, 1999),
Dwyer (1987, 1990, 1992), Robertson (1983a, 1983b, 1985, 1987), Phillipson
(1983) Teichgraeber (1981), Dickey (1986) and Evensky (1989). The debate
Smith on Virtues 59
While the focus on ius has overshadowed the importance of virtus in

Smith, I will contend that both approaches are naturally intertwined
within the Smithian project.2 As Pocock is well aware, ‘ “virtue” is a
word with a long history and a great many meanings’ (Pocock, 1985,
p. 41). I will begin by briefly examining one particular, classic meaning
of virtue that Quentin Skinner explains with reference to the idea of the
vir virtutis (1978, vol. 1, p. 87 and passim), in order to see whether Smith
inherits part of this tradition, and how he fits it into his narrative.
The word virtue relates to the Latin virtus, which is used to translate
the Greek word areté. As is the case with many Greek words, any trans-
lation is difficult, and probably misleading, and this is certainly the case
of areté, which had a long history before it acquired its Socratic moral
overtones. It seems that the Greeks might have presupposed that the
root of areté, as related to manly qualities, was in the epic Ares, which
stands for the god of war and slaughter, son of Zeus and Hera, and later
called by the Romans ‘Mars’. This popular etymological mistake, linking
areté to warlike manliness, has an understandable cultural value in itself,
as it implicitly stresses the character of the martial virtues, so prominent,
for example, in the Iliad and the Odyssey and throughout the classical
tradition.3 But just as the Greeks had the cardinal virtue of andreía
between the jurisprudential approach and civic humanism is best reflected in

the collection of essays by Hont and Ignatieff (1983). Although Winch (1978,
1996) makes use of the political discourse of civic humanism, in Winch (1983)
he expresses some reservations about its methodology. Phillipson (1983, p. 200,
note 89) is also worth reading, as it provides a taste of the debate in question.
Harpham (1984) provides a powerful critique of Winch’s (1978) approach to
Smith, calling for a better understanding of liberalism, and in Harpham (2000)
he investigates Smith’s concept of liberty, questioning any republican interpre-
tation. Stimson (1989) also criticises any republican interpretation of Smith by
suggesting that we cannot find a coherent Smithian theory of politics.
2
Pocock refers to the ‘two-buckets fallacy’ (1983, p. 248). Vivienne Brown
reflects the rather generalised view that ‘the language of rights and markets
seems to lie uneasily beside the language of virtue and corruption in spite of a
number of attempts to straddle both interpretative paradigms’ (1994, pp.
101–2). Smith not only had promised a treatise on Jurisprudence (TMS
VII.iv.37, p. 342; see also Corr. pp. 286–7), a vow that he reluctantly maintains
in the advertisement to the last edition of the TMS, but makes ample use of it,
not only, as it is evident, in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, but also in his moral
philosophy and political economy.
3
‘In the city-state courage was called manliness, a clear reminiscence of the
Homeric identification of courage with manly areté’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939],
pp. 6–7) and ‘the word areté had originally meant warlike prowess’ (ibid., p. 8). In
Plato’s Cratylus (407d1) the God Ares is etymologically related to the masculine
(fortitudo), derived from anér, which denotes ‘man’, the Romans, following
this ‘manliness tradition’, coined the Latin word virtus from vir, also
meaning ‘man’. Cicero summarised this cultural tradition of virtue-
manliness-courage when he wrote Appelata est enim ex viro virtus; viri
autem propria maxime est fortitudo (‘it is from the word for man that the
word virtue is derived; but man’s chief quality is fortitude’) (Cic.Tusc,
II.xviii.43, 1966, pp. 194–5). Some 150 years later, Plutarch referred to
Roman martial prowess and wrote, in Greek, that evidence for its impor-
tance ‘may be found in the only Latin word for virtue, which signifies
really manly valour’ (Plut.Lives, vol. 4, 1968, p. 121).
However, strictly speaking, the Greek word areté is related to áristos,4
which means that which is best, or most perfect, and that is the reason
that many translations, instead of using the word virtue for areté, prefer
the word ‘excellence’ or even ‘goodness’. In this broader sense we under-
stand the so-called ‘Renaissance man’, whose aim is to attain universal
excellence in all aspects of virtue. But virtus and areté, in their moral
aspects were linked to the cardinal virtue of courage, and were con-
trasted with the effeminate (fortuna). For example Cicero, referring to
the virtue of fortitudo, which in Latin corresponds to the cardinal virtue
of courage, wonders ‘what is more vile or disgraceful than a womanish
man?’ (Cic.Tusc, III.xvii.36, 1966, p. 271).
This value system was revived during the Renaissance, as a reaction
against the Augustinian view of human nature and the scholastics’ devi-
ation from the classic moral significance of courage. It became a relevant
feature of the civic humanist tradition. The archetypal example is
when Machiavelli, in chapter XXV of The Prince, states that virtù must
not only resist, but even beat and coerce fortuna, which is a woman.5
arren and as well as to to andreion, an adjective that clearly relates to andreia, the
cardinal virtue of courage. MacIntyre (1988, p. 26) argues that areté, in post-
Homeric uses (inscriptions on grave-stones for example), means courage and
manliness. In The Odyssey 4. 725 areté is related to esthlós, that which is noble,
and in 22. 244 it is linked to to áristoi, that which is best or excellent, which rep-
resents the real etymological root of areté. But in The Iliad 20. 242 there is a
connection between areté and that which is manly. The passage in The Odyssey
8. 266ff, when Ares seduces Aphrodite, and they are then set up by Volcanus,
exemplifies another important feature of Ares’s manly character.
4
‘The root of the word [areté] is the same as that of áristos’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939], p. 5).
5
In chapter XXV of The Prince, Machiavelli says that fortune ‘shows its powers
where no force has been organised to resist her’ (Machiavelli, 1988 [1532],
p. 85), where ‘powers’ is a translation of virtù. At the end of the chapter
Machiavelli concludes ‘fortune is a woman, and if you want to control her, it
is necessary to treat her roughly’ (ibid., p. 87). Perhaps Skinner and Price’s
Smith on Virtues 61
The Romans, who had worshipped the goddess Fortuna,6 already

considered that she would be subdued by virtus, creating this classical
relationship between virtù and fortuna which became a style of Renaissance
discourse. This revival of vir virtutis, of ‘the truly manly man’ (Skinner,
1978, vol. 1, p. 87) rooted in the classical tradition, shaped the ideals of
the civic humanist tradition. Skinner rightly considers that ‘this empha-
sis on man’s creative powers came to be one of the most influential as
well as characteristic doctrines of Renaissance humanism’ (ibid., p. 98).
Its influence stems from the simple acceptance of the idea that fortuna is
a woman, and therefore attracted by the vir, the man of true manliness,
a quality she is especially keen to reward. The Prince should not only
know how to coerce her if circumstances demand it, but must also strive
to attract the goddess to gain her favours, as the achievement of power
and glory oscillates along with this flirtation. Success finally depends on
how fortuna is combined with virtù. This cluster of ideas, encompassed
by the virtue–manliness–courage triad, remained a central aspect of
intellectual discourse in modern political thought an aspect that is still
present in Smith’s discourse.
3.3 Smith’s vir virtutis narrative and

the standing army debate
Smith also inherits part of this tradition, especially when he writes

about standing armies and the martial spirit, and in a more explicit
manner when he refers to the ‘awesome and respectable’ virtue of self-
command. The latter will be treated extensively in Section 3.5.1 of this
chapter. Regarding the former, we know that in An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Smith simply considered that ‘a well-
regulated standing army is superior to every militia’ (WN V.i.a.39,
translation is not literal enough as the original reads ‘perché la fortuna è donna,
ed è necessario, volendola tener sotto, batterla ed urtarla’ (Machiavelli, 1891 [1532],
p. 365), which is probably better translated as ‘since fortune is a woman, it is
necessary, if one wants to reduce her to obedience, to cane and to strike her’.
Earlier Quentin Skinner was closer to the latter sense stating that ‘he
[Machiavelli] ends by declaring with a characteristic flourish that, ‘because for-
tune is a woman’ the aim of the man of virtù must be ‘to beat and coerce her
until she becomes submissive to his will’ (1978, vol. I, p. 121).
6
The Goddess was depicted with the cornucopia during the Roman Republic, a
symbol of plenty, but the Christian tradition broke with this image, and she
was later represented by the wheel of change, a symbol of the unexpected,
resembling the idea that she was moved by whim, and not liable to be a poten-
tial ally (see Skinner, 2000, pp. 29–30).
p. 705, cf. V.i.a.25, p. 700).7 His justification for defending this thesis is
based on the progress of commercial society, rather than on any anti-
republican ideological grounds. Indeed, Smith is aware that ‘[m]en of
republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous
to liberty’, and after that he immediately adds, ‘[i]t certainly is so, wher-
ever the interest of the general and that of the principal officers are not
necessarily connected with the support of the constitution of the state’
(WN V.i.a.41, p. 706). Yet the debate is not simply confined to econom-
ics. His demand that those generals and chief officers (who, according to
Smith, should be the ‘principal nobility and gentry of the country’) have
‘the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority’ (ibid.), is
a basic concern which is at the core of those who criticised mercenaries
and defended the militia. Duty towards the country is the political as
well as moral cornerstone that underpins the first duty of the sovereign:
defence. With this demand for those in command, which resembles the
reasons for defending the militia against an army of mercenaries, Smith
argues that a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty, and on
the contrary, in some cases it can be favourable to it. There is a differ-
ence between a merely professional standing army, and Smith’s
proposed standing army, in that the latter is commanded by those few
who share the spirit of a republican commitment to the politeia. This
view is complemented further by the image of ‘the patriot who lays
down his life for the safety, or when for the vain-glory of this society,
appears to act with the most exact propriety’, concluding that ‘his con-
duct, therefore, excites not only our entire approbation, but our highest
wonder and admiration, and seems to merit all the applause which can
be due to the most heroic virtue’ (TMS VI.ii.2.2, p. 228). Sublime
courage, giving up his own life for his country, makes the patriot an
object of wonder and admiration, an example of perfect propriety. Our
7
For this highly sensitive political issue in Scotland, Andrew Fletcher’s A
Discourse of Government with relation to the Militias (1698, reprinted in Daiches,
1979) is fundamental to understanding the importance of militias within
the Scottish context. On Fletcher, see Daiches (1979) and Robertson (1983b,
pp. 141–51; 1985, pp. 22–59). On the standing army debate see Schwoerer (1974),
Western (1965) and especially Robertson (1985) for an analysis of the issue in
Scotland. The best account of Smith and the militia issue remains, in my view,
Winch (1978, pp. 103–20; 1996, p. 55, pp. 114–23), although I believe that
there was an actual shift of mind in Smith influenced by his mature economic
thoughts (according to Winch’s interpretation, Smith continued to support
militias). However, I am not proposing a new Adam Smith Problem. See also
Hont and Ignatieff (1983, pp. 7–8) and Robertson (1985, pp. 201–32) for
Smith’s justification of the standing army.
Smith on Virtues 63
natural love for our country also reflects a strong commitment, as ‘[w]e
do not love our country merely as part of the great society of mankind:
we love it for its own sake, and independently of any such consideration’
(TMS VI.ii.2.4, p. 229).8 As Knud Haakonssen has concluded, ‘in modern
conditions a militia could never replace a standing army altogether’
(1981, p. 179, emphasis in original), but Smith’s defence of a standing
army is carried out in a very eclectic way, selecting the stronger points of
two apparently antagonistic positions, which in his proposal somehow
become combined. Moreover, at times it appears that Smith is not fully
at ease with the superiority of a standing army over a militia, and in
those occasions, the civic humanist language permeates the debate.
The standing army debate, with different nuances, followed the tra-
jectory of Machiavelli’s warning to the Prince regarding the need of virtù
to defend the principality against fortuna. Such virtù could only express
itself through a citizen militia under the Prince’s command, and not
through mercenaries who ‘are useless and dangerous’ (Machiavelli, 1988
[1532], p. 43).9 As a matter of fact, according to his correspondence, as
late as 1760 Smith endorsed the cause of the Scottish militia.10 But his
change of opinion is not negligible if we remember that even Francis
Hutcheson, Smith’s teacher and predecessor in the chair of Moral
Philosophy at Glasgow University, also promoted the idea of a citizen
militia ‘by turns’. In his A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three
8
Smith’s encomium for the love of one’s country is particularly powerful in his
late addition to Chapter II, Of the order in which Societies are by nature recom-
mended to our Beneficence, in part VI. The next chapter is entitled Of universal
Benevolence, and the difference between the usage of beneficence and benevo-
lence is, in my view, not negligible, as the former entails a sense of duty, that
is only intentional in the latter. Another wonderful example of how civic lan-
guage is combined by Smith with an economic discourse, is when he discusses
the relationship between a member of society and his society, concluding that
‘its prosperity and glory seem to reflect some sort of honour upon ourselves’
(TMS VI.ii.2.2, p. 227). The concept of glory is repeatedly stressed by Cicero,
especially in his De Officiis, as is the concept of honour. Sallust also delves into
the idea of glory, while Seneca stresses the concept of honour. Both concepts
were fundamental for the modern moral and political discourse that preceded,
and certainly influenced, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.
9
Moreover ‘experience has shown that only rulers and republics that possess
their own armies are very successful’ (Machiavelli, 1988 [1532], p. 44).
10
‘The Lincolnshire mobs provoke our severest indignation for opposing the
militia’ (Corr., p. 21) and in a letter to William Strahan, Smith refers to
Nathaniel Hooke’s The Secret History of Colonel Hooke’s Negotiations in Scotland,
in Favour of the Pretender; in 1707, concluding that it ‘may throw a damp upon
our militia’ (Corr., p. 68).
Books; Containing the Elements of Ethics and the Law of Nature (1747), he
writes:
Military arts and virtues are accomplishments highly becoming all

the more honourable citizens. Warfare therefore should be no man’s
perpetual profession; but all ought to take their turns in such services.
And however it may be observed, that, when according to modern
custom, armies are made up of the very dregs of people, fellows too
dissolute and worthless for any other occupation, whosoever takes
this way of life for a few years is made unfit for any other occupation
in future; yet the case would be quite otherwise if all best citizens
served in our armies by turn. This method too would bring along
with it these grand advantages: all the people would be trained and
skilled in military service. Should one of our armies be entirely cut
off, we could have another of veterans immediately: were the chief
officers cut off; we would have others of equal experience in readiness
to take command: and it would be no easy matter for either any
ambitious citizen at home, or any foreign invader, to trample upon
the rights of an armed people well trained in military service.
(Hutcheson, 1764 [1747], pp. 348–9)
Hutcheson, as well his ablest disciple, Smith, saw the benefits and dan-
gers of military training. But Smith’s shift of mind regarding the militia
prompted Adam Ferguson, after reading the WN, to write to Smith, stat-
ing: ‘but you have likewise provoked the militia, and there I must be
against you’ (Corr., pp. 193–4).11 Ferguson not only supported military
valour as a cornerstone of civic virtue, but also was much more cautious
regarding the benefits of the commercial progress of society. As Pocock
has recently argued ‘the continuing emphasis on virtù in the Greek and
Roman sense ... is what sets a certain distance between him [Ferguson]
and Hume or Smith’ (1999, vol. 2, p. 346). Since this distance has been
attributed to Smith’s preference for natural jurisprudence over civic
11
Alexander Carlyle, a founding member of the Edinburgh Poker Club, wrote an
anonymous pamphlet attacking Smith’s position on the standing army in the
WN. Adam Smith was an active member of the Edinburgh Poker Club which
was formed in 1762 by Adam Ferguson with the explicit aim of ‘stirring up’ the
militia issue, Ferguson’s most cherished cause (cf. Ferguson’s pamphlet entitled
Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia, 1756). Little wonder that
Pocock refers to Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) as ‘the
most Machiavellian of the Scottish disquisitions’ (1975, p. 499).
Smith on Virtues 65
virtues, and of a standing army over a militia, that gap may not be quite
so wide.12
Smith’s final position in the WN takes a pragmatic approach to the
progress of society. Book V of the WN starts with the following passage:
The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the
violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be per-
formed only by means of a military force. But the expence both of
preparing this military force in times of peace, and of employing it in
time of war, is very different in the different states of society, in the
different periods of improvement. (WN V.i.a.1, p. 689)
The standing army is an inevitable consequence of progress, and a nec-

essary institution for the protection of individual liberty. Smith’s much
debated theory of the four stages of society (‘hunters, shepherds, agri-
culture and commerce’, LJ i.27, p. 14),13 a reflection that constitutes the
12
Nicholas Phillipson argued that Smith’s civic language has been practically
ignored, and that this also extends to the Scottish context (1983, p. 200, espe-
cially note 89). But after 1983 much work has been done on this issue (cf. supra
note 1).
13
It has been argued the Smith’s stadial theory is proto-Marxist: ‘[t]he essential
idea embodied in the theory [four stages’ theory] is that societies undergo
development through successive stages based on different modes of subsistence’
(Meek, 1976, p. 6, emphasis on original) or ‘the eighteenth-century concept of
‘mode of subsistence’ must be transformed into what Marx was later to call
mode of production’ (ibid., p. 229, emphasis on original). Although Meek (1976)
had attributed to Smith the originality of the stages theory, pointing out that
Turgot had developed it independently, today it is widely accepted that vari-
ous authors had developed this idea in Europe (see especially Hont (1987),
who establishes the continuity between earlier natural law theories and
Smith’s four stages theory, calling our attention to Pufendorf’s strong influ-
ence). Skinner (1982) has questioned Meek’s Marxist interpretation. Before
Meek’s attempt to ideologise Smith, Macpherson (1962) and Schlatter (1951)
had suggested through ‘possessive individualism’ or a rather sequential ‘his-
tory of private property’, respectively, an argument from Hobbes and Locke
that culminates with Adam Smith for a particular view of capitalist society. In
this setting I fully sympathise with Donald Winch, who persuasively argues:
‘Smith’s politics is much more problematic than it has been made to appear’
(1978, p. 26). Smith also refers to the four stages theory in (LJ, p. 459). It must
be underlined that Smith’s ‘history of mankind’ is presented as a sequence of
states; it is not an evolutionary history. But the interpretation of this sequence
as an spontaneous order à la Hayek, is still a matter of debate. In this line,
James Otteson has duly distinguished between ‘unintended order’ and ‘spon-
taneous order’ (2002, p. 6, note 3).
core of the following analysis (WN V.i.a, pp. 689–708), is paramount to

his analysis of this issue, as it is already suggested in the last sentence of
the passage quoted above. In the advanced state of society, the two
impediments to the existence of a militia are economic and technical,
that is, ‘the progress of manufacturers, and the improvement in the art
of war’ (WN V.i.a.8, p. 694).14 We also learn from history, starting with
Philip of Macedon, of the superiority of a standing army, but Smith
observes that a militia with experience in the field can become like a
standing army, warning that ‘the American militia may become in every
respect a match for that standing army’ (WN V.i.a.27, p. 701). As a con-
sequence of the division of labour, there is a high opportunity cost
involved in citizen’s leaving their particular trade, and so the need for a
standing army is supported by an arrangement of ideas that combine
economic, historical, political and psychological arguments. This
broader focus in tackling an issue is distinctively Smithian.
But specialisation was, in the advent of commercial society, an impor-
tant cause of corruption that undermined the role of virtù. While Hume
and Smith believed that the material and moral gains of a commercial soci-
ety would preserve liberty, Ferguson saw in them the risk of corruption,
understood as meaning ‘the loss of autonomy in the pursuit of sociability,
the loss of a sense of self without which there can be no sense of the pub-
lic’ (Pocock, 1999, vol. 2, p. 347). It is no coincidence that Ferguson’s An
Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) starts with an analysis of morals,
and ends with an uneasy portrayal of corruption.15 Clearly Smith reflects
14
Regarding the latter it is worth mentioning the following passage: ‘[s]ince the
invention of fire-arms, strength and agility of body, or even extraordinary dex-
terity and skill in the use of arms, though they are far from being of no consequence,
are, however, of less consequence’ (WN V.i.a.21, p. 699, emphasis added). One
recurrent classical theme revived during the Rennaisance, as was briefly dis-
cussed in Section 3.2, was the idea of physical prowess, and Smith’s typical
grammatical construction clearly reflects the importance of prowess, regardless
of firearms.
15
Jack (1989) discusses certain aspects of the debate from Mandeville to the
Scottish and the French Enlightenment. The idea of political corruption, which
is different from the modern understanding of the term, with its economic
overtones, is fundamental to this debate. Corruption was related to the decline
and fall of the republic, to a loss of public spirit resulting from the sacrifice of
the public benefit in favour of the private one (an important theme, for exam-
ple, in Machiavelli’s History of Florence). On the modern economic and political
nuances of this debate and the relationship between self-interest and public
benefits in commercial society, Albert Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests
(1977) is, in my opinion, already a classic.
Smith on Virtues 67
the gradual abandonment of the civic narrative in its more Fletcherian

form, but his discourse still retains conspicuous vestiges of civic language.
After a brief analysis of the history of war, Smith concludes that there
is a need for a standing army as a consequence of the modern
techniques of the ‘age of commerce’:
In ancient times the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend

themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times
the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the
opulent and civilized. The invention of fire-arms, an invention which
at first sight appears to be pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the
permanency and to the extension of civilization. (WN V.i.a.44, p. 708)
These ‘unavoidable effects of the natural progress of improvement’ (WN

V.i.a.43, p. 708) are unintended consequences of the advancement of
society, but this does not mean that Smith disapproves of classical
republicanism. Of course this tradition was ‘far more than a set of claims
about political structures: it was an ethical position’ (Nelson, 2001,
p. 892) which also entailed a way of life represented by the vivere civile.
From this perspective, political arrangements influenced by the republi-
can tradition underlying the civic humanist approach also attracted
Smith, as he proved with his reiterated commendations of the ‘republi-
can form of government’ which ‘seems to be the principal support of the
present grandeur of Holland’ (WN V.ii.k.80, p. 906).16 The praise of
English colonists in America, whose ‘manners are more republican’, and
their governments, which ‘have hitherto been more republican
too’ (WN IV.vii.b.51, p. 585), also corroborates this assumption.
16
Of course, this is a highly debatable characterisation, for at least two reasons.
First, it is difficult to reconstruct what Smith actually understood by republican-
ism in general (which is distinct from Holland’s republicanism in particular),
and second, though Smith repeatedly praises Dutch commercial success, in the
next sentence he is also quite critical, referring to ‘the great mercantile families’
that influence ‘the administration of that government’ (WN V.ii.k.80, p. 906).
Regarding the former, David Steuart Erskine, Lord Buchan, a distinguished stu-
dent of Adam Smith, in his recollections of Smith published in The Bee (June,
1791) states that ‘he approached to republicanism in his political principles’
(Rae, 1965 [1895], p. 124). Similarly, Burke, after resigning from the Whig party,
referred to Smith as ‘a thorough and loyal Whig’ (ibid., P. 379). But this repre-
sents a Whig interpretation of Smith’s republicanism, which is also debatable, as
well as more complex if we bring Hume into the discussion (see Stimson, 1989).
Another source for this debate, is when Smith refers to Rousseau’s second
Discourse as ‘only the true spirit of a republican carried a little too far’ (EPS,
p. 251).
Furthermore, his language resembles the éthos of the civic humanistic

tradition when he speaks of ‘the effeminate and ill-exercised militia of the
great Persian empire’ (WN V.i.a.29, p. 702, emphasis added) and when he
repeatedly and severely criticises the gradual decay of the martial spirit,
calling for government intervention. For example, just after praising the
Greek and Roman republics for maintaining the martial spirit of their cit-
izens, Smith adds that ‘in the progress of improvement the practice of
military exercises, unless government takes proper pains to support it,
goes gradually to decay, and, together with it, martial spirit of the great
body of the people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demon-
strates’ (WN V.i.f.59, pp. 786–7). Soon thereafter, he writes:
But a coward, a man incapable either of defending or of revenging

himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the charac-
ter of man. He is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind, as
another is in his body, who is either deprived of some of its most essen-
tial members, or has lost the use of them. He is evidently the most
wretched and miserable of the two; because happiness and misery,
which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more
upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the
mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the martial spirit of
the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to pre-
vent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity and wretchedness,
which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading themselves
through the great body of the people, would still deserve the most
serious attention of the government. (WN, V.i.f.60, p. 787)
Smith’s approach to the standing army debate is an excellent example of

the dialogue between virtue and commerce that I am trying to uncover.
The reader witnesses the rational triumph of economic progress within
a vir virtutis atmosphere. Moreover, in his famous passage foreseeing the
drawbacks of the division of labour, Smith grumbles that a man per-
forming a few simple operations ‘generally becomes as stupid and igno-
rant as it is possible for a human creature to become’ rendering him
‘incapable of defending his own country in war’ (WN V.i.f.50, p. 782).17
17
The much-discussed similarities between Smith’s complaints and Marx’s the-
ory of alienation, reflect another of the unintended negative consequences of
the progress of civilised society. This recurrent idea also leads Smith to say that
‘[a] man, without proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possi-
ble, more contemptible than even a coward’ (WN V.i.f.61, p. 788), which
shows to what extent Smith’s language epitomises the tradition of virtù.
Smith on Virtues 69
He goes even further, claiming that ‘[h]is dexterity at his own particular
trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intel-
lectual, social, and martial virtues’ (ibid., emphasis added), and calling
once again for government intervention. In brief, while Smith delegates
defence to professional soldiers, he does not necessarily wish to deprive
the citizen of martial virtue. The classical virtus of the Greco-Roman tra-
dition interacts with the fundamental condition for economic progress,
that is, the division of labour, and specifically the need for labour as the
source of wealth. Smith’s undertaking combines the civic humanist tra-
dition with the ‘stubborn facts’ of a rapidly developing economic soci-
ety in what Pocock has appropriately termed ‘commercial humanism’
(Pocock, 1985, pp. 50 and 194). Regarding the standing army debate,
although Smith supports the approach, it can be argued that he is still
thinking within the conceptual framework of the civic tradition.
3.4 The philosophical tradition behind

the cardinal virtues
While Machiavelli, ‘not indeed a man of the nicest morality even in his
own times’ (TMS VI.i.16, p. 217),18 focused on the complex relationship
between his virtù and fortuna, following in the footsteps of classical and
humanist authorities, he radically deviated from them in terms of what
was considered to be the necessary and essential treatment of the
cardinal virtues. By circumventing this aspect, Machiavelli not only
reacted against the intellectual establishment, but also revolutionised
the subject of politics. The Romans, basically adopting and adapting the
Greeks’ ideas, considered that virtus was related to many qualities, but
among them, the four cardinal virtues, and courage in particular,
occupied a pre-eminent position. Smith’s position within this tradition
of thought, however, is a subject that has been either ignored or treated
perfunctorily, with a few notable exceptions, and so it is worth revisiting
certain aspects of this debate.
Joseph Cropsey, for example, analyses Smith’s four virtues under the
assumption that they are the cardinal virtues (1957, pp. 37–49), and
though he is aware of the relevance of these virtues to Smith’s moral
theory, in his interpretation of one passage he concludes ‘that all virtue
and the maximization of pleasure meet in self-command, leaving us
18
It is important to note that already in his Edinburgh lectures Smith was aware
of Machiavelli’s contribution to history and modern political science. Smith
apparently would have lectured that ‘Machiavelli is of all Modern Historians
with the idea that virtue is a form of maximization of pleasures and

minimization of pains’ (ibid., p. 49).19 This reading of self-command as a
virtue with utilitarian overtones, is in my view incorrect, as the passage
that Cropsey quotes (TMS IV.2.6, p. 189) refers to what I will later suggest,
in Section 3.5.2, is the Epicurean virtue of prudence.20 Vincent Hope
points out that ‘Smith examines the cardinal virtues in detail’ (1989,
p. 106), and then incorrectly states that the Smithian virtues ‘are the cardi-
nal virtues’ (ibid., p. 112). Norbert Waszek analyses the Stoic’s influence
and the sources of the four Smithian virtues, concluding persuasively
that ‘Smith is in the broad stream of the cardinal virtues issue in Western
ethical thought with its origins in the Greek, especially Socratic tradition.
And yet it can be argued that the particular manner in which Smith
defined those traditional virtues distinctly echoes Stoic ideas and termi-
nology’ (1984, p. 603). Athol Fitzgibbons has argued that ‘Smith’s four
virtues ... prudence, justice, self-command, and benevolence, were his
eighteenth century namesakes for the traditional Stoical virtues, which
had been ... wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage’ (1995, p. 104).
This account uncritically accepts Cicero as the spokesman of the Stoic
tradition.21 Yet while Cicero follows ‘the Stoics above all, not as an expos-
itor, but, as is my custom, drawing from their fountains when and as it
seems best, using my own judgement and discretion’ (Cic.Off, I.6, 1991,
p. 4), and while he is an important source for Stoical thought, his writ-
ings are hardly an uncomplicated summary of Stoic ideas, to say nothing
of the neo-Stoicism that influenced the Scottish context. Second, benefi-
cence (or benevolence, assuming, as does Fitzgibbons, that these words
are synonyms, but noting that the latter etymologically entails a volitive
the only one who has contented himself with that which is the chief purpose
of History, to relate Events and connect them with their causes without becom-
ing a party on either side’ (LRBL, p. 115), much resembling Machiavelli’s
famous dictum on the verità effetualle della cosa, in chapter XV of The Prince.
Moreover, Smith refers two times to Machiavelli’s historical reports in his WN
and his works were in his Library (Bonar, 1966, p. 106).
19
When Vivenza (2002, p. 194) asserts that ‘Waszek was the first to link the
cardinal virtues to Smith’s moral philosophy’, she ignores Cropsey’s Polity and
Economy (1957), though it must be said that his treatment of the issue is
perfunctory.
20
Vivenza (2002, pp. 54–7 and 197) interprets Smith’s prudence as Epicurean,
too, but she is aware that there are also nuances of Stoicism in Smith’s concept
of prudence, concluding that it is a mixture.
21
Fitzgibbons (1995, p. 105) not only relies on a ‘Ciceronian Stoicism’ for
Smith’s account of virtues, but considers that, in Smith’s case, benevolence is
the civic humanist virtue par excellence.
Smith on Virtues 71
sense) was never a principal virtue for the Stoics, although it takes on an
important and particular sense for Smith. My attempt here is to see how
Smith received and revised this important tradition.
More recently Charles Griswold simply states that ‘[t]he cardinal virtues
for Smith are self-command, prudence, benevolence and justice’ (1999,
p. 202), and James Otteson refers to ‘the four principal virtues’ and ‘the
four cardinal Smithian virtues’ (2002, pp. 15, 166). In Knud Haakonssen’s
recent introduction to the Cambridge edition of the TMS, he argues more
precisely that Smith ‘revised the traditional schema of the cardinal virtues
which in his hands become prudence, benevolence, justice and self-
command’ (Smith 2002 [1759], p. xx). And yet, just before this book went
to press, Gloria Vivenza’s ‘Postcript’ to her Adam Smith and the Classics:
The Classical Heritage in Adam Smith’s Thought, which was published in
Italian in 1984,22 concludes categorically that the four Smithian virtues
‘do not correspond to the cardinal virtues of Christianity, or even those of
the classical world’ (2002, p. 202). I will briefly outline the tradition of the
four cardinal virtues in order to assess whether there are any similarities
between them and the Smithian virtues.
Although the tradition of the four principal virtues has pre-Socratic
antecedents (especially in some fragments of Democritus), it basically
began with Plato, first in the Socratic Protagoras, and then in the
Republic, where he expounds his more developed views on the cardinal
virtues. Broadly speaking, Plato endeavours to transfer the virtues of the
pólis to the individual. In his attempt to found an órthe pólis, Socrates
demands the following qualities: sophía (wisdom), andreía (courage),
sophrosúne (temperance) and dikaiosúne (justice) (Pl.Rep, 427E, 1999,
p. 347), a cluster that reappears, although in a different form, in his later
dialogue Laws.23 These four main virtues were carried forward by the
22
I must confess that a few years ago Emma Rothschild had strongly encouraged
me to read Vivenza’s Adam Smith e la cultura clasicca (1984). With the difficul-
ties inherent to a non-native Italian, I much profited after reading it, but I dis-
agreed with some points. Her ‘Postcript’ to her rather late but very welcome
English translation (Vivenza, 2002) is an excellent piece, which could have
been turned into a book in itself. The translation of her book into English is an
important contribution to Smith scholarship, and I am certain that it will pro-
duce a debate on some important issues that have been rather neglected, espe-
cially as a result of her emphasis on Aristotle’s influence on Smith.
23
In Plato’s Laws the four principal virtues as human goods are dependent on the
divine (Pl.Lg, I.631C-D, 1967, p. 25). Temperance and courage are related to the
producing and soldier social classes, respectively, and wisdom to the leadership
of the philosopher king. Justice, as the principal virtue, maintains the harmony
tradition initiated by Zeno at the Stoa Poikile. According to Plutarch,

‘Zeno admits several different virtues, as Plato does, namely prudence,
courage, moderation [sophrosúne] and justice’ (Plu.St, quoted in Long
and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 378 and vol. 2, p. 375). As a consequence of
the Platonic–Stoic scheme, in the Hellenistic world the four chief virtues
were widely adopted as canonical,24 and sometimes combined with
Aristotle’s more extensive catalogue of virtues.
For Plato, justice has pre-eminence among the four principal virtues
(Pl.Rep, 432b–434d), but apparently for Zeno, the founder of Stoicism,
wisdom comprises all virtues: ‘justice was wisdom concerned with assign-
ment (or distribution), sophrosúne (self-control, temperance) was wisdom
concerned with acquisition, bravery wisdom concerned with endurance’
(quoted in Sandbach, 1975, p. 42, a passage that most probably corres-
ponds to Plutarch’s Stoic Self-Contradictions 1034c–e). Similarly Cicero
refers to the four virtues as ‘perception of truth ... preserving fellowship
among men, with assigning to each his own ... greatness and strength of
a lofty and unconquered spirit ... order and limit in everything that is
said and done’ (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991, p. 7) – wisdom, justice, courage and
temperance, respectively. For Aristotle, particular justice was related to
his principle of assignment by desert (Arist.EN, V.iii.7, 1994, p. 269),25
and for Plato, the all-encompassing virtue of justice refers to the har-
mony of the other three virtues, as each element performs its own par-
ticular function without interfering with the functions of the others. The
Stoics adopted Plato’s four virtues, while reconceptualising them in order
to avoid Plato’s metaphysical assumptions and the all-encompassing
nature of dikaiosúne. Although the Stoic tradition is complex, and varies
in its different historical stages (Early, Middle and Roman or late
Stoicism),26 and bearing in mind that it is difficult to talk about the Stoic
between them, allocating each part of the soul its proper function, and no other.
Virtue is also for Plato harmony of the soul, and the four principal virtues corre-
spond to its natural constitution (intellect-wisdom, feeling-temperance, will-
courage, and justice remains as the principal virtue which regulates the others).
24
Cicero repeatedly refers to the four principal virtues (prudentia, iustitia, fortitudo,
temperantia) following the tradition of the Stoa (cf. Cic.Inv, II.LIII.159, 1968,
p. 327) or his classic definition of the four chief virtues in (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991).
25
I focus exclusively on Aristotle’s particular justice since for Grotius, in the
tradition of natural law, it will then become perfect right. Smith inherits
Grotius’s definition of justice almost literally, à la Cicero (see infra Section
3.5.3). It should be noted that in the Prolegomena of Grotius’s De Iure Belli ac
Pacis, justice is defined as ‘abstaining from that which is another’s’.
26
Roughly speaking, Early Stoicism is represented by Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC),
Cleanthes (331–232 BC) and Chrysippus (c.280–c.206 BC). Middle Stoicism is
Smith on Virtues 73
doctrine as such, one thing common to the Stoics, as Cicero points out,
is that they consider that all four virtues ‘are bound together and
interwoven’ (Cic.Off, I.15, 1991, p. 7). This insight about the unity of
virtues, which follows the Socratic and Platonic tradition,27 will prove
important in the development of the idea of the four principal virtues.
It seems that the first to use the word ‘cardinal’28 with respect to the
virtues was Ambrose of Milan,29 and later Aquinas reports ‘that there are
four virtues of the soul whereby it lives spiritually in this life, namely prudence,
temperance, fortitude, and justice, and he [Augustine of Hippo] adds that
the fourth pervades them all’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.58,8, vol. 37, 1963, p. 41,
emphasis in the original). Therefore the Christian tradition inherited
the four cardinal virtues as being: prudence (prudentia), fortitude (forti-
tudo), temperance (temperantia) and justice (iustitia) and the latter, for
Augustine of Hippo, maintains its grand Platonic sense. Although
Aquinas uses Aristotle’s phrónesis, or practical wisdom, as prudentia,
instead of the elusive and all-encompassing wisdom (sophía, sapientia),
which involves theoretical wisdom, there are some additional relevant
differences with the Greco-Roman tradition that influenced and con-
trasted with the virtus propounded by classical republicanism.
Cicero summarises the tradition of the four virtues as follows: ‘courage
is displayed in toils and dangers, temperance in forgoing pleasures, pru-
dence in the choice of goods and evils, justice in giving each his due’
(Cic.Fin, V.xxiii.67, 1999, pp. 469–71). The main feature of this account
is that all the principal virtues are related to the individual, to the self,
although they are certainly encompassed by the social structure of a
pólis or res-publica, to speak literally of a classical Greco-Roman tradition.
After Augustine of Hippo, the scholastics, especially Aquinas, altered the
mainly represented by Panaetius (c.180–110 BC) and Posidonius of Apamea

(c. 135–c.51 BC). And Roman or Late Stoicism, principally by Seneca (4 BC–65
AD), Epictetus (AD 50–138), Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80) and Hierocles (second
century AD). What we know today about Stoicism is basically from doxography
and some fragments, mainly through the legacy of Cicero, Diogenes Laertius,
Marcus Aurelius, Hierocles, Stobaeus, Epictetus and Galen.
27
This Socratic idea is, for example, clearly stated in Protagoras (331e; 359b and
361a–b).
28
Cardinalis comes from cardo, literally a hinge of a door. Aquinas states ‘a cardi-
nal virtue is concerned with the main points in human life: like a hinge on
which a door turns’ (Aq.ST, 2a2æ.123,11, vol. 42, 1963, p. 35).
29
Aquinas reports that ‘Ambrose comments, We know that there are four cardinal
virtues, namely, temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, I,
vol. 23, 1963, p. 117, emphasis in the original).
classical tradition of the four principal virtues in order to accommodate

them to the Christian dogma. The old moral currency continued to cir-
culate, but with a new design. First of all, the political framework of the
zôon politikón,30 in its wide social Greek sense, was substituted, or rather
expanded, to include the City of God. According to Aquinas, for Augustine
‘prudence is knowledge of what we should seek or avoid, temperance the curbing
of lust for fleeting pleasure, fortitude the firmness of spirit against passing trials,
and justice the love of God and our neighbour pervading the rest’ (Aq.ST,
2a2æ.58, 8 vol. 37, 1963, p. 41, emphasis in the original. Note the Stoic
influence on this account). Aquinas adopted Augustine’s account of justice
as ‘the virtue which renders what is due in actions between equals’ (ibid.,
Ia2æ.61, 4, vol. 23, p. 125), merely regulating man in his dealings with
others, but leaving his dealings with God to the theological virtues.31
Another important change is in reference to courage, which is replaced by
fortitude. For the scholastics, fortitudo is no longer the vir virtutis related to
martial success, which pursued the classical idea of human glory, but
rather is focused on overcoming obstacles.32 Fortitudo is a strengthening
virtue in the face of dangers, like fear, which prevent man from attaining
what he must and therefore the cardinal virtue lost its characteristic of
physical prowess. Also, while either wisdom or prudence had been the
30
Seneca in De Beneficiis, attributes to the the Cynic Demetrius the Latin term
sociale animal for zôon politikón (Sen.Ben, 1887, p. 198), while Aquinas argues that
primo quidem quia homo naturaliter est animal sociale (‘first, because man is natu-
rally a social animal’, (Aq.ST, 1a.96, 4, vol. 13, 1963, p. 135), following Aristotle’s
famous idea of the zôon politikón (Ar.Pol, III 1278b20, 1998, pp. 200–1).
31
For Augustine of Hippo justice involved supernatural qualities, but Aquinas
restricted the cardinal virtues to the human realm, developing the divine or
theological virtues of faith, charity and hope, as God is the real and true télos.
Aquinas concludes his article entitled ‘Is justice always towards another?’
within the question ‘on justice’ by stating that ‘A man’s actions with regard to
himself are sufficiently straightened out when his emotions are ruled aright by
the other moral virtues. His actions with regard to another, however, call for a
special rightfulness in relation to the other on which they bear, not only to his
acting itself. And so for such actions there is a special virtue, and this is justice’
(Aq.ST, 2a2æ.58, 2, vol. 37, 1963, p. 25).
32
I am grateful to Quentin Skinner who duly remarked upon this point the clas-
sical impetus to act of classical courage, in contrast to the Christian fortitudo.
This apposition is important, and while Ambrosio maintained the martial
view of fortitudo, it was his disciple Augustine of Hippo who christianised the
four virtues as manifestations of God’s love. Later on Aquinas argues that in
the classical tradition ‘courage ought not to rank as a cardinal or chief virtue’
(Aq.ST, 2a2æ.123,11, vol. 42, 1963, p. 35) as it is not directed to a goal, in the
newly baptised Aristotelian concept of télos.
Smith on Virtues 75
primary virtues for Zeno and the Stoics, then for Aquinas prudentia, as the
Aristotelian intellectual virtue of phrónesis, constituted the principal virtue.
Methodologically, Aquinas attempts to give a systematic account of
the four cardinal virtues according to their formal objects and the
faculties in which they reside. Regarding the latter Aquinas assumes that
prudence as principal virtue, resides in the rational part of the soul.
Justice resides in the will,33 temperance in the sensitive appetites (the
concupiscible), and fortitude in the urge or impulse to resist fear (the
irascible), and all three are participants of prudence.34 With reference to
the formal objects of the cardinal virtues, Aquinas implies that ‘any
virtue that causes a good judgement of reason may be called prudence;
every virtue that causes actions to fulfil what is right and due may be
called justice; every virtue that restrains and tames the passions may be
called temperance; every virtue that strengthens the mind against any
onset of passion may be called fortitude’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, 3, vol. 23,
1963, p. 123). As with the Stoics, Aquinas insists on the pre-eminence of
one main virtue (prudentia), but also considers that the other three
virtues are interrelated (cf. ibid., Ia2æ. 61, 4, vol. 23, pp. 125–9).
Therefore the cardinal virtues are all intertwined, but the vir virtutis tra-
dition lost its classical connotation of martial prowess.
3.5 The Smithian virtues
Before analysing Smith’s account of virtues, we should first briefly exam-

ine how this classical tradition was assimilated by Francis Hutcheson. In
his A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books; Containing the
Elements of Ethics and the Law of Nature (1747), Hutcheson writes that
prudence is ‘a cautious habit of consideration and forethought, discern-
ing what may be advantageous or hurtful in life’ (ibid., 1764 [1747],
p. 70), which combines Epicurean and Stoic elements, while fortitude is
‘that virtue which strengthens the soul against all toils or dangers we
may be exposed to in discharge of our duty’ (p. 70), within the Stoic and
33
This is one reason why justice as ‘giving to every man his due’, in commuta-
tive terms, related to the will is an ad extra virtue, towards others, and the
other three cardinal virtues are ad intra virtues, that is, related to man’s nature.
34
‘There are four virtues as we are considering it at present, namely, our essen-
tially rational part, and this is complemented by prudence, and our deriva-
tively rational part. This is threefold, namely, the will, which is the seat of
justice, the concupiscible power, the seat of temperance, and the irascible
power, the seat of courage’ (Aq.ST, Ia2æ. 61, 3, vol. 23, 1963, p. 121).
Christian tradition that lost the ad extra quality of andreía, and focused
in the inner self that faces the external. Temperance ‘is that virtue which
restrains and regulates the lower appetites toward sensual pleasures’
(p. 72), and justice is the ‘sovereign virtue to which all the rest are
subservient’ (p. 72), also following a Platonic scheme.
3.5.1 Self-command
In the third section of part VI of the TMS, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’,
added just before Smith’s death, and occupying nearly half of this
part, Smith praises the classical martial virtues implicitly linked to
self-command. The first paragraph refers to the Smithian virtues, but
underlines that ‘[t]he most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by
the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his
duty’ (TMS VI.iii.1, p. 237). For Smith, ‘[w]ar is the great school both for
acquiring and exercising this species of magnanimity [self-command]’,
stressing that ‘it is this habitual contempt of danger and death which
ennobles the profession of a soldier’ (TMS VI.iii.7, p. 239). Elsewhere he
refers to ‘the rash, the insolent, the slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous’
characters of men as causing ‘ruin to the individual, and misfortune to
all who have anything to do with him’ (TMS IV.2.1, p. 187, emphasis
added). The italicised adjective is used in the pejorative, classical-
humanist sense, that is, as an antithesis of the manly virtus that has to
tame the capricious and effeminate fortuna.
In the first part of the TMS Smith refers to Cato’s ‘manly fortitude’
(TMS I.iii.1.13, p. 48), and in part VI he again touches on the same
subject, adding that ‘[f]ortune has in this [Catiline’s conspiracy] ... great
influence over the moral sentiments of mankind, and, according as she
is either favourable or adverse, can render the same character the object,
either of general love and admiration, or of universal hatred and
contempt’ (TMS VI.iii.30, pp. 252–3), combining the apposition
between virtus and fortuna.
In the third part of the Sense of Duty, Smith praises:
The man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man who
has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command ... In
success and in disappointment, in prosperity and in adversity, before
friends and before enemies, he has often been under the necessity of
supporting this manhood. (TMS III.3.25, p. 146)
Soon after, he explicitly refers to ‘the manhood of self-command’ (TMS,

III.3.34, p. 152). But one passage in particular, which is an excellent
example of the type of narrative I am trying to uncover, makes the point
Smith on Virtues 77
most clearly:
No character is more contemptible than that of a coward ... .We

esteem the man who supports pain and even torture with manhood
and firmness; and we can have little regard for him who sinks under
them, and abandons himself to useless outcries and womanish
lamentations. (TMS VI.iii.17, p. 244)
In addition to all these vir virtutis remarks,35 Smith states that

self-command ‘is not only a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues
seem to derive their principal lustre’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241). This passage
suggests self-command as an important virtue with a foundational char-
acter, which, as we will see, represents its unique distinctiveness.
Near the end of the TMS, in the conclusion of the sixth part of ‘Of the
Character of Virtue’, Smith sums up his four virtues: self-command,
prudence, justice and beneficence, which I have labelled the ‘Smithian
virtues’. Only self-command is assessed by its propriety, regardless of its
effects or consequences (cf. TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18 and II.i.I.1, p. 65). The final
paragraph of part VI is worth reproducing, and reads as follows:
But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency

with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but
a small part, of that approbation. Those effects may sometimes be
agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and though our approbation
is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether
destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valour may be employed indif-
ferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice; and though it is
no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still
appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and
in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling
quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exer-
tion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to
make and to maintain the exertion. The effects are too often but too
little regarded. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added)
The example Smith uses to underline the different nature of self-

command is related to ‘the most heroic valour’ that ‘may be employed
indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice’. Once again
35
Martin Calkins and Patricia Werhane (1998, p. 50) too readily link areté to man-
liness, but they correctly underline the masculine and heroic overtones of
Smith’s self-command.
this assessment of self-command resembles martial virtue, and suggests

the cultural tradition of virtus. The connection of self-command to virtus
is evident, as is the influence of the underlying republican tradition in
the WN, as has already been suggested in the brief analysis of the stand-
ing army debate. Therefore, my argument clearly opposes Vivienne
Brown’s judgement that ‘the account of morality in TMS diverges widely
from the public virtus of civic humanism (or classical republicanism)’
(1994, p. 209). More than divergence, there seems to actually be a
certain amount of convergence.
Although, as I have argued, self-command relates to the vir virtutis
tradition, its actual nature as a virtue per se is complex. Prior to the sixth
edition, Smith’s self-command appears to have many meanings. First, it is
related to control of passions as ‘the great, the awful, and respectable, the
virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions
which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity
and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require’ (TMS I.i.5.1,
p. 23). Then, when Smith writes that ‘[s]elf-command, which constitutes
the dignity of every passion ... we reverence that reserved, that silent and
majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes ...
that concerted tranquility, which it requires so great an effort to support’
(TMS I.i.5.3, p. 24), it resembles the Epicurean ataraxia, or tranquillity of
mind, governing the natural passions of our nature. Also, Smith considers
that in ‘the great school of self-command’ we study how ‘to be more and
more’ masters of ourselves (TMS III.3.22, p. 145).36 But soon thereafter it
appears again related to the martial virtues: ‘hardships, dangers, injuries,
misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of
this virtue [self-command]’ (TMS III.3.37, p. 153). Finally, there is
a peculiar paragraph in which Smith refers to the ‘absolute’ self-command
of the American savages (TMS V.2.9, pp. 205–6), which definitely implies
a complete physical and psychological self-denial.
A first reading gives the impression that self-command is related to
control of the passions, to the cardinal virtue of temperance, at times
involving a dose of self-denial. But what makes it a different and rele-
vant virtue for Smith? The answer is simple: its unique character as the
foundation of all virtues, which not only underpins all the other
Smithian virtues, but keeps them intertwined following the tradition of
the cardinal virtues. Self-command, as a foundational virtue, very much
resembles a designation that derives from the Greek virtue of enkráteia. I
36
Cf. ‘the man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man who has been
thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command’ (TMS III.3.25, p. 146).
Smith on Virtues 79
will attempt to show, pace the editors of the TMS and the prevailing view
on the nature of self-command, that the underlying assumption for con-
sidering self-command as ‘distinctively Stoic’ (TMS intr., p. 6),37 is flawed.
Self-command is originally a Socratic virtue, with some important
nuances in its meaning.38
The general argument that has been given for considering self-
command as essentially Stoic is, explicitly or implicitly, related to the
widely discussed Stoical concept of apátheia. One common and particu-
lar interpretation of apátheia literally translates the word as ‘without pas-
sions or emotions’, which would explain the Stoic indifference towards
worldly events. This interpretation is debatable.39 I support the view,
against the vernacular use of the word ‘stoical’,40 of those who maintain
that ‘apátheia does not imply a wise man without emotions, but that all
37
An exception is Athol Fitzgibbons, who, as we will see, correctly but without
further explanation states that ‘[s]elf-command was a synonym for Platonic
temperance’ (1995, p. 105). Curiously, Brown (1994, chapters 3 and 4), in what
is probably one of the best available analyses of Smith and Stoicism, did not
pinpoint this issue referring to ‘self-command as pre-eminently Stoic virtue’
(ibid., p. 98) and simply to the ‘Stoic virtue of self-command’ (ibid., p. 215).
There is general agreement in the literature on the Stoic nature of Smith’s
virtue of self-command. Even Gloria Vivenza, in the most thorough and devel-
oped analysis of Smith and the classics, argues that self-command ‘is indeed a
virtue with undeniably Stoic characteristics’ (2002, p. 57).
38
The fact that enkráteia is a Socratic virtue of course does not necessarily imply
that it did not influence the Stoics. Moreover, it must be stressed that the
language of vir virtutis is often overlapped with the ethical discourse of the
Stoics. Not in vain does Smith refer to the ‘spirit and manhood of their [Stoics]
doctrines’ (TMS VII.ii.29, p. 283).
39
I use the word ‘debatable’ carefully, as there is no agreement on this issue. For
example, a great scholar like Ludwig Edelstein insisted that for the Stoics self-
mastery was ‘undoubtedly, freedom from passion, apátheia. Virtue consists in
not being disturbed by events’ (1966, p. 2), ‘all passions have to be subdued’
(ibid., p. 52) or ‘passions must be erradicated’ (ibid., p. 56). Also a philosopher
like Martha Nussbaum refers to the concept of apátheia as ‘what the Stoics said
it was. It is extirpation’ (1994, p. 401) or ‘the Stoic does not hesitate to describe
the wise person as totally free from passion’ (ibid., p. 390).
40
The standard English dictionary entry for stoical is ‘characterized by impassiv-
ity or resignation’. Paul Heise has correctly, in my view, argued that ‘[t]he fun-
damental Stoic propensity to one’s own nature, oikeíosis, and its concomitant
directive to act “according to nature” became not a call to quietism or laissez
faire but a call to lead oneself and the community to their natural providential
end’ (1991, p. 67).
his emotions are rationally controlled’ (Rist, 1978, p. 259).41 Sandbach

arrives at a similar conclusion relying on what the Stoics actually under-
stood by páthos.42 In fact, morally indifferent things for the Stoics, such
as wealth, rank or reputation, are neither good nor bad, but simply
indifferent (cf. Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 419–23); its moral con-
tent is neutral. We can pursue these indifferent things provided they
spring from a literally ‘good’ impulse, which the Stoics named eupátheia.
This idea proves that the Stoics had no intention of ‘eradicating’ pas-
sions. The latter is simply one questionable interpretation of Stoic phi-
losophy, an interpretation which has in my view, paid mere lip service
to their philosophical project. It is difficult to imagine the sage as devoid
of feelings, as practically inhuman. Smith shared this generalised view,
stating that ‘the stoical apathy is, in such cases, never agreeable, and all
the metaphysical sophisms by which it is supported can seldom serve
any other purpose than to blow up the hard insensibility of a coxcomb
to ten times its native impertinence’ (TMS III.3.14, p. 143). If Smith
endorsed the view that apátheia for the Stoics simply meant eradicating
passions, it is even more difficult to imagine him relying on the Stoical
concept of apátheia as fundamental to the development of his virtue of
self-command, thus reinforcing my argument that Smith was not
thinking exclusively in Stoic terms when he referred to self-command.43
Plutarch, after stating Zeno’s four principal virtues, reports that
Cleanthes ‘adds the following words: “This strength and might, when it
arises in what seem to be matters requiring persistence, is enkráteia; when
in matters requiring endurance, courage; concerning deserts, justice; con-
cerning choices and avoidances, sophrosúne” ’ (Plu.St, quoted in Long and
Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 378 and vol. 2, p. 375). In this statement prudence
or wisdom are absent, having been replaced by enkráteia. The latter would
41
Following this line of thought: ‘The point of Stoic virtue, notwithstanding the
heavy earnestness of some of our sources, is not abandoning ordinarily enjoy-
able and useful activities’ (Long, 1996, p. 177) or ‘it must be a caricature of the
wise man to think that he has become insensitive to human concern ... .
Things do move him, but not in such a way as to disturb his balanced judge-
ment’ (Frede, 1986, p. 110).
42
‘It is sometimes said that the Stoics wished to eradicate emotions ... what the
Stoics wished to abolish was no emotion but ‘passion’ (páthos) or, as Cicero
translated the word, “mental disturbance” ‘ (Sandbach, 1975, p. 59).
43
The influence of the Stoics on the Scottish context is very complex.
Hutcheson, who translated Marcus Aurelius into English, not only presented a
neo-Stoicism divergent from the Ciceronian heritage, but also platonised some
of his Stoic reformulations. Shaftesbury’s influence on Hutcheson’s moral
sense is also informed by his particular reading of the Stoics.
Smith on Virtues 81
seem to support the assertion that self-command is essentially Stoic, but

first, let me take a moment to trace the philosophical history of this virtue.
The Greek word eg-kráteia literally means ‘inner power’ or ‘power
within oneself’ (as for example, with the word démos-kráteia), making
‘self-command’ a fairly good translation of the term.44 Its opposite is
akrāsía. In his Memorabilia45 Xenophon portrays Socrates as referring to
enkráteia as the ‘foundation of all virtues’ (X.Mem, I.v.4, 1997, p. 67), and
later in a dialogue with Euthydemus discussing the importance of
enkráteia, Socrates suggests that ‘enkráteia is a very great blessing [áriston]
to a man’ (X.Mem, IV.v.9, 1997, p. 329). Yet, the noun enkráteia appears
only four times in Plato’s works (and the adjective enkrátes, eighteen
times). For example, he defines sophrosúne as ‘a kind of beautiful order and
a continence [sophrosúne] of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say,
using the phrase ‘master of himself’ [enkráteia]’ (Pl.Rep, IV 430e.7, 1999,
p. 359). Therefore Plato, in the only appearance of this word within his
dialogues, defines the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne as a kind of enkráteia.
Aristotle first defines sophrosúne as a mean between pleasure and pain
(Arist.EN, II.vii.3, 1994, p. 99). He then continues his analysis of
sophrosúne (Arist.EN, III.x-xii, pp. 173–87) by contrasting it with profli-
gacy (akolăsía). Soon thereafter, in Book VII, which also belongs to his
Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle follows Plato’s definition, stating that ‘it is
clear that enkráteia and akrāsía relate only to the objects to which
sophrosúne and akolăsía are related’ (Arist.EN, VII.v.9, 1994, p. 405). This
analogical contrast is important, as it shows that for Aristotle the cardi-
nal virtue of sophrosúne includes enkráteia, as akrāsía is also one kind of
akolăsía.46 But sophrosúne and enkráteia involve a process of choosing
44
Enkráteia is commonly translated as self-control, self-restraint or continence.
For an excellent account of the evolution of enkráteia’s meaning, see Gauthier
and Jolif (1959, vol. 2.ii, pp. 579–81).
45
Memorabilia was a widely read and a very important classical text during the eigh-
teenth century. The book was in Smith’s library (Mizuta, 1967, p. 153), and he
undoubtedly knew it quite well. He is reported to have referred to the ‘accounts
we have of the Condemnation of Socrates’ (LRBL, p. 180, the emphasis on the
plural added) and, when dealing with the ‘Socratick method’, Smith would have
explicitly mentioned ‘the dialogues of Xenophon and Plato’ (ibid., p. 146).
46
Akrāsía for Aristotle is perhaps better translated as weakness of will, and relates
to doing the wrong thing knowingly (Ar.EN, VII 1146b31–5, 1994, pp. 384–9),
in contrast to Socrates, who ascribed akrāsía to ignorance, implying that no one
would do the wrong thing knowingly. In other words, if one knows that some-
thing is bad or wrong, one will simply not do it. The nature of akolăsía is more
complex, as it appears in Aristotle like a second nature, as akin to doing wrong
things deliberately. Regarding the former, Aristotle distinguishes between akrāsía
and assessing that which is good and rational to do. In this setting, for
Aristotle sophrosúne, as self-possession, is a central excellence for the
deliberations of the person of practical wisdom.47 As Alasdair MacIntyre
has argued, sophrosúne became ‘the virtue not of setting constraints
upon one’s goal, but of moving with due and deliberate caution in one’s
choice of means’ (1988, p. 48),48 combining páthos in terms of constraint
of passions, and práxis, in relation to prudential deliberation.
First of all, it is important to underline that the notion of ‘self-
command’ was not widely employed in eighteenth-century moral dis-
course; it was more common to hear about self-control or even
self-restraint in the neo-Stoic tradition of constraint of passions. It
appears to me that ‘command’ gives this virtue a sense of direction
which complements its ad intra connotation, and which distinguishes it
from the all-encompassing coercive nature of self-control.49 The actual
meaning of enkráteia confirms this very simple intuition. Self-command
implies a person ‘possessed of himself’, somebody who knows what to
do in addition to what not to do.50 Certainly for Smith, self-command,
as a virtue strictly related to propriety, corresponds to enkráteia,51 as an
for appetites and desires (akrāsía haplōs) as morally worse than akrāsía in respect
to anger (akrāsía thumoū) (ibid., VII 1149a24-b26, pp. 404–9). This distinction is
literally followed by Smith (cf. TMS, VI.iii.3, p. 238). It is noteworthy that Smith
uses fortitude, manhood and strength of mind for controlling akrāsía thumoū
and temperance and moderation for commanding akrāsía haplōs.
47
As Amélie Rorty points out ‘the phronimos is a sophron’ (1980, p. 272), but of
course the reverse does not follow.
48
Incidentally, see also how Alasdair MacIntyre links sophrosúne with courage
and manliness (1988, p. 26), reinforcing the argument of self-command and
vir virtutis.
49
Otteson (2002) states that ‘Smith calls the ability to control one’s passions and
consciously direct one’s actions “self-command” ’ (p. 55), he then emphasises
the idea that self-command ‘presupposes the notion that one can freely
choose to act in one way or in another way’ (p. 238–9), finally linking free
human choice as ‘embodied in Smith’s notion of the virtue of self-command’
(p. 291). These remarks are very much in the same line that I am trying to
defend here, but James Otteson, though clear about what he means, does not
give additional evidence for this important conclusion.
50
In this sense, I suggest that Pocock’s characterisation of Ferguson’s under-
standing of morality in terms of virtue as long as one remains ‘possessed
of oneself’ which is ‘the precondition of the occasionally necessary sacrifice of
the self to the public good’ (Pocock, 1999, pp. 347 and 352) is reminiscent of
Smith’s understanding of self-command, and goes at least someway towards
bridging the gap between Smith and Ferguson.
51
Furthermore, the noun enkráteia, as well as the adjective enkrátes, appear in
the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Demosthenes and are very
Smith on Virtues 83
ad intra virtue that also requires the exercise of individual deliberation.

In the Platonic–Aristotelian tradition, the philosophical evolution of
this concept is firmly linked to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne, which
is also an aristocratic virtue.52 In conclusion, self-command is not sim-
ply a Stoical virtue; it has an important philosophical tradition that has
been completely ignored in the literature on Smith. Werner Jaeger
rightly considers enkráteia as a virtue that ‘became a central conception in
our moral code’ (Jaeger, 1965 [1939], vol. 2, p. 53). Within the tradition of
the cardinal virtues, the latter is true, and enkráteia’s nature is not exclu-
sively related to the restraint of passions. Indeed, for Aristotle, enkráteia
does not only mean endurance of pain, but also victory over desire (Ar.EN,
VII 1150.a.32, 1994, p. 415). The significance of this interpretation of self-
command pertains not only this particular virtue, but by simple exten-
sion, to all Smithian virtues. Self-command must be seen as related to
individual free choice,53 in a positive way that gives moral autonomy to
the individual, and grants excellence, through propriety (a theme that
will be discussed in the next chapter) to all other Smithian virtues.
The then famous writer Henry Mackenzie54 is reported to have referred
to Smith as ‘an exception. He had twice Dr. Johnson’s learning – who
only knew one language well, the Latin – though he had none of his
affection’ (Clayden, 1887, pp. 166–7). Smith’s command of Latin and
Greek was very strong. Additional proof of the latter statement is found
in the impressive collection of works by classical writers in his library
common in Xenophon (cf. Lidell and Scott, 1996, p. 473), among others. All
these classic authors were well known to Smith.
52
In the sense that, as Alasdair MacIntyre has suggested, ‘it is the virtue of a man
who could but does not abuse his power. One part of such restraint is the abil-
ity to control one’s passion’ (1981, p. 136, emphasis added). Soon thereafter
MacIntyre adds that sophrosúne ‘does not necessarily imply restraint so far as
one’s goals are concerned; it is rather restraint in the manner of realizing these
goals’ (ibid.).
53
Edward Harpham suggests that ‘[o]ne could argue that the ideal of self-
command itself demands a certain amount of negative liberty if it is [to] be
realized’ (2000, p. 236). The complexity and distinctively Smithian nature of
self-command combines, in my opinion, a negative and then a positive aspect,
that is, it evolves from a negative virtue to a positive one. In this sense, Calkins
and Werhane (1998) have also briefly developed this broader character of self-
command. They argue that ‘[s]omeone who evidences self-command is conti-
nent and capable of controlling his or her passions through a combination of
knowledge, foresight, self-reliance and self-control. As a result, that person is
also capable of integrating into society and participating in the community’s
fruitful or productive interactions’ (1998, pp. 45–6).
54
Walter Scott referred to Henry Mackenzie as the ‘Scottish Addison’.
(Mizuta, 1967), his repeated emphasis on the study of the Greek

language in his letters to Lord Shelburne concerning the education of
his son (cf. Corr., pp. 28, 29 and 31) and his command of Greek in his
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. I would venture not only that
Smith’s virtue of self-command is influenced by this important philo-
sophical tradition, which I have briefly summarised, but also that Smith
was well aware of the Greek word enkráteia, its nature and meaning and
its relationship with the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne.
However, one could contend that there exists an oversight in my
argument, specifically where it assumes that self-command for Smith is
principally related to propriety, that is, it presupposes that it is an ad intra
virtue. Indeed, Smith also claims in the TMS’s previous editions, that ‘self-
command ... by which we restrain our present appetites, in order to grat-
ify them more fully upon another occasion, is approved of, as much
under the aspect of propriety, as under that of utility’ (TMS IV.2.8, p. 189).
The latter quotation also appears to reflect a consequentialist approach to
self-command, in contrast with the one added to the sixth edition, which
basically confines self-command to propriety, as the effects ‘are too often
but too little regarded’ (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264). Should we now under-
stand self-command as related to propriety and utility, or should we assume
that Smith’s last words are a lapsus that he overlooked while working on
the last edition, perhaps allowing for the fact that when Smith wrote the
sixth edition ‘he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217)?
I believe neither. Throughout the TMS, Smith is concentrating on the
‘awesome and respectable’ virtue of self-command as his principal
virtue. The apparently contradictory sentence merely reflects a particu-
lar feature of self-command, that is, what Smith recognises as the
‘Epicurean virtue of prudence’ that enables us ‘to abstain from present
pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure
or to avoid a greater pain in some future time’ (TMS IV.2.6, p. 189).55 In
this specific passage, he is linking self-command to a prudential pursuit
55
The Epicurean influence on Smith is clearly reflected by a longstanding intel-
lectual tradition. Although the epithet ‘Epicurean’ brought connotations of
hedonism and religious dissent, similar to those of ‘Hobbist’, it is a fact that
Epicurus himself, as well as Lucretius and Horace, were quite influential on
Smith. Gassendi and St Evremond had revived this tradition in the seven-
teenth century, and it had a major impact on natural philosophy through its
corpuscular theory of matter, especially through Newton’s Opticks. In the early
eighteenth century it was Bayle’s task to endorse an Epicurean morality, and
the Epicurean influence on Hume is also fundamental, as has been persua-
sively argued by Moore (1994) in his challenge to the view of Hume’s moral
Smith on Virtues 85
of pleasure and avoidance of pain, which involves a concern with the

consequences as well as with the propriety of self-constraint. In this
sense it is simply the prudential part of the excellence of self-command,
which is also consistent with the Aristotelian definition of sophrosúne as
the observance of the mean (mesótes) with respect to pleasures and pains
(Ar.EN, II.vii.3, 1994, p. 99). Smith’s later additions to the TMS certainly
contributed to broadening the meaning of self-command.56 It appears
that for Smith self-command is as relevant as phrónesis is for Aristotle, as
it entails not only a kind of self-denial or simple control of passions, but
also a notion of prudential deliberation. This explanation is strength-
ened when we recall that according to Smith ‘to act according to the dic-
tates of prudence, of justice and proper beneficence, seems to have no
great merit where there is no temptation to do otherwise’ (TMS VI.iii.11,
p. 241). In its broader sense, self-command is a meta-virtue, upon which
all of the other three Smithian virtues, judged by merit, depend. But self-
command is not only literally beyond the other Smithian virtues, it is
also behind them, underpinning the moral value of actions. This feature
of enkráteia is the basis on which to attain moral excellence.
However, this broader sense of self-command is linked to our
conscience, to the supposed impartial spectator who is capable of assess-
ing the propriety of our behaviour, regardless of its consequences. In this
setting, self-command is a virtue that enables proper moral behaviour,
providing the moral structure that sets the ground for future actions to
be judged. This complementing of Smith’s propriety and merit, repre-
sented by self-command and the other virtues, respectively, has been
wonderfully summarised by Knud Haakonssen as ‘a most extraordinary
combination of an ideal of intentions with an actual ethics of conse-
quences’ (1981, p. 65).57
philosophy as fundamentally Hutchesonian. It is not negligible that Smith

altered his view of the Epicureans from the ‘worst of all three’ to ‘the most
imperfect of all three’ (TMS VII.ii.45, p. 307) in the last edition of the TMS, nor
that he added the characterisation of ‘the peaceable and indolent Epicureans’
(TMS VII.ii.1.28, p. 281).
56
Curiously Werhane (1991, pp. 9, 41 and 100) puts forward three times the idea
that Smith added the notion of self-command in the sixth edition, after the
publication of the WN. In my view, strictly speaking, Smith developed the
concept of self-command as a meta-virtue in his last edition, but the notion
linked to enkráteia and sophrosúne was already quite significant since the first
edition.
57
In his new introduction to the Cambridge edition of the TMS Knud
Haakonssen stresses that ‘judgment in terms of merit or demerit is, according
In summary, while it appears to be a contradiction for Smith to relate

self-command in the last edition mainly to propriety, and in the previous
editions also to utility, this is merely a consequence of the broad sense that
Smith later attributes to self-command as a meta-virtue encompassing all
the others, including prudential deliberation. Self-command is a distinc-
tively Smithian virtue that encompasses the humanist discourse that was
still pervasive during the second half of the eighteenth century. The broad
character of self-command contrasts with the specific nature of the
Smithian consequentialist virtues of prudence and justice, and although
it is intellectually appealing as a complex virtue, it lacks the pragmatic
simplicity of the other virtues. The former virtue will prove, in my view,
to be the remnant of a civic humanist tradition that is combined in Smith
with a jurisprudential approach. The latter tradition influenced his
pragmatic account of justice and, more subtly perhaps, of prudence.
3.5.2 Prudence
The editors of the TMS not only consider self-command as ‘essentially
Stoic’, but go so far as to declare that Smith interprets prudence ‘in a
Stoic manner’ (TMS intr., p. 6). We have shown that the former assertion
is perfunctory and requires elaboration, but the latter, if not mistaken, is
definitely misleading. First, we have already mentioned that the Stoic
tradition is complex, and that some classical exponents of the cardinal
virtues tradition sometimes refer to prudence (phrónesis), while others
speak of wisdom (sophía). In general it seems that the Stoics do not make
the distinction between the former, practical wisdom, and the latter,
theoretical wisdom (cf. Sandbach, 1975, p. 42), as Aristotle did.
Furthermore, what they actually did understand by wisdom or prudence
is a matter of debate; we simply know that the Stoics, following Socrates
and Plato, believed that all virtues are a form or manifestation of wisdom
or prudence. Second, if we simply take Cicero’s account of prudence as
the correct choice of good and avoidance of evil, this broad definition is
closer to Aristotle’s boúleusis and even perhaps phrónesis,58 as practical
to Smith, derivative from judgment in terms of propriety’ (Smith 2002 [1759],

p. xvii). However, I believe that this not only applies to judgement, but also to
morality in general, in terms of motivations and consequences.
58
In this Aristotelian sense, I see great affinities between my own understanding
of Smith’s project and Samuel Fleischacker’s attempt, in his A Third Concept of
Liberty. Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (1999), to recover Kant’s
third Critique as relevant to understanding Smith’s moral philosophy.
Fleischacker also draws some very interesting connections between Smith and
Smith on Virtues 87
intelligence pursuing the right means to the only end, rather than to
what Smith understands by inferior prudence.
Smith clearly states:
Wise and judicious conduct, when directed to greater and nobler

purposes than the care of the health, the rank and reputation of the
individual, is frequently and very properly called prudence ...
superior prudence ... necessarily supposes the utmost perfection of all
intellectual and of all the moral virtues. It is the best head joined to
the best heart. It is the most perfect wisdom combined with the most
perfect virtue. It constitutes very nearly the character of the
Academical or Peripatetic sage, as the inferior prudence does that of
the Epicurean. (TMS VI.i.14, p. 216)
As Norbert Waszek (1984) has persuasively argued, Smith conceives two

levels of morality: one for the wise few, and one for the common man.
Regarding prudentia, this intuition is clearly explicit when Smith distin-
guishes between superior prudence ‘of the Academic or Peripatetic sage’
which requires the ‘most exact propriety’ as ‘[i]t necessarily supposes the
utmost perfection of all intellectual and of all moral virtues’ (TMS
VI.i.15, p. 216), and inferior prudence. Smith’s moral philosophy simply
concentrates on the latter, as the more practical and simple concept of
the Epicureans.59 The Aristotelian phrónesis is another problem for the
pragmatic Smith, as is Plato’s sophía. He prefers to focus on the worldly
prudence that acts ‘as a bridge between the two books [WN and TMS]
because it is both moral and economic virtue’ (Griswold, 1999, p. 203),
Aristotle, and although Aristotle’s influence on Smith is a subject that had

been unduly neglected, the very recent translation of Vivenza’s Adam Smith e
la Cultura Classica (1984) will certainly fill the gap, making up for the long wait
that scholars not proficient in Italian endured with a suggestive, but in parts
debatable, new ‘Postcript’. On Aristotle’s influence on Smith, Laurence Berns
(1994) and Martin Calkins and Patricia Werhane (1998), also provide interest-
ing contributions.
59
Smith explicitly states the Epicurean connection in the last quoted passage,
linking inferior prudence with the character of an Epicurean. Before, in the
beginning of the section on prudence, Smith refers to how by growing up, ‘he
soon learns that some care and foresight are necessary for providing the
means of gratifying those natural appetites, of procuring pleasure and avoid-
ing pain ... In the proper direction of this care and foresight consists the art of
preserving and increasing what is called external fortune’ (TMS VI.i.2, p. 212).
Other references to Epicurean prudence can be found in (TMS IV.2.6,
pp. 189–90 and VII.ii.2, pp. 294–300).
what Gloria Vivenza aptly defines as ‘domestic’ prudence (2002, p. 197).

Indeed, as many scholars have argued, Smith’s prudence, with an
emphasis on ‘a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry
and application’ (TMS IV.2.6, pp. 189–90), represents the pragmatic and
worldly face of this virtue which pervades his TMS and his WN.
In his conclusion to the section on virtues, Smith restricts prudence to
‘our own happiness ... originally recommended to us by our selfish ...
affections’ (TMS VI.concl.1, p. 262). His understanding of prudence is
simple:
The care of the health, of the fortune, of the rank and reputation of
the individual, the objects upon which his comfort and happiness in
this life are supposed principally to depend, is considered as the
proper business of that virtue which is commonly called Prudence.
(TMS VI.i.5, p. 213)
Security, therefore, is the first and the principal object of prudence.
The method of improving our fortune, which it principally recom-
mends to us, are those which expose to no loss or hazard; real knowl-
edge and skill in our trade or profession, assiduity and industry in the
exercise of it, frugality, and even some degree of parsimony, in all our
expenses. (TMS VI.i.6, p. 213)
Prudence is related to self-interest, in which ‘the habits of economy,

industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought ... deserve
the esteem and approbation of everybody’ (TMS VII.ii.3.16, p. 304). It is
a self-regarding virtue that fosters Smith’s recurrent defense of the right
of all people to the ‘bettering of our condition’. The latter does not
entail the cold greediness of the homo œconomicus as a socially detached
acquisitive individual, as it demands not only the propriety of self-
command, but also the approval of the impartial spectator and supposed
impartial spectator, as ‘the prudent man is always both supported and
rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the
representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast’
(TMS VI.i.11, 215). So George Stigler’s remark that the WN is ‘a stupen-
dous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest’ (Stigler, 1982,
p. 136) is not only biased and misleading, but simply mistaken. Self-
interest, as nothing more than another of the motivations behind pru-
dence, is not the blind pursuit of one’s own wishes, wants or desires
regardless of others. In neoclassical economic terminology, it would be
the maximisation of a person’s utility, but subject to the all-encompassing
impartial spectator constraint. For Adam Smith human nature is
Smith on Virtues 89
predominantly social, which explains the relevance of the impartial

spectator, and human conduct is fundamentally ethical, which is deter-
mined by the social interaction that leads to moral rules.
However, there is one approach that might lead us to consider pru-
dence as Stoic. It is related to the complex Stoical concept of oikeíosis,
which encompasses a sense of belonging,60 appropriation or ownership,
of making something one’s own, and also of something coming to
belong to oneself. According to the core thesis of oikeíosis,61 man is not
only motivated to self-preservation by self-interest, but he also has a nat-
ural impulse to sympathise with others. Smith is well aware of this
important insight when he states that ‘according to Zeno ... every ani-
mal was by nature recommended to its own care, and was endowed with
the principle of self-love, that it might endeavour to preserve, not only
its existence, but all the different parts of its nature, in the best and most
perfect state of which they were capable’ (TMS VII.ii.I.15, 272).62
Nevertheless, oikeíosis is not particularly related to the virtue of pru-
dence for the Stoics, as it is a principle of self-motivation embedded in
human nature.
Moreover, the definition of prudence from the Early Stoics, was later
defined by the anthologist Stobaeus as ‘the science of what should or
should not be done’ (Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, p. 380),63 which is
60
I believe Brown (1994, pp. 95–7) correctly links Smith’s self-love to oikeíosis.
Heise (1995, p. 19) also states that ‘the self-interest or self-betterment of Smith
is the oikeíosis of the Stoics’, but I am not fully convinced that from a single
passage we can infer that ‘[i]n the sixth edition of TMS, Smith became even
more Stoic’ (ibid., p. 23). Neither author mentions Hierocles’s classic example
of the concentric circles (cf. Long and Sedley, 1999, vol. 1, p. 349; and note 48,
chapter 2), which would definitely reinforce their argument.
61
See Schofield (1995, 1999, pp. 760–8), Inwood and Donini (1999, pp. 677–82),
Long (1996, pp. 250–64), Sandbach (1975, pp. 34–5), Engberg-Pederson (1990;
1995), and Edelstein (1966, p. 35).
62
Elsewhere Smith refers to ‘[e]very man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and
principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every
respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person’ (TMS
VI.ii.I.1, p. 219). Brown (1994) and Heise (1995) analyse the importance of
oikeíosis for Smith, and Vivenza (2002, pp. 203–6) calls our attention to the
Peripatetic influences. In my opinion, this is wrong, as the concept of oikeíosis
is fundamentally Stoic, and Smith was well acquainted with sources like
Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Stobaeus and Marcus Aurelius, amongst others.
63
Stobaeus’s works were part of Smith’s library (Mizuta, 1967, p. 143). In
Stobaeus’s Eclogae (2.63, pp. 11–12) he also refers to prudence as ‘the theoría
and práxis of what should be done’ (emphasis added). As I have mentioned,
the distinction between theoretical and practical phrónesis is Aristotelian, and
similar to Cicero’s definition (‘choice of goods and evils’). However, the

latter entails a process of rational deliberation, a Peripatetic and Epicurean
overtone that Smith applies to his particular account of prudence.
There is a combination of classical influences in Smith’s concept of
prudence.64 The main difference, of course, between Smith’s account of
inferior prudence and the Epicurean concept of prudence, is that for the
latter ‘prudence ... was not desirable upon its own account’ (TMS
VII.ii.2.8, p. 296). For the Epicureans, prudence was not valued as
a virtue as such, but only as a means to an end. Smith is aware that in
the calculation of future pleasure and the avoidance of future pain
(which also includes the endurance of present pain for the sake of pleas-
ure or less pain in the future), the Epicureans considered temperance as
fundamental. Yet, in this sense, temperance also lost its classical tradi-
tion as a cardinal virtue, as according to Smith ‘[t]he whole value of this
virtue [temperance] arose from its utility ... Temperance, in short, was
nothing but prudence with regard to pleasure’ (TMS VII.ii.2.9, p. 297).
In general, I contest the narrow but widely accepted view that Smith’s
‘theory of virtue traces its roots to the Stoics’ (Werhane, 1991, p. 41). In
reality, the problem becomes more complex as different philosophical
traditions are combined. Inferior prudence is related to well-being as
‘the habits of oeconomy, industry, discretion, attention, and application
of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested
motives, and at the same time are apprehended to be very praiseworthy
qualities, which deserve the esteem and approbation of everybody’
(TMS VII.ii.3.16, p. 304). It is essentially a self-regarding virtue, generally
material in its scope, and partly Epicurean in its classical tradition.
Inferior prudence, in this narrower sense of prudence, preaches the right
of each human being to improve his material condition. Smith is well
aware of the Aristotelian tradition when he refers to superior prudence,
and is certainly quite familiar with the Aristotelian concept of phrónesis.
But in answering the question of why Smith focuses on a narrower con-
cept of prudence, it can be argued that he takes a pragmatic, realist and
eclectic stance. He neither overlooks, nor ignores, the classical tradition.
On the contrary, his position on prudence has an Epicurean basis, com-
bined with Stoic overtones of self-preservation with some clear
the italics reflect the Socratic and Platonic idea of one phrónesis that can also
be sophía.
64
Not to mention a Hobbesian emphasis on self-preservation and man’s capac-
ity to take care of his own affairs, a connection that has been convincingly
developed by Cropsey (1957).
Smith on Virtues 91
Aristotelian and Peripatetic nuances. However, Smith’s account of

prudence implicitly comprises the right to improve our condition, and
this insight definitely presupposes the jurisprudential language of
rights.
3.5.3 Justice and beneficence

For Smith, ‘mere justice’ is ‘a negative virtue, and only hinders us from
hurting our neighbour’ (TMS II.ii.I.9, p. 82) – the classic Ciceronian
cuique tribuere ius suum. Therefore justice is simply defined in its com-
mutative sense (Aristotle’s ‘corrective’ sense) as ‘when we abstain from
doing him [our neighbour] any positive harm, and do not directly hurt
him, either in his person, or in his estate, or in his reputation’ (TMS
VII.ii.1.10, p. 269). The simple laws of justice ‘guard the life and person
of our neighbour; the next are those which guard his property and
possessions; and last of all come those which guard what are called his
personal rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others’ (TMS
II.ii.2.2, p. 84). Life, property and contracts are basic principles implied
in the ‘sacred and religious regard not to hurt or disturb in any respect
the happiness of our neighbour’ (TMS VI.intro.2, p. 218). He is follow-
ing Grotius, whom he praises at the end of the TMS,65 in his definition
of commutative justice (see TMS VII.ii.I.10, p. 269). Grotius represented
the modern tradition of natural law as a reaction against Aristotelian-
scholastic assumptions about natural law, limiting the notion of justice
(and especially rights) to their commutative aspect.66 The development
65
‘Grotius seems to have been the first who attempted to give the world any
thing like a system of those principles which ought to run through, and be the
foundation of the laws of all nations; and his treatise of the laws of war and
peace, with all its imperfections, is perhaps at this day the most complete work
that has yet been given upon this subject’ (TMS VII.iv.37, pp. 341–2).
66
Very good accounts of the natural law tradition are Tuck (1979) and
Haakonssen (1985). For Grotius, see Tuck (1999, pp. 78–108) and for Pufendorf
(ibid., pp. 140–65) and Hont (1987). Tully (1991) provides a useful introduc-
tion to Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man and Citizen and Teichgraeber (1986, pp.
20–6) presents another good synthesis of Grotius’s project. For its relevance to
the Scottish Enlightenment in particular, Haakonssen (1996) presents a clear
account that complements his classic The Science of a Legislator. The Natural
Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (1981) and its importance for
Smith is developed in Hont and Ignatieff (1983, pp. 26–43). In Britain,
Cumberland, with his De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philosophica (1672), com-
pleted the triad of modern natural law philosophers. For Cumberland, see
Darwall (1995, pp. 80–108).
of the natural law tradition initiated by Grotius, reformulated by

Pufendorf and adapted by Locke, is fundamental in the shaping of
Smith’s view, as has been persuasively shown by Istvan Hont and
Michael Ignatieff (1983, pp. 24–43), and was very influential in the cur-
riculum of Scottish universities.67 But its enormous influence did not
signal the end of the civic humanist tradition.
Undoubtedly, Smith’s account of prudence and justice is quite
restricted compared to what Aristotle had to say about phrónesis (pruden-
tia) and certainly in comparison to what Plato understood by dikaiosúne
(iustitia). I believe that, putting aside the complex and sometimes elu-
sive classical meaning of these virtues, in focusing mainly on negative
justice and inferior prudence, he obeys this jurisprudential tradition; its
emphasis is on ius, not on virtus. The importance of jurisprudence is
undeniable, as it ‘was the social science of the eighteenth century’
(Pocock, 1985, p. 49). Moreover, even though Smith follows the modern
natural law tradition, his reformulation of it within the framework of
the sympathetic process and the impartial spectator, overcomes many of
its problems, as has been suggested by Haakonssen (1981, pp. 99–134).68
On the other hand, beneficence, as the virtue of doing good to others,
somehow also entails a sense of duty.69 Smith is clearly aware of the
‘limited powers of beneficence’ (TMS VI.ii.intro.2, p. 218), as it ‘is
the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the
building ... Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds
the whole edifice’ (TMS II.ii.3.4, p. 86). At the individual level,
beneficence plays a relevant role, as it appears as a mechanism required
to regulate prudence in the presence of a third person, though it is
a consequence of the sympathetic process. But this virtue also relates to
our relationship with society, which has political implications (see TMS
VI.ii.2, pp. 227–34). In a broader scheme, it is also fundamental for the
67
Moore and Silverthorne (1983) argue that Gershom Carmichael, the first
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, and therefore Hutcheson
and Smith’s predecessor, was responsible for establishing the natural jurispru-
dential tradition in Scottish Universities. And as Pocock has argued, ‘Scottish
Enlightenment was happening in the schools, not the salons’ (1999, p. 326).
68
In his view, ‘Smith’s rejection of a ‘utilitarian’ or consequentialist account of
rights and their accompanying virtues, and his adoption of a Unitarian spec-
tator account, gives him the best of both worlds [natural and acquired right]’
(Haakonssen, 1981, p. 102).
69
For Aquinas beneficentia is the theological virtue of charity (cf. Aq.ST, 2a2æ 23,
vol. 34, 1963). Vivenza (2002, pp. 66–8) draws some very interesting connec-
tions between Smith’s and Cicero’s concept of benevolence, suggesting its
political significance.
Smith on Virtues 93
providential plan, as it involves the often discussed principle of design.

The way ‘nature’ functions not only demands individual sacrifices to the
public interest, as in a process of inverse oikeíosis, these levels of indi-
vidual sacrifice reach a third stage in which the individual must privi-
lege even the greater interest of the universe.70 In this manner, once
Hierocles’s concentric circles have reached the final circumference, they
implode towards the individual who is at the centre. Of course, Smith’s
account of beneficence presents clear traces of Stoic doctrines.
Prudence and justice are related to the language of rights, the former as
my right to better my own condition, and the latter as my right to life,
property and contracts. Beneficence involves the language of duties, so
there is a combination of what pertains to the self and to the community.
However, one must bear in mind that the Smithian theory of virtues
assumes that rights and duties are underpinned by the virtus of self-
command, and this fundamental virtue not only reflects a humanist lan-
guage, but also involves a notion of self-possession and moral autonomy.
If Smith’s account of virtues is complementary to the tradition of virtù,
the role of self-command within this scheme is quite significant:
The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, of strict
justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtu-
ous ... The most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most
perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty.
(TMS VI.iii.1, p. 237)
Taking Grotius’s influence as a starting point, it is worth considering one

detail that is important for our account of the Smithian virtues. Smith is
conscious that ‘we may often fulfill all the rules of justice by sitting still
and doing nothing’ (TMS II.ii.1.9, p. 82), simply by respecting rights.
Here he concentrates on commutative justice, defined as ‘that justice
which I have treated of above’, what Grotius calls ‘justitia expletrix,
which consists in abstaining from what is another’s’ (TMS VII.ii.I.10,
70
For example, ‘[t]he wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own
private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest of his particular
order or society. He is at all times willing, too, that the interest of this order or
society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of
which it is only a subordinate part. He should, therefore, be equally willing
that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the
universe, to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent
beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and director’
(TMS VI.ii.3.3, p. 235).
p. 269). But then he continues, stating that ‘the second sense of the
word coincides with what some have called distributive justice, and
with the justitia attributrix of Grotius, which consists in proper beneficence’
(ibid., last emphasis added). Smith’s account of justice has been often crit-
icised for taking a libertarian stance, only considering its negative defini-
tion as Grotius’s ‘expletive justice’. Some have even stated that his
‘notion of justice’ is ‘not well developed in the TMS or in any of Smith’s
writings’ (Werhane, 1991, p. 43). However, distributive justice, in
its grand but elusive sense, is also implicit in his account of virtues:
distributive justice, an imperfect right in the Grotian tradition, is
included under the virtue of beneficence,71 so it is indirectly amongst the
four Smithian virtues. Therefore, when Brown (1994, p. 210) goes so far
as to argue that in Smith’s account, ‘the truly moral virtues of benefi-
cence and self-command do not carry any public or political resonances’,
she is, in my view, erring regarding the interpretation of both virtues.72
Indeed, Smith argues:
... we are said not to do justice to our neighbour unless we conceive

for him all that love, respect, and esteem, which his character, his
situation, and his connexion with ourselves, render suitable and
proper for us to feel, and unless we act accordingly. It is in this sense
that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit who is connected
with us, though we abstain from hurting him in every respect, if we
do not exert ourselves to serve him and to place him in that situation
in which the impartial spectator would be pleased to see him’. (TMS
VII.ii.I.10, p. 269)
Smith probably focuses on inferior prudence and negative justice in

order to bring the ‘excellences of character’ closer to men. Although he
was well aware of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, he assumes a prag-
matic stance very much influenced by the jurisprudential tradition.
Moreover, his concept of prudence as ‘inferior prudence’ is in a certain
71
Griswold (1999, p. 252) also develops this connection.
72
Though there is a longstanding tradition underlining the importance of bene-
volence, and beneficence, in Smith’s system, I would side with Gloria Vivenza
who is of the opinion that ‘benevolence is not a particularly significant theme
in Smith’s economic thought, and its importance is largely restricted to the
moral sphere’ (2002, p. 65). In general, the role of the impartial spectator is fun-
damental. But it is undeniable that beneficence has political relevance for
Smith, as is quite clear in chapter 2, Of the order in which Societies are by nature
recommended to our Beneficence, part VI, as I have previously argued.
Smith on Virtues 95
way similar to the same Epicurean tradition that he so categorically

dismisses as ‘undoubtedly the most imperfect of all the three [systems]’
(TMS VII.ii.4.5, p. 307). At that time, few intellectuals would have appre-
ciated being labelled as ‘Epicureans’ or ‘Hobbists’, as these epithets con-
tained a severe pejorative sense that incited public disapproval, and
even the risk of being accused of atheism. He knew what his friend
David Hume had to go through. Once again Smith, avoiding what dur-
ing his time could have been controversial, is very cautious.
3.6 Conclusions
In the TMS, Smith presents four virtues that not only inherit part of the
Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean and cardinal virtues tradition,
but which also differ drastically in their nature and spirit. The cardinal
virtue of fortitude does not appear, but is implicit, together with the vir
virtutis tradition, in self-command. Smith continuously refers to phróne-
sis and dikaiosúne, but concentrates on what he terms inferior prudence
and, following the jurisprudential tradition, on commutative justice.
Smith adds beneficence, the virtue of doing good to others, which
encompasses distributive justice. The virtue of self-command, although
apparently Stoic, has its origins in the Socratic virtue of enkráteia, which
is related to the cardinal virtue of sophrosúne of Plato and Aristotle. Self-
command is the only Smithian virtue that can be considered a meta-
virtue, as all of the other three virtues, judged by their effects, add
‘lustre’ to their consequences through the propriety of Smith’s most
humanistic virtue. In this pre-eminent sense, self-command resembles
the character of prudence or wisdom for the Stoics, or prudentia for
Aquinas. Furthermore the Smithian virtues are all interrelated in that
self-command has a special position in this scheme. The other three
virtues, beneficence, prudence and justice, judged by their conse-
quences, not only ‘participate’ (to use a Platonic connotation) in self-
command, but are also exalted by its propriety. In other words, for Smith
the motives underlying his virtue of self-command dignify and ennoble
the consequentialist nature of his other virtues. I have suggested that the
language of rights and duties, of inferior prudence, negative justice and
beneficence, is underpinned by the Smithian virtù of self-command. He
combines a jurisprudential approach to virtues, with humanist reso-
nances that are still loud enough in his virtue of self-command, as well
as in his defence of the standing army.
Of course we cannot fully understand Smith’s position on virtues
without the sympathy-spectator framework, but I believe that this
exercise has shed further light on the nature of his last attempt to give
an account of the Character of Virtue, as it implies a recovery of the sig-
nificance of the four Smithian virtues. From a virtue ethics perspective,
Smith’s intention is perhaps a pragmatic undertaking which seeks to put
aside all the metaphysical assumptions attached to the virtues under-
pinned by phrónesis or dikaiosúne in the Aristotelian and Platonic tradi-
tions, respectively. Yet he repeatedly praises the manly virtue of courage,
of superior prudence and general justice. Undoubtedly he has inherited
the civic humanist tradition through the use of its distinctive language.
The TMS, and the WN to a lesser extent, reflect a permanent dialogue
between this tradition and the jurisprudential one, between the rem-
nants of virtus and the ascent of political economy. The all-encompassing
virtue of self-command, necessary to ennoble the virtuous character of
prudence, beneficence and justice, is proof that Smith’s defence of
commercial society was carried out with a humanist consciousness. In
this sense, ‘the first chapter in the history of political economy is also a
further chapter in the continuing history of civic humanism’ (Pocock,
1975, p. 426). But Smith’s last attempt to develop a theory of virtues was
like the Maginot line: he came to be known mainly as the father of the
science of economics, as the prophet of self-interest.
4
Adam Smith’s Concept of
‘Propriety’: Its Meaning and
Philosophical Implications
4.1 Introduction
The first part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is fundamental to Adam

Smith’s moral philosophy. It is peculiarly entitled ‘Of the Propriety of
Action’. Throughout the TMS Smith repeatedly refers to ‘propriety of
conduct’, to the idea of ‘acting with propriety’, and even to ‘love of pro-
priety’. Moreover, in the last part of the TMS he celebrates some affinity
between his moral approach with all ‘those Systems which make Virtue
consist in Propriety’, that is, Plato, Aristotle and Zeno. But, what does he
actually mean by ‘propriety’? Does it only correspond to the canonical
understanding that views propriety as the attainment of a concordance
of sentiments? Or in addition to the latter, is it simply an extension of
Shaftesbury’s ‘politeness’, the Addisonian criterion for proper behav-
iour, as the mark of gentlemanliness? In this chapter I will re-examine
Smith’s concept of propriety, arguing that it is also a complex and dis-
tinctively philosophical concept.
The next section of this chapter briefly analyses the context of the
concept of propriety, concluding that its vernacular moral connotation,
stemming from its etymological root proprius, inherits its ad intra char-
acter, that is, internal to the agent. Section 4.3 addresses Smith’s concept
of propriety. I argue that the concept of propriety evolves. Initially, the
meaning of propriety is simply restricted to the ground necessary to
exercise the sympathetic process, as the precondition for attaining
mutual sympathy. Then, the sense of propriety, underpinned by the
virtue of self-command and the role of conscience, which is introduced
by the supposed impartial spectator, acquires a new philosophical
97
dimension that is especially built on in the last edition of the TMS. In

Section 4.4, I show that this broader understanding of propriety has
philosophical significance. It not only dismisses any interpretation of
Smith as a proto-utilitarian, asserting the fact that for Smith, moral
actions are not simply determined as such by their outcome, but also by
the motives for which they were undertaken. I suggest that if some of his
contemporaries, notably Hutcheson and Hume, prepared the ground for
utilitarianism, Smith anticipated some features of Kantian ethics.
Finally, in section 4.5, although I argue that the philosophical nature of
propriety is distinctively Smithian, I attempt to track down the classical
sources that influenced the concept of propriety, rebutting the wide-
spread view that Smith could have been allured by Cicero’s concept of
decorum. The fact that Smith explicitly links propriety to Cicero’s officia
supports my view that this concept, within the context of the supposed
impartial spectator and the virtue of self-command, is linked to duty.
My thesis therefore, is that there are more grounds to consider Smith as
a deontologist, than as a proto-utilitarian.
4.2 Propriety and its context
Propriety has its etymological root in the Latin word proprius, which
entails the idea of something not common when compared with other
things, something peculiar, or of something belonging to one only. In
relation to this last definition it also refers to one’s own, to a possession,
and therefore its obvious link to ‘property’. In fact, the word proprietas is
the Latin word for the Greek idiotes,1 which derives from idios (the Latin
equivalent of proprius), one’s own, pertaining to oneself. Idios also relates
to private interests in opposition to the public, implying also the notion
of private property for the Greeks.2 In the seventeenth century propriety
was a doublet of property, but comprising a wider meaning that relates
to its etymological root. For example, Hobbes would declare ‘[a]nd
therefore where there is no Own, that is, no Propriety, there is no
Injustice; and where there is no coercive Power erected, that is, where
there is no common-wealth, there is no Propriety’ (Hobbes, 1996 [1651],
1
In the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology it is asserted that proprietas is
Cicero’s Latin translation of idiotes (Onions, 1966, p. 716). However, as a caveat,
I have not been able to corroborate this assertion.
2
For the Greeks, idiotes was a person without public attribution, basically anyone
who was not involved in the affairs of the polis; in other words, a private person
not sharing the concerns of the community.
Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’ 99
p. 106, original emphasis), clearly drawing on proprius’ general meaning

of one’s own.3 Locke would, in turn, use both words, propriety and
property, interchangeably. His famous definition of property as
‘Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the gen-
eral name, Property’ (Locke, 2000 [1689], p. 350, original emphasis)4
reflects the broader realm of propriety. Nowadays, we still maintain its
original etymological root in words like ‘appropriate’ or ‘proprietor’, but
the modern social sense of property has been narrowed exclusively to
that of material ownership.
In English, the word ‘propriety’, breaking away from the word ‘prop-
erty’, acquired a moral connotation, suggesting correct behaviour, that is,
what the proper thing to do is. For example, in the influential Spectator,
the Whig periodical published by Steele and Addison between 1711 and
1714, we read ‘Virgil has excelled all others in the Propriety of his senti-
ments’ (Addison and Steele, 1965 [1712], vol. 2, p. 586). Chambers’s
Cyclopaedia (fifth edition, 1743) defines ‘Property, or Propriety, Proprietas,
that which constitutes or denominates a thing proper; or, it is a particular
virtue or quality, which nature has bestowed on something, exclusive of
all others’.5 Later, in his 1755 English Dictionary Doctor Johnson defines
propriety as ‘Peculiarity of possession; exclusive right’, and ‘Accuracy,
justness’, but he finds ten different meanings for the word ‘proper’. One
of these meanings relates in general to ‘fitness’, and another to the French
word propre, in the sense of ‘elegant’. In the French Encyclopédie of 1765,
the entry for propreté says that it ‘concerns the body, what is decency
and good manners (moeurs); propreté shows the respect one has for society
and for oneself, for man must respect himself’.6 Soon after it defines
propriété as a quality in philosophical terms, and then in terms of natu-
ral laws and politics as legitimate ownership within civil society.
3
Elsewhere Hobbes refers to ‘power as propriety’, or ‘Rules of Propriety’ (1996
[1651], p. 125), ‘Propriety of Subjects’ (ibid., p. 225) and ‘Propriety in his land’
(ibid., p. 228).
4
Cf. ‘... every Man has a Property in his own Person’ (Locke, 2000 [1689], p. 287,
original emphasis). Locke also refers to ‘[t]he measure of Property, Nature has
well set, by the Extent of Mens Labour’ (ibid., p. 292, original emphasis), and
soon after he refers to the ‘Rule of Propriety’ (ibid., p. 293, original emphasis).
5
The third edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) uses similar terminology,
defining propriety as ‘a particular virtue or quality which nature has bestowed
on some things exclusive of all others’.
6
The original reads: ‘eft à l’égard du corps ce qu’eft la décence dan ses moeurs, elle
fert à témoigner le refpect qu’on a pour la fociété & pour foi même; car l’homme doit
fe refpecter’.
The French understanding of propre and propreté, as cleanness, elegance

and refinement, albeit mainly focused on the external, also reflects pro-
priety’s moral sense during the eighteenth century and its link to proper
behaviour and good manners.7
While ‘propriety’ had a popular moral meaning during the eighteenth
century, it was a word not widely used in this sense within the British
philosophical writings of the period. Smith’s predecessors Cudworth,
Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Mandeville, Wollaston, Balguy, Berkeley,
Hutcheson and Butler, do not use ‘propriety’ with any original philo-
sophical connotation. Neither do his contemporaries Hume, Ferguson
or Reid.8 In this sense, Smith’s case is different. He not only used the
word extensively in the TMS (it appears more frequently than sympathy
in the TMS),9 but ‘propriety’ plays a fundamental role within his moral
philosophy. At first sight its meaning might look like the popular under-
standing of the concept, but propriety for Smith, as this chapter
attempts to show, is more complex.
7
Rousseau’s famous distinction, in his second Discourse, between the corrupted
amour propre as egoism, and the virtuous amour de soi-meme as natural self-love,
probably implicitly suggests his reaction against propriety’s modern sense
of property as material ownership (Rousseau, 1993 [1755], p. 73). It is interest-
ing to mention that abbé Du Bos’s Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la pein-
ture (1719), a book that belonged to Smith’s library (cf. Mizuta, 1966, p. 60) and
that was certainly read by him (he refers to Du Bos in TMS V.2.10, p. 207),
mainly perhaps due to its influence on Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism
(1762), anticipates Rousseau’s distinction between amour propre and amour de
soi-meme.
8
One exception is Henry Home, Lord Kames. Recalling the French propreté he
says ‘[t]hus it appears, that a taste for cleanness is inherent in our nature. I say
more: cleanness is evidently a branch of propriety, and consequently of self-
duty’ (Home, 1778 [1773], vol. 1, p. 325). In the second volume he refers to ‘the
principle of chastity, like that of propriety or of decency’ (ibid., vol. 2, p. 23).
Chapter X of his influential Elements of Criticism (1762) is entitled ‘Congruity
and Propriety’, suggesting that congruity and propriety entail what is suitable,
‘what is fit and proper’ (Home, 1785 [1762], p. 333; note that he seems to be
paraphrasing Smith; cf. TMS III.4.12, p. 160). Then Home says: ‘I call propriety
a law, no less, than justice; because both are equally rules of conduct that ought
to be obey’d: propriety includes that obligation; for to say an action is proper,
is in other words to say, that it ought to be performed’ (ibid., p. 348). This is
strikingly similar to the meaning of Smith’s propriety that I attempt to uncover.
Perhaps not surprisingly Lord Kames and Adam Smith were well acquainted.
But the credit of originality still belongs to Smith, as the TMS was published
first.
9
The word propriety appears 213 times in the TMS, and sympathy, 180.
The fact that propriety, in its etymological context, retained the original
peculiarity that it pertains to the self in the moral realm, constitutes the
basis of my argument. Indeed, at a general level it is interesting to note
that the definite divorce between ‘propriety’ and ‘property’ left the for-
mer with a moral connotation, although pertaining to the self, restrict-
ing the latter simply to private capital ‘goods’ belonging to a person.
But in particular, the aim of this chapter is to prove that not only the
modern concept of property, following the Hobbesian–Lockean and
Grotius–Pufendorf tradition, was fundamental to shaping Smith’s polit-
ical economy, as it is widely acknowledged, but also that his idea of
‘propriety’ is very significant within his moral philosophy project. The
latter is an aspect that has been relatively neglected, notwithstanding its
philosophical consequences.
4.3 Propriety in the TMS
4.3.1 Propriety as the grounds for sympathy

The first part of the TMS is entitled ‘Of the Propriety of Action’. This sec-
tion is extremely important for Smith’s purpose as it defines the sympa-
thetic process, introducing the impartial spectator. Initially in the TMS,
propriety appears simply as ‘the pitch which the spectator can go along
with’ (TMS I.ii.intro.1, p. 27). It is related to the emotional level that the
agent has to achieve in order to fulfill his intention of being the object
of sympathy, reaching ‘the point of propriety’. This intention necessar-
ily comprises the effort that this emotional exertion requires, which is
represented by the sense of propriety, and exercised through the multi-
faceted virtue of self-command. Smith refers to ‘our natural sense of pro-
priety ... to consider what will be the sentiments of the cool and
impartial spectator’ (TMS I.ii.3.8, p. 38). Then propriety is a natural
‘power’ that allows the agent to attain a proper disposition of character
that will permit any spectator to sympathise with him. In this first
stage, propriety appears simply as an inner sense that ought to be
exercised in order to reach mutual sympathy. This is the canonical
definition or understanding of propriety; the attainment of ‘concord’
of feelings, or the necessary ground that will allow the impartial specta-
tor to go along with the agent ‘lowering his passion to that pitch’
(TMS I.i.4.7, p. 22).
Already in the first part of the TMS, Smith brings forward the distinc-
tion between the two aspects from which action proceeds, ‘first, in
relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation
to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce’
(TMS I.i.3.5, p. 18; cf. II.i.intro.2, p. 67). The ‘suitableness or unsuitable-

ness’ of the former he defines as propriety or impropriety, and the
‘beneficial or hurtful effects’ of the latter as merit or demerit. The first
part of the TMS is dedicated to ‘propriety’, and the second to ‘merit’.
Propriety is ad intra, internal to the agent, but the consideration of
the consequences of our actions, that is, merit or demerit, regardless of
the inner intentions prior to the action, is ad extra, external to the
agent. Thus Smith would refer to ‘propriety of affections’, simply to ‘pro-
priety in the motives’, or he would conflate propriety to ‘the intention or
affection of the heart’. Certainly the distinction between the motive and
the effect is as old as morality itself,10 but in an epoch that turned the
focus of ethics to the consequences, Smith’s revival of moral motivation
is definitely noteworthy. Moreover, Smith was very aware of this fact:
Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of

affections, and have given little attention to the relation which they
stand in to the cause which excites them. In common life, however,
when we judge of any person’s conduct, and of the sentiments which
directed it, we constantly consider them under both these aspects.
(TMS I.i.3.8, p. 18)
The pragmatic Smith is also conscious ‘[t]hat the world judges by the
event, and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is
the great discouragement of virtue’ (TMS II.iii.3.1, p. pp. 104–5). Action
is required, since ‘indolent benevolence’ alone, without actual benefi-
cence, is just a good wish. We know ‘that the praise of good intentions,
without the merit and good offices, will be but of little avail to excite
either the loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree
of self-applause’ (TMS II.iii.3.3, p. 106). Smith also complains that
Hutcheson’s system, which makes virtue consist in benevolence, focuses
just on the beneficial effects, omitting the important question of the
causes of other virtues. In Smith’s own words:
The view and aim of our affections, the beneficent and hurtful effects
which they tend to produce, are the only qualities at all attended to
in this system [Hutcheson’s]. Their propriety and impropriety, their
suitableness and unsuitableness, to the cause which excites them, are
disregarded altogether. (TMS VII.ii.3.15, p. 304)
10
Hume also clearly underlined this distinction (see, for example, A Treatise of
Human Nature, 3.2.2–11, 2000 [1739–40], pp. 307–9) and, of course, there is a
long philosophical tradition behind it, going back to the Greek philosophers.
It is precisely this clear distinction between motives and effects in

Smith’s moral philosophy, the distinction that criticises the emphasis on
the consequences by underlining the importance of motives, which
demands a re-examination of propriety. But first it is necessary to under-
stand how sympathy occurs with respect to propriety.
In the second part of the TMS, which focuses upon merit, Smith car-
ries through the distinction between merit and propriety (TMS
II.i.intro.2, p. 67), but he stresses another subtle difference between
both. Propriety demands ‘not only that we should entirely sympathize
with the person who acts, but that we should perceive this perfect con-
cord between his sentiments and our own’, but for merit ‘[n]o actual
correspondence of sentiments, therefore, is here required’ (TMS II.i.5.11,
p. 78). Thus we have to distinguish the impartial spectator’s relationship
with the person who performs the action (propriety), from his relation-
ship with the person upon whom the action is performed (merit). The
role of sympathy is deeper in terms of propriety than it is in relation to
merit. The former requires complete concordance of sentiments, what
Smith defines as direct sympathy, but the latter only requires indirect
sympathy, as it is a ‘compounded sentiment’ (TMS II.i.5.2, p. 74). In
other words, in terms of propriety or impropriety there is a spectator and
then an agent, but in terms of merit or demerit there is a spectator, an
agent and the person upon whom the action is performed. In terms of
moral approbation the two stations scheme (depicted below) requires
full concordance of sentiments, but the three stations scheme comprises
a direct sympathy with the agent and an indirect sympathy with the
person acted upon. It is only the latter that finally determines merit or
demerit, as the spectator focuses upon the effects; the object is the
person acted upon.
Graphically (I am indebted to Khalil (1990) for this graphical
representation):
Two stations Three stations
impartial impartial
spectator spectator
direct sympathy direct sympathy indirect sympathy
agent agent person to be

considered
Propriety, compared with merit, presupposes a more demanding sympa-

thetic process. In this light, propriety is an ad intra faculty of the agent
that should derive from a complete concordance of sentiments with the
impartial spectator. However, in terms of merit (or demerit), usually
moral judgement relies upon indirect sympathy (indirect antipathy)
towards the person acted upon, while the gratitude (or resentment) of
the person is morally enhanced if there is direct sympathy with the
motives of the agent. I will return to this point below, but for the pur-
pose of the argument, in this first stage propriety is associated with the
relationship between the impartial spectator and the agent, between a
hypothetical self and the actual self.
In the third part of the TMS, ‘Of the Sense of Duty’, Smith stresses the
importance of the ‘supposed impartial spectator’,11 the inner voice that:
When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour

to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is
evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two
persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different
character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined
into and judged of. The first is the spectator, whose sentiments with
regard to my own conduct I endeavour to enter into, by placing
myself in his situation, and by considering how it would appear to
me, when seen from that particular point of view. The second is the
agent, the person whom I properly call myself, and of whose con-
duct, under the character of a spectator, I was endeavouring to form
some opinion. The first is the judge; the second the person judged of.
(TMS III.i.6, p. 113)
This implies a radical move, as the analysis is now restricted to one-

self,12 and as Vincent Hope has argued, it is Smith’s achievement ‘to
reinstate conscience as the source of virtue’ (1989, p. 83). In particular,
within this part, the third chapter, ‘Of the Influence and Authority of
11
Also called ‘the man within the breast’, ‘the supposed and well-informed spec-
tator’, ‘the great arbiter of our conduct’, ‘the great judge and arbiter of our con-
duct’, ‘demigod within the breast’, ‘the great inmate of the breast’, ‘the judge
within’, ‘the inhabitant of the breast’, ‘the ideal man within the breast’, ‘the
abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct’ and ‘the Vicegerent
of God within us’.
12
I am indebted to Sam Fleischacker who has called my attention to a point
which is worth clarifying. When I refer to ‘one’ self I am not implying that
Smith holds this one-self as a unitary one. This one-self is part of a divided self.
Conscience’, was not in the first edition of the TMS. It was included in
the second edition (1764), but the majority of this chapter consists of
additions made to the sixth and last edition of the TMS (1790). In the
chapter on conscience, the ad intra character of the sense of propriety is
reinforced by the role of the supposed impartial spectator, and by the
virtue of self-command. This feature is clear when Smith argues that
‘[t]he degree of self-approbation with which every man, upon such occa-
sions, surveys his own conduct, is higher or lower, exactly in proportion
to the degree of self-command which is necessary in order to obtain that
self-approbation. Where little self-command is necessary, little self-
approbation is due’ (TMS III.3.26, p. 147). Moreover, Smith stresses its
moral import when he asserts that ‘[t]he love of it [self-approbation], is
the love of virtue’ (TMS III.2.8, p. 117). Not surprisingly, man desires not
only praise but ‘praiseworthiness; or to be that thing which, though it
should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object
of praise’ (TMS III.2.1, p. 114). But so far the analysis, although it has
evolved from three and two selves to one self, continues to be expressed
in terms of moral approbation.
4.3.2 Propriety and moral obligation

The issue is more complex when the nature of Smith’s virtues enters into
the analysis, specifically when the ‘great, awful and respectable’ virtue of
self-command, which relates to the supposed impartial spectator, per-
forms its role. In the beginning of the TMS Smith praises ‘what noble
propriety and grace do we feel in the conduct of those who, in their own
case, exert that recollection and self-command which constitute the dig-
nity of every passion, and which bring it down to what others can enter
into!’ (TMS I.i.5.3, p. 24). In this introductory passage Smith hints at an
important clue: the close relationship between propriety and self-
command. This connection persists throughout the whole TMS, but it is
exalted with the final additions to the last 1790 edition.13 In fact, for the
sixth edition of the TMS Smith added a completely new part entitled
‘Of the Character of Virtue’. It is no coincidence that this entirely new
part concerns virtues. Nor is it by chance that the third section of this
completely new addition is entitled ‘Of Self-Command’, and that it
13
Patricia Werhane argues that Smith added the concept of self-command to the
sixth edition of the TMS (1991, pp. 9, 41 and 100). This is incorrect, as it can
be easily shown that for Smith the concept of self-command was quite clear
since the first edition. However, as I argue in this chapter, for the last edition
Smith did actually develop and emphasise the virtue of self-command.
comprises nearly half of this new sixth part. In my view this represents
a fundamental clue to Smith’s mature moral views, reflecting the impor-
tance he attributes to the virtue of self-command.
In the section concerning virtues, Smith analyses his principal virtues,
that is, prudence, justice, beneficence and self-command. In the conclu-
sion to this section, Smith synthesises his thoughts on the nature of
virtues. Although prudence is recommended to us ‘by our selfish affec-
tions’, and justice and beneficence ‘by our benevolent affections’ (TMS
VI.concl.1, p. 262)14 as self-regarding and other-regarding virtues,
respectively, Smith concludes that:
In our approbation of all those virtues, our sense of their agreeable

effects, of their utility, either to the person who exercises them, or
to some other persons, joins with our sense of their propriety, and
constitutes always a considerable, frequently the greater part of that appro-
bation. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added)
On the contrary, self-command is ‘principally and almost entirely

recommended to us by one; by the sense of propriety, by regard to the
sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator’ (TMS, VI.concl.2, p. 262).
Below is the complete final paragraph of part VI of the TMS:
But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency

with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but a
small part, of that approbation. Those effects might sometimes be
agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and though our approbation
is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether
destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valour may be employed
indifferently in the cause either of justice or injustice; and though it
is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still
14
In the literature on the Smithian virtues benevolence is usually misunder-
stood. The virtue is actually ‘beneficence’, that of ‘doing’ good. Benevolence,
related to volition (‘willing’ good) is the motivation behind beneficence and
justice, as it is clear from the passage just quoted. For example, Bentham
clearly states that ‘ “Benevolence” is a word employed to describe the desire of
exercising the virtue of beneficence’ (1983 [1831], p. 127). And if Hutcheson
clearly saw that benevolence would entail beneficence, Smith is aware that ‘[i]t
has been observed already, that proper benevolence is the most graceful and
agreeable of all affections ... as its tendency is necessarily beneficent’ (TMS
VII.ii.3.4, p. 301), distinguishing benevolence as a motive that tends to the
action of beneficence.
appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and
in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling
quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exer-
tion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to
make and to maintain that exertion. The effects are too often but too
little regarded. (TMS VI.concl.6, p. 264, emphasis added)
The other three Smithian virtues related to merit, that is, prudence, jus-
tice and beneficence, are mainly approved by their consequences. By
contrast, the virtue of self-command is judged by the supposed impartial
spectator, by our moral alter ego, and it is reflected in our sense of pro-
priety. Thus the strict etymological sense of propriety as ad intra, is what
pertains to oneself, regardless of the external outcome. Moral approba-
tion of self-command does not necessarily depend upon the effects, as
‘valour’ employed in the cause of injustice can still appear ‘great and
acceptable’. From a consequentialist point of view, it is easier to see how
we morally approve or disapprove of the virtues of prudence, benefi-
cence and justice, as it is within the framework of the impartial specta-
tor and the agent. But it is not clear how we have to deal with
self-command, as it pertains to the supposed impartial spectator, as an
ad intra virtue within oneself.
In the literature it has customarily been assumed that the sympathetic
process is performed only in terms of moral approbation, as a narrowly
understood teleological means to the process of an end, in which the
moral motivations are a separate issue.15 The virtues of prudence, justice
and beneficence, related to the impartial spectator and judged by the con-
sequences, would fit in this framework. Moral approbation, in terms of
the impartial spectator, allows us to learn from others how to behave, as
there is a continuous social interplay that guides the behaviour of indi-
viduals. But we face a different situation with the virtue of self-command.
It is ‘the strong sense of propriety’ (TMS VI.concl.7, p. 264), in other
words ‘the cause which excites an action’, that determines the moral
judgement of the virtue of self-command. But this cause, as the object of
15
As I have already argued in Chapter 2, when the editors of the TMS, in an
attempt to categorically dismiss Das Adam Smith Problem, state that ‘[s]ympa-
thy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement. The motive to action
is an entirely different matter’ (TMS intr., pp. 21–2, original emphasis), I
believe they were paying mere lip service to Smith, as this sentence has gener-
ated a generalised view of the sympathetic process only in terms of moral
approbation, neglecting the role of the sympathetic process as related to moral
motivation (see Section 2.5).
moral judgement, is approved or disapproved by the supposed impartial

spectator. Now, the crucial question is whether self-command is only a
process of internal deliberation, which is restricted to the self and does
not entail action. The example Smith gives is related to valour, which
corresponds to the cardinal virtue of courage (fortitudo or andreía), defi-
nitely suggesting that self-command is not merely confined to inner
deliberation, but also that it might result in action. But regarding the
cause of action, is it judged in relation to its outcome ex ante or ex post?
It seems to me that as self-command still appears ‘great and respectable’
regardless of its consequences, we do not necessarily require the actual
outcome of the action in order to morally judge it. As we concentrate
upon the cause that excites the action, the supposed impartial spectator
can simply be situated ex ante, focused on the motives prior to action.
Given that the supposed impartial spectator is the judge of self-
command, Smith is granting self-sufficiency to the individual. My point
here is that Smith’s idea of motivation gives autonomy to the individ-
ual, and through the supposed impartial spectator, as members of society
who have learned through experience what is good or bad, we can act
based on what we believe is right. I believe that this deontological posi-
tion, pace Rothschild who declared that Smith ‘is not ... a deontologist’
(2001, p. 336, note 56), is also present in Smith’s TMS.16 Also, I maintain
that there is no ‘tension’ between motivation and effects in Smith’s
moral philosophy, but on the contrary, that they complement each
other.17 The concordance of a benevolent affection with a beneficial
consequence, for example, leads to the most admired combination of
propriety with merit. But propriety, is not only necessary, its absence
may override merit, as:
If in the conduct of the benefactor there appears to have been no pro-

priety, how beneficial soever its effects, it does not seem to demand,
16
Let me briefly explain again what I understand by deontology (cf. note 60,
chapter 2). In the case of Smith, and a fortiori of Kant, as I will argue below,
deontology is agent-relative, which is different from a utilitarian interpreta-
tion of duty towards an end. The former implies duty, but not duty determined
by the consequences, but rather duty motivated within the agent, either by
the supposed impartial spectator or by reason, respectively. The fact that
Bentham’s Deontology is focused towards an end does not mean he did not
consider motives (see infra note 30).
17
Cf. ‘The great tension at the heart of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is indeed
over the morality of intentions and the morality of consequences’ (Rothschild,
2001, p. 124).
or necessarily to require, any proportionable recompense. (TMS

II.i.4.1, p. 73)
Virtuous actions have merit only if they come from proper motives.
Smith insists that ‘[t]o act according to the dictates of prudence, of jus-
tice, and proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is
no temptation to do otherwise ... Self-command is not only itself a great
virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lus-
tre’ (TMS VI.iii.11, p. 241). All other virtues without ‘the great, awful and
respectable’ virtue of self-command appear to be morally inferior.
Therefore, as certain amount of self-command is necessary for all other
virtues to stand out, propriety in general adds moral worth to merit. In
other words, coming back to the analysis of direct and indirect sympathy
abovementioned, in terms of virtues we can conclude that indirect sym-
pathy is morally enhanced by the sense of propriety involved in direct
sympathy. That is why ‘[t]he propriety of a person’s behaviour, depends
not upon its suitableness to any one circumstance of his situation, but to
all the circumstances, which, when we bring his case home to ourselves,
we feel, should naturally call upon his attention’ (TMS V.2.5, p. 202). To
judge the merit (or demerit) of an action, we should take into account
not only the effect upon the person to be considered to indirectly sym-
pathise with his gratitude (or resentment), but also all other circum-
stances, in particular the motives that initially guided the agent to act,
that is, direct sympathy. In brief, merit attained with propriety is, for
Smith, the real object of moral admiration.
In this framework, that is, within the relationship of propriety, self-
command and the supposed impartial spectator, the sense of propriety
transcends its initial stage as simply the necessary ground for the sym-
pathetic process, and acquires a new philosophical dimension. Now the
focus is not only upon the agent who strives, through the faculty of pro-
priety, to attain the sympathy of the impartial spectator, but upon the
person himself, the one self. Direct sympathy represents propriety in its
first stage. The conflation of impartial spectator and agent, resulting
in the supposed impartial spectator, represents not only propriety in its
second stage, but also a subtle transition from moral judgement
to moral obligation. In the first part of the TMS propriety was defined in
relation to the impartial spectator, in terms of an undeveloped notion of
self-command. Yet with the introduction of the supposed impartial
spectator, the sense of propriety, underpinned by the virtue of self-
command, acquires a new moral relevance that transcends moral judge-
ment and implies a sense of duty. The latter is the reason that Smith
delves into the supposed impartial spectator in the third part of the
TMS, entitled ‘Of Duties’. In this part, the sense of propriety acquires a
new dimension with its link to ‘the great, the awful, and respectable’
virtue of self-command and therefore with the supposed impartial
spectator. To corroborate this point, let me briefly elaborate on certain
characteristics of self-command.
4.3.3 The nature of self-command

From the first pages of the TMS, Smith distinguishes the amiable from
the respectable virtues within the framework of the sympathetic process.
The former help the spectator to sympathise with the agent, while the
latter facilitate the agent’s struggle to moderate his emotions (the canon-
ical understanding of propriety developed above in Section 4.3.1). For
Smith, ‘[t]he amiable virtues consist in that degree of sensibility which
surprises by its exquisite and unexpected delicacy and tenderness. The
awful and respectable, in that degree of self-command which astonishes
by its amazing superiority over the most ungovernable passions of
human nature’ (TMS I.i.5.6, p. 25). Once again, however, the role of self-
command as foundational in terms of moral worth is clear:
The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid conde-
scension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one: the
great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-
government, of that command of passions which subjects all the
movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the
propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other.
(TMS I.i.5.1, p. 23)
In this definition, self-command is understood in relation to passions,

to the emotional moderation needed by the agent to attain sympathy
from the impartial spectator, and in general to achieve the ‘control
of passive feelings’ (TMS III.3.21, p. 145). But when the supposed impar-
tial spectator is introduced in the third section, ‘Of Duty’, the moral
worth of self-command is for Smith very much like the unattainable
virtues of the Stoic sage. In the human process to acquire the virtue
of self-command, Smith concludes that a child, after moderating his
passions:
thus enters into the great school of self-command, it studies to be

more and more master of itself, and begins to exercise over its own
feelings a discipline which the practice of the longest life is very

seldom sufficient to bring to complete perfection. (TMS III.3.22, p. 145)
Then continuous references to ‘manly countenance’ and ‘the manhood

of self-command’ (e.g. TMS III.3.34, p. 152), follow Smith’s attempt to
clarify the nature of self-command under the new light shed by the sup-
posed impartial spectator. He concludes that ‘[h]ardships, dangers,
injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the
exercise of this virtue [self-command]’ (TMS III.3.36, p. 153). As it has
been shown in Chapter 3, Smith’s virtue of self-command inherits the
humanist classical tradition of virtù which had been revived during
the Renaissance, and which permeates the development of classical
republicanism up through the Enlightenment (see Pocock, 1975). It
is self-command’s unique nature, embedded by the spirit of the human-
istic tradition, that shapes propriety as an important philosophical
concept.
Smith’s analysis of all ‘those Systems [Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics]
which make Virtue consist in Propriety’ in the final section of the TMS
is rather panegyric.18 The reason is quite simple. Aristotle and Zeno,
with some evident differences, basically sustained Plato’s account of the
four cardinal virtues. In one way or another, they all praise what Smith
defines as self-command. Indeed, for Smith ‘the ancient systems, which
place virtue in propriety, seem chiefly to recommend the great, the
awful, and the respectable virtues, the virtues of self-government and
self-command; fortitude, magnanimity, independence upon fortune,
the contempt of all outward accidents, of pain, poverty, exile, and
death’ (TMS VII.ii.4.1, p. 306). In my view, this is the best definition
Smith gives of self-command, a virtue that reflects the tradition of civic
humanism, fully representing the neglected Socratic virtue of enkráteia
(see Section 3.5.1). On the one hand, self-command is the one virtue
that underpins our sense of propriety, making possible many others.19
18
Especially, perhaps, because he is pleased to declare that ‘[Plato’s] account, it is
evident, coincides in every respect with what we have said above concerning
the propriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.I.11, p. 270) and ‘[Aristotle’s] account of
virtue too corresponds pretty exactly with what has been said above concern-
ing the propriety and impropriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.I.12, p. 271). Smith’s
praise of Stoicism, and Zeno in particular, as is well known, are numerous
throughout the TMS.
19
It is noteworthy that in the conclusion of part VI of the TMS, quoted above,
Smith refers in the plural to ‘the other virtues of self-command’ (TMS
VI.concl.6, p. 264).
On the other hand, ‘the propriety of our own conduct’ for Smith
‘constitutes the real essence of virtue’ (TMS VI.iii.18, p. 244), and there-
fore the virtue of self-command has a very special position in Smith’s
ethical system.20 It is a complex ad intra virtue that contrasts with the
dominant consequentialist nature of the other virtues, although it also
complements them.
Self-command, as the virtue necessary to attain the sense of propriety,
conjoined with the supposed impartial spectator, attains a volitional
character that is reflected by the sense of duty.21 In Smith’s example of
an earthquake in China that killed millions of people, he explains, à la
Hume, the natural reaction that ‘[i]f he was to lose his little finger
to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them,
he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hun-
dred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense mul-
titude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry
misfortune of his own’ (TMS III.3.4, pp. 136–7). However, the ‘propriety
of resigning to the greatest interests of our own’ (TMS III.3.4, p. 137)
rests upon the supposed impartial spectator. It is the sense of propriety,
supported by the virtue of self-command and the supposed impartial
spectator, that corrects ‘the natural misrepresentations of self-love’ (TMS
III.3.4, p. 137). Human beings can overcome the delusions of self-love
through the triad of propriety, the supposed impartial spectator and self-
command, understood within the sympathetic process, which will ‘lead
us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and
proper either to be done or to be avoided’ (TMS III.4.7, p. 159). These
‘general rules of morality’ implicitly prioritise motivation over effects,
and give precedence to propriety over merit. Their formation implies a
revival of morality as internal to the agent, although not isolated from
other agents, as for Smith the individual moral consciousness is the
result of social intercourse. Indeed, Smith’s ethical system is primarily a
social theory of ethics, as the ‘general rules which determine what
20
Self-command is not simply the control of passions. The idea of self-command
is deeper than self-control, as it implies a sense of direction. Self-control has a
coercive character that only relates to the control of passions, but self-
command, although also implying the control of passions, relates to the person
who knows where he or she is going. In brief, it is not only a negative virtue,
but it can also be interpreted as a positive one, as has been argued in Chapter 3.
21
Unsurprisingly, Smith refers to a ‘sense of duty and propriety’ (TMS IV.2.11,
p. 192), ‘duty and propriety’ (TMS VI.iii.19, p. 245), and the ‘sense of propriety
and duty’ (TMS VI.iii.21, p. 246).
actions are, and what are not, the objects of each of those sentiments,
can be formed no other way than by observing what actions actually
and in fact excite them’ (TMS III.4.9, p. 160). But it is the virtue of self-
command that leaves room for an inward process of deliberation that
stresses the role of duty.
Although the shaping of these ‘general rules’ is a consequence of a
social practice, embodied within the sympathetic process, its exercise
is a matter of individual deliberation. Specifically, within the corrup-
tion debate – that material progress entails moral decline – in which
self-love plays a predominant role, Smith is extremely clear when he
states:
Those general rules of conduct, when they have been fixed in our
mind by habitual reflection, are of great use in correcting the misrep-
resentations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be done in
our particular situation. (TMS III.4.12, p. 160, emphasis added)
Self-command, as the virtue that gives lustre to all other virtues, as the
virtue that determines the sense of propriety and that is continuously
supervised by the supposed impartial spectator, implies a sense of duty.
This position is different from a purely consequentialist moral stance. In
fact, Smith’s concept of propriety, understood in its philosophical com-
plexity, implies a return to an emphasis on motives assessed by individ-
ual consciousness, and exercised as moral duties. The latter is clearly
deviating from classical utilitarianism, as for Smith:
That the sense of duty should be the sole principle of our conduct, is
no where the precept of Christianity; but it should be the ruling and
the governing one, as philosophy, and as, indeed, common sense
directs. (TMS III.6.1, p. 171)
Smith concludes his section on duty with the sentence ‘[n]o action can
properly be called virtuous, which is not accompanied with the senti-
ment of self-approbation’ (TMS III.6.13, p. 178). The supposed impartial
spectator is the ‘arbiter of our conduct’, and its role, reflected in the
sense of propriety and exercised through the virtue of self-command,
determines the ‘propriety of our conduct’. In conclusion, propriety, as
ad intra, is the mark of our moral conduct, not only because it will add
moral worth to any action, but also because it is morally valuable in
itself as a motive to action.
4.4 Philosophical implications
Although the concept of sympathy and the impartial spectator had been
used by Hume and Hutcheson,22 what is clearly original to Adam Smith
is the emphasis he places on propriety. I have attempted to show that
when encompassing the supposed impartial spectator and the virtue of
self-command, this philosophical concept acquires a new dimension as
a motive to action. The sense of propriety, strengthened by self-command,
not only complements the beneficial effects of Hutcheson’s reiterated
emphasis on ‘publick usefulness’ (Hutcheson, 1728, p. 294), which also
characterises Hume’s philosophical position, but also has moral worth
in itself, regardless of the effects. It is my intention to show that if
Hutcheson and Hume prepared the ground for Bentham, Smith paved
the road for some of Kant’s ideas on ethics.
The literature on Smith and utilitarianism is divided. For example
Glossop (1976) considers both Hume and Smith as utilitarians, while
Thorstein Veblen affirms that ‘Smith might well be classed as a moder-
ate utilitarian’ (Veblen, 1933 [1899–1900], p. 131) and even John Rawls
considers the TMS specifically as pre-utilitarian (Rawls, 1999 [1971],
p. 20, note 9). Martin (1990) analyses Smith’s criticism of Hume, sug-
gesting that Smith had two fundamental objections in mind. First, that
Hume mistakes the role of reason in morality, and second, that he fails
to make morality essentially social, as Smith certainly did. According to
her, Smith had a good point in the former, but she argues convincingly
that the social nature of morality is also present in Hume. Marie Martin
concludes that Smith and Hume ‘have been interpreted by many as
either utilitarians or precursors of utilitarianism. Although false in both
cases, such readings make more sense applied to Hume than to Smith’
(ibid., p. 119), doing justice to Smith.23 Recently, Emma Rothschild has
22
It has been commonly argued that, even though ‘impartial spectator’ appears
in the first issue of the Spectator, it is a distinctively Smithian concept.
However, Hume, in his second enquiry, uses similar metaphors like ‘judicious
enquirer’, ‘impartial enquirer’, ‘spectator’, ‘indifferent spectators’ and
Hutcheson in his An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and
Affections with Illustrations upon Moral Sense (1728) uses the notion of
‘Spectator’, the idea of an ‘Actor and an Agent’ and ‘Observer’. But Smith’s
strong emphasis on impartiality is definitely his contribution. Fleischacker
(1991, p. 252, note 18) persuasively defends the philosophical originality of
Smith’s impartial spectator.
23
Knud Haakonssen distinguishes between means-utility and ends-utility, argu-
ing that ‘it is clearly misleading to say that Hume’s moral theory in general,
and his theory of justice in particular, is utilitarian’ (1981, p. 41).
correctly argued that Smith rejects Hume’s moral system, as in the

Smithian sympathetic process ‘the convergence of sentiments depends on
judgements about motives, as well as about consequences’ (2001, p. 231).
For Alec Macfie ‘Smith then was not a utilitarian’ (1967, p. 48). T. D.
Campbell states that ‘Smith does assume that utility is the standard by
which to assess the good and bad qualities of a total way of life’ (1975,
p. 76), and labels Smith’s position as ‘contemplative utilitarianism’.24 In
addition, David Raphael argues that ‘Hume is by and large a utilitarian.
Adam Smith is an antiutilitarian, indeed a natural law theorist, but his
natural law is natural law with a difference, a genuinely empiricist natural
law’ (1972–73, p. 88). I believe it is also erroneous to say that Smith is
‘antiutilitarian’; it would be better to simply say that he is not a proto-
utilitarian. Moreover, Raphael’s claim of Smith’s antiutilitarianism rests
upon the wrong ground. It is not in the modern natural laws framework,
the tradition inherited from Grotius and his ablest disciple Pufendorf,
that we find Smith’s disparity with utilitarianism, but in his explicit rebut-
tal of the foundations of classical utilitarianism and in his concept of pro-
priety. Finally Samuel Fleischacker has suggestively argued for Smith’s
‘utilitarianism without utility’ as ‘a clear ancestor of Kant’s purposiveness
without purpose’ (1999, p. 147).
But there is another problem: what is actually utilitarianism, and
more intriguing perhaps, how should we understand the concept of util-
ity within the eighteenth-century context. Regarding the former, I will
assume a classical and general conception of utilitarianism, of a
Benthamite sort, as he is the indisputable father of this philosophical
movement. But there is much debate as to what we should understand
by utility in eighteenth-century parlance. Fred Rosen (2000), in an
attempt to defend Smith’s adherence to a certain type of utilitarianism,
in which utility, when not meaning useful, would lead us to Hume, has
recently called our attention to this issue.25 His contribution, regardless
of whether or not one agrees with the conclusion, is important as it per-
tains to another, more fundamental, question which is at the core of this
book, that is, context. By labelling Smith as a utilitarian, contemplative
utilitarian or any other version of the same, we run the risk of circum-
venting or intentionally skipping the real problem of what Smith actually
24
See also Campbell and Ross (1981) and Campbell (1971, pp. 217–20).
25
Fred Rosen has examined Smith’s concept of utility, defending the thesis that
Smith is using it as a Humean utilitarian. It is noteworthy that in Cicero’s
De Officiis the concept utile can be understood both as a means to an end
(as something useful), or as an end in itself (as beneficial).
meant by utility. I acknowledge that such an enterprise is beyond the

scope of this chapter, but, having made this caveat, I believe that we
would not be falling into the historiographic practice of looking at the past
through the eyes of those who lived after it by attempting to determine
whether Smith’s ideas can be considered a precursor of Bentham’s
utilitarianism.26
Bentham begins The Principles of Morals and Legislation with the sen-
tence ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sover-
eign masters, pain and pleasure’ (1988 [1781], p. 1, original emphasis).
Then Bentham asks the question ‘[t]he interest of the community then
is, what?’. The answer is very simple: ‘the sum of the interests of the sev-
eral members who compose it’ (ibid., p. 3). The ‘classical utilitarian doc-
trine’, as labelled by John Rawls (in Sidgwick, 1981 [1874], p. v), rests
upon the Epicurean dictum of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain as the
natural objects of desire and aversion, and then extends from the indi-
vidual to society. Smith is unusually resolute in discarding the Epicurean
system27 as ‘altogether inconsistent with that which I have been endeav-
ouring to establish’ (TMS VII.ii.2.13, p. 298), and goes further to con-
sider this system as ‘undoubtedly the most imperfect’ (TMS VII.ii.4.5,
p. 307),28 therefore opposing any form of hedonism.
Now focusing upon society, utilitarianism claims in general that what-
ever produces the greatest happiness for the members of society is
morally right. In this broad sense Smith stresses this particular idea of a
summun bonum as the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and
some passages in the TMS definitively have a pre-utilitarian tone.29 If
Smith denies the foundations of utilitarianism, he is not completely
26
Bentham had a very poor opinion of Scottish Enlightenment moral thought,
referring to them, with the exception of Hume, as a whole ‘host of Scotch
sophists’ (1998 [1831], p. 27).
27
As I have already mentioned elsewhere, within the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth century context, Epicureanism had a pejorative sense in moral philos-
ophy, similar to that of a ‘Hobbist’, that was meant to be applied to atheists.
28
It is worth mentioning that up to the fifth edition of the TMS Smith would refer
to the system of Epicurus as ‘the worst of all three’. The change in the sixth edi-
tion from ‘the worst’ to ‘the most imperfect’ is not negligible, in my opinion
(see Section 3.5.2).
29
For example, while dealing with punishment and ‘the general interest of soci-
ety’, Smith asserts that ‘[w]hen the preservation of the individual is inconsis-
tent with the safety of the multitude, nothing can be more just that the many
should be preferred to the one’ (TMS II.ii.3.11, p. 90). Elsewhere he also refers
to ‘the greatest possible quantity of happiness’ (TMS VI.ii.3.2, p. 235), though
the latter is clearly within a Stoic context, referring to the ‘all-wise Being’.
opposed to its beneficial consequentialist nature, as the importance that

he attributes to motives does not necessarily exclude the significance of
effects.30 However, if we take into account the philosophical concept of
propriety, and the emphasis it places on motivation, Smith deviates
from the predominant focus on consequences. Indeed, it is Smith’s
emphasis on propriety that constitutes a radical departure from
Hutcheson’s reiterated accent on the ‘greatest possible Aggregate, or Sum of
Happiness’ (Hutcheson, 1728, p. 219) or ‘the greatest Universal Happiness
of the whole’ (ibid., p. 202). Neither would Smith completely agree with
Hume’s stress ‘that PERSONAL MERIT consists altogether in the posses-
sion of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to
others’ (Hume, 1998 [1751], p. 145, emphasis in the original) in which the
idea of utility ‘is a foundation of the chief part of morals’ (ibid., p. 117).31
In fact, for Smith ‘the sentiment of approbation always involves in it
a sense of propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility’
(TMS IV.2.5, p. 188).32 This simple feature of his moral philosophy com-
pletely invalidates any attempt to describe Adam Smith as a forebear of
utilitarianism. It is propriety, underpinned by the supposed impartial
spectator and the virtue of self-command, which moves Smith away
from classical utilitarianism. For Smith:
In these and in all other cases of this kind, our admiration is not so
much founded upon utility, as upon the unexpected, and on that
account the great, the noble, and exalted propriety of such actions.
(TMS IV.2.11, p. 192, emphasis added)
Propriety has been narrowly understood within the sympathetic frame-

work of moral approbation, or as a visible quality external to the agent,
simply related to good manners, or gentlemanliness, ignoring its particular
nature as a sense internal to the agent. But it is propriety, together with
30
Utilitarianism places the focus on consequences, though Bentham was very
aware of the importance of motivation. In fact, he wrote A Table of the Springs
of Actions (1817), in which motives to action are determined by a desire for
pleasure and an aversion of pain. But Smith would reject the idea of pleasure
and pain as the sole motivational determinants.
31
Not surprisingly, Bentham wrote that when he read Hume’s Treatise he
‘learned to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue’ (quoted in
Darwall, 1995b, p. 60).
32
Cf. ‘we approve of another’s man judgment, not as something useful, but as
right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality ... [t]he idea of the utility of
all qualities of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not what first recom-
mends them to our approbation’ (TMS I.i.4.4, p. 20).
the supposed impartial spectator and the fundamental and unique

virtue of self-command, which illuminates a particular feature of
Smith’s ethics.
In a letter to Kant, his pupil and friend Marcus Herz wrote in 1771: ‘I
have various comments to make about the Englishman Smith who, Herr
Friedländer tells me, is your favorite’ (Kant, 1999, p. 130).33 It is not sur-
prising, in my view, that Smith’s TMS attracted Kant’s attention. If it was
Hume who awoke Kant from his ‘dogmatic slumber’ (Kant, 1997 [1783],
p. 10) in speculative philosophy, perhaps Smith also influenced Kant’s
practical philosophy.
Yet the notion of Smith as a proto-Kantian is not original at all. For
example, August Oncken’s Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant. Der Einklang
und das Wechselverhältniss ihrer Lehren über Sitte, Staat und Wirthschaft
(1877), without any textual evidence on which to rely upon,34 stressed
the role of consciousness in Smith as pre-Kantian, and called attention
to the similarities between some of Smith’s and Kant’s passages. Then
Walther Eckstein’s thorough introduction to his 1926 German transla-
tion of the TMS considers ‘Oncken’s parallel rather forced’ (Fleischacker,
1991, p. 250),35 but provides some textual evidence, pointing out the
letter from Herz just mentioned, and a reference to the impartial specta-
tor in Kant’s Reflexionen (Eckstein, 2000 [1926], p. 23 and note 37; see
also TMS intr., p. 31). But Eckstein leaves open the issue of Smith’s influ-
ence on Kant when he refers to the TMS as ‘a preliminary stage of
the categorical imperative under the concept of “impartial spectator” ’
(ibid., 19), and moreover when he states that ‘Kant’s ethical writings
unquestionably show much in common with Smith’s work’ (ibid., p. 23).36
Recently Samuel Fleischacker, providing additional textual evidence
33
Marcus Herz refers to the German translation that was based on the third edi-
tion of the TMS (1767), as it obviously pre-dates the WN, a work that Kant
knew quite well through the influence of his friend Christian Jacob Krauss (see
section 2.3.1, note 13).
34
The standard German edition of Kant’s works, Kant’s Gessamelte Schriften,
edited by the Royal Prussian (and later German) Academy of Sciences, began
to be published in 1900. Fleischacker (1991, p. 254) also provides this evidence
and argues further that when Walther Eckstein published his German transla-
tion of the TMS in 1926, the nineteenth volume of the Akademie Kant edition
had not been published yet, so Eckstein could not refer to the textual evidence
that Kant had read TMS that is given in some passages of his Reflexionen.
35
Jacob Viner was also rather ironic towards Oncken’s work (cf. Viner, 1927, p. 201).
36
Joseph Cropsey, in a lecture celebrating the WN’s bicentenary, also considers
that ‘some of Smith’s understandings recommended themselves to Kant’
(1976, p. 155).
(1991, pp. 251–2), has attempted to show that Smith was an important
influence on Kant,37 and that, furthermore, we can better understand
Kant’s Groundwork in the light of the TMS. Even more recently,
Haakonssen (1996, pp. 148–53) dedicated an entire section to ‘Kantian
themes in Smith’, adding some possible textual references, and persua-
sively calling our attention to some important similarities between
Kant’s ethics and certain features of Smith’s moral philosophy.38
However, none of these approaches has underlined the character of the
relationship of propriety and self-command in order to find a link
between Smith’s TMS and Kant’s ethical position. Let me elaborate on
this point.
I have already argued that for Smith, moral action is not simply valued
as such by its outcome, but also by the motive for which it was under-
taken. In Kant’s practical philosophy, moral value is determined by the
nature of the agent’s intention. Although the latter is a rather simplified
version of a complex issue, the question must be understood in relation
to the metaphysical problem of freedom, the keystone of practical reason
(and also speculative reason).39 Kant’s solution to the antinomy of free-
dom’s causality, with the distinction between phenomenon (experience)
and noumenon (things in themselves, beyond experience), underpins the
moral law that determines correct behaviour. First he distinguishes max-
ims, which are subjective principles, from imperatives. The latter, which
are objective, can either be hypothetical or categorical. The former are
37
Fleischacker (1991), though he raises some interesting and suggestive points,
provoked an overreaction from Perreijn (1997). Later, Fleischacker (1999),
making use of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, has further developed his views on
Smith and Kant in a very suggestive way.
38
It is interesting to note, that while Fleischacker (1991) claimed that under-
standing Smith will help us to understand Kant’s Groundwork, Knud
Haakonssen believes that ‘[t]he point here is the modest one that Kant’s spo-
radic attention to Smith helps to highlight some peculiarly important aspects
of the latter’s thinking’ (1996, p. 150), thus taking the opposite direction.
39
In Kant’s first Critique the concept of freedom is defined negatively, as an intel-
ligible cause; it is in his second Critique that it appears as positive freedom, as
free will. The famous footnote in the Preface of Kant’s second Critique distin-
guishes freedom as the ratio essendi of the moral law, and the moral law as the
ratio cognoscendi of freedom. The latter implies that we know we are free
because we can act based on moral motives. Freedom then is a factum (a meta-
physical one), as if ‘were there no freedom, the moral law would not be
encountered at all in ourselves’ (Kant, 1996 [1788], p. 140). And as practical
reason and moral experience are pre-assumptions in Kant’s ethical system,
then the moral law is indistinctly related to freedom.
determined by the object of the will (empirical), but the latter prescribe
independently of the object.40 This framework allows Kant to develop
the thesis of the categorical imperative, assuming, therefore, that reason
contains the determining ground of the will. The emergence of a sollen,
as an unconditioned ought to, is the ground of the moral law that pre-
scribes the free will to act morally, regardless the consequences. The pre-
dominant role of obligation in Kantian ethics, is already present in
Smith’s TMS, as has been generally acknowledged. In fact, Smith adds to
the sixth edition of TMS that ‘[t]he most perfect knowledge, if it is not
supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him
to do his duty’ (TMS VI.ii.3.1, p. 237), underlining the role of self-
command and its link to moral obligation.41
Of course Kantian ethics are complex,42 but his simple view that
‘when moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which one
sees, but those inner principles of actions that one does not see’ (Kant,
1996 [1785], pp. 61–2) clearly stresses the importance of motives. For
Kant, morality relies upon the categorical imperative as a command in
itself good, directing what ought to be done. His ‘Fundamental Law of
Pure Practical Reason’, of acting only according to those maxims that
40
In other words, a priori, understood in a Kantian sense as unconditioned and
independent of experience. Not dependent on what Kant understands in his
Groundwork as pathologische, that is, that depends upon senses. It is also worth
mentioning that a maxim (through the test of the categorical imperative) can
actually become a categorical imperative, but that a hypothetical imperative
can never become a categorical imperative. James Otteson argues that TMS’s
meta-argument can be viewed as a hypothetical imperative: if you want x,
then you should do y (2002, pp. 236, 256). I believe this is an appropriate
characterisation, if it takes into account the social context that leads to these
general rules.
41
Moreover, the concept of merit, which is part of the Christian tradition, and
the idea of praiseworthiness, also represent some common features between
Kant and Smith’s moral views.
42
Kant’s moral philosophy is most accessible in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals (1785), while his second critique, Critique of Practical Reason (1788) is
more theoretical. His Metaphysics of Morals (1797) is a difficult work for Kantian
scholars, as it apparently assumes a more teleological view, emphasising the
role of virtues, although it can be argued that it is not inconsistent with his gen-
eral philosophical scheme. Some foundations of his practical philosophy are
also found in his first Critique, but certainly the evolution from his magnum
opus for speculative reason, to the Groundwork, and then to the second Critique,
which attempts to solve all the shortcomings pinpointed by his critics who saw
inner contradiction in his philosophical system, is strenuous and, as I just have
mentioned, not eased by the appearance of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
can be consistently willed as a universal law,43 undoubtedly goes beyond

what Smith would have imagined. This Kantian assumption implies
that morality is founded on human rational will, in which men are not
means, but rational beings that exist as ends by themselves. Here too,
there is great affinity between the role of human dignity in Smith and in
Kant. In that sense, Fleischacker (1999), proposing that Smith has an
egalitarian vision of the world based on an egalitarian conception of
judgement, has substantially deepened and expanded our knowledge
of this and other possible connections. Relying on Kant’s third Critique,
Samuel Fleischacker concludes that ‘a Kantian account of moral experi-
ence leads to the politics of Adam Smith’ (1999, p. 86). Furthermore,
Fleischacker has advanced some of the most striking similarities arguing
that ‘Smith deemphasizes the importance of consequences in evaluating
right action’ (1999, pp. 123–4), as he underlines the role of rational
deliberation acknowledging that for Smith ‘the Head has a substantial
role in ethics’ (ibid., p. 125).
Kant’s famous conclusion to his second Critique expresses admiration
for ‘the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ (Kant,
1996 [1788], p. 269) and regarding the ‘moral within me’, he says that it
begins ‘from my invisible self’ (ibid.). This metaphor of the invisible self
resembles the supposed impartial spectator, the man within who has to
convince the man without to act according to certain moral precepts,
motivating him to act with propriety. In the same way that Kant would
react against any form of utilitarianism, Smith had already grounded a
similar argument in his TMS.44 For Kant, as for Smith, empirical princi-
ples such as utility, are unfit as the ground for morality. The instrumen-
talism inherent in utilitarianism, which considers people as means and
not as ends in themselves, and which maximises the general welfare by
simply aggregating the many, was what Smith would have considered as
the ills of ‘the man of system’.
43
The Fundamental law of pure practical reason of Kant’s second Critique states:
‘So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a
principle in a giving universal principle’ (Kant, 1996 [1788], p. 164). In the
Groundwork there are different formulations that progress in five stages, from
the ‘universal law’ and the ‘law of nature’, through ‘humanity as an end in
itself’, then ‘autonomy’ and finally a ‘kingdom of ends’.
44
‘Smith and Kant dissent sharply from the utilitarianism that dominated eigh-
teenth-century ethical theory’ (Fleischacker, 1999, p. 143). Kant’s distinction
between the autonomy of the will (independent of the object faced by our
will), and heteronomy of choice (in which the object determines the will),
would place utilitarianism in the latter category.
While the extent of the influence of Smith’s TMS on Kant will always
remain uncertain, it is clear that an adequate understanding of Smith’s
triad of propriety, the supposed impartial spectator, and self-command,
allows us to establish other possible links, expanding on what has been
already discussed in this fascinating chapter of the history of ideas.
Finally, I would stress once again that I am not arguing for a ‘Smithian
Kantianism’. This would stretch the argument beyond my point, and it
would seriously undermine the historical stance defended in this book,
falling in the historiographic trap of applying ‘isms’ that are no more than
mental constructions developed in other contexts. The textual evidence
does not provide any conclusive suggestion that the TMS actually influ-
enced Kant, nor that Smith could actually have foreseen Kant. The argu-
ment here is simply that Smith’s philosophical concept of propriety, and
his emphasis on the ‘Sense of Duty’, introducing the supposed impartial
spectator, could plausibly have influenced Kant. Indeed, there are some
evident, fundamental and irrefutable differences. For Kant, reason is the
basis of morality, while for Smith it is sentiments (though not devoid of
deliberative reason). The former would emphasise the a priori character of
the categorical imperative, prior and independent of experience, the lat-
ter the social nature of the moral rules, within the realm of experience. If
Kant had been influenced by Smith’s impartial spectator, it would be pos-
sible to argue that the word ‘rational’ in Kant’s mention of an ‘impartial
rational spectator’ (Kant, 1996 [1785], p. 49),45 in the first paragraph of
the first chapter of his Groundwork, simply reflects their insurmountable
difference. Smith categorically argued that ‘it is altogether absurd and
unintelligible to suppose that the first perception of right and wrong can
be derived from reason’ (TMS VII.iii.2.7, p. 320) as ‘the general maxims of
morality are formed ... from experience and induction’ (TMS VII.ii.2.6,
p. 319). Yet the tension in Smith’s TMS between motivation and effects,
reviving the former, leads me to conclude, in this game of historiographic
precedence, that there are more grounds to consider Smith a proto-
Kantian, than a proto-utilitarian in ethics.
4.5 A reinterpretation of the classical source

of Smith’s ‘propriety’
In this final section, I will speculate about the origins of propriety, not for
the sake of an antiquarian’s pastime, but in order to reinforce my argu-
ment about the importance and sense of propriety, and its relationship
45
Fleischacker (1991, p. 252) develops the same point.
with duty, rebutting the generally accepted view on this point. It is well
known that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Cicero was
widely read. Smith continuously cites Cicero and in his Lectures on
Rhetoric and Belles Lettres he is reported to have said that ‘[t]here is no
character in antiquity with which we are better acquainted than with
that of Cicero’ (LRBL, ii.235, p. 191). Indeed, his Lectures show an inti-
mate knowledge of Cicero’s works.46 In addition, Hume, in his first
Enquiry, reflects the favourable cultural setting when he says that the
‘fame of CICERO flourishes at present’ (Hume, 1993 [1748], p. 3, empha-
sis in the original).47 But among Cicero’s works, his masterpiece De
Officiis was, in particular, extremely popular. It is not insignificant that
Frederick the Great called De Officiis ‘the best work on morals that has
been or can be written’, and that the influential Grotius followed Cicero
by writing his De Iure Belli ac Pacis (1625) also in three books, and also
quoting extensively from Cicero’s De Officiis.
At first sight, as Smith explicitly refers to ‘propriety of decency’, it
would appear that propriety for Smith is very close to Cicero’s concept
of decorum. The latter is Cicero’s attempt to translate prépon,48 a Greek
word that as decorum embodies both an aspect of moral fitness and
external visibility. In seventeenth and eighteenth century discourse it
reflects the character of the ‘English Gentleman’ that not only pertains
to appearances, but also to a sense of proper behaviour.49 Regarding the
latter, as propriety is linked to what is praiseworthy, decorum is also ety-
mologically linked to dignitas.50 Both are ad intra and then ad extra, as
46
In Smith’s library there are three different editions of Cicero’s complete works,
plus a single edition of De Officiis and his Lettres (Mizuta, 1967, p. 81). Seneca,
in contrast, was not especially popular. For example, the influential Lord
Kames, in his Sketches of the History of Man (1778 [1773]), refers to Seneca as ‘a
great corrupter of the Roman taste’ (ibid., 284). In the TMS Smith speaks of
Seneca as ‘that great preacher of insensibility’ (TMS I.iii.I.13, p. 48).
47
In his My Own Life, Hume recalls that during his youth ‘Cicero and Virgil were
the authors which I was secretly devouring’ (Hume, 1987 [1777], p. xxxiii),
and he asserts that ‘Cicero was certainly one of the finest gentlemen of his age’
(ibid., p. 128).
48
‘The Greeks call it prépon; let us call it decorum’ (∏␳␧π␱␯ appellant hoc Graeci, nos
dicamus sane decorum) (Cic.Or, xx.70, see also De Officiis I.xxvii).
49
Gloria Vivenza considers that prépon ‘is always connected with appearance,
and it is something that is projected to the exterior’ (2002, p. 193). But moral
fitness is not necessarily always manifest, nor is it exclusively related to
appearances, as it also entails a sense of doing the right thing per se.
50
The nouns decus and decor (hence decorum), as well as the adjective dignus (dig-
nitas), are all derived from decet, which means, ‘appropriate conduct’.
the process goes from internal moral fitness to external visibility. But if
Cicero is perhaps more concerned with the external nature of decorum,
in terms of appearance as the good manners of a patrician, Smith’s
emphasis, as I have attempted to show above, is with propriety as inter-
nal to the agent. Regardless of the social and political importance of
politeness, gentlemanliness and good manners,51 Smith’s propriety does
not simply mean Shaftesbury’s ‘politeness’, the social conventions of
good manners. It also pertains to a moral aspect that is related to fulfilling
one’s duties.
However, Cicero’s decorum captures a sense of externality accompa-
nied by an inner moral quality, emerging as the natural candidate for
Smith’s propriety. Indeed, of those few Smithian scholars who have
attempted to determine his classical sources and their influence on him,
Athol Fitzgibbons considers that ‘Smith understood propriety in the
sense of Cicero’s decorum’ (1995, p. 58), while according to Vincent
Hope, ‘Cicero’s notion of decorum is not unlike Smith’s idea of propriety’
(1989, p. 107). Recently, Charles Griswold has asserted that ‘[t]he notion
of propriety is a very old one. It seems roughly equivalent to what Cicero
called, in a text Smith certainly knew, decorum, for which the Greek is,
Cicero adds, prépon’ (1999, p. 183).
Another commentator, in her notable contribution to uncovering
Smith’s classical influences, has put forward the thesis that ‘Decorum ...
does not correspond to propriety’ (Vivenza, 2002, p. 194). Stretching the
sense of one particular passage of the TMS, she concludes that Smith
relates propriety to the Aristotelian concept of mesótes (Vivenza, 1984,
pp. 56–9).52 The passage in question reads ‘[t]he propriety of every passion
51
For example, Burrow (1988) stresses the concept of politeness developed by
Whigs like Shaftesbury, Addison and Steele as an important virtue within the
development of Whig political thought. Shaftesbury is another clear example
of the ideal of politeness as has been argued by Klein (1986, 1994). Phillipson
(1987, 1993) also draws some interesting connections between political
thought and politeness, and in relation to Adddison and Steele’s Spectator, he
coins the term ‘Spectatorial propriety’ (1993, p. 309), considering the language
of propriety as an important political concept for the reformation of manners,
and pointing out its neo Ciceronian origins, thereby implicitly linking propri-
ety to decorum.
52
I must make a methodological point regarding Gloria Vivenza’s position. In
brief, I believe that she too readily dismisses the Stoics’ influence, and if she is
prepared to use Diogenes Laertius book 10 when appropriate, it appears as if
she does not consider book 7 to be a reliable source (Vivenza, just before quot-
ing a passage from book 10, states that ‘Diogenes Laertius, an author to whom
Smith himself makes reference and an important source of Epicurean thought’
excited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves, the pitch which the

spectator can go along with, must lie, it is evident, in a certain medioc-
rity’ (TMS I.ii.intro.1, p. 27). In my view, the Aristotelian sense of medi-
ocrity in this passage is merely instrumental, serving only to explain
propriety in its first stage definition, as the process necessary for attain-
ing the concordance of sentiments. Moreover, in Gloria Vivenza’s
Postcript to the very recent English translation of her book (Vivenza,
2002), she insists, rebutting Waszek (1984),53 that ‘Smith’s propriety is,
rather, related to the medietas of Aristotelian origin’ (ibid., p. 191). But
then she writes that ‘Smith ... declares that his propriety bears affinity to
both Aristotle’s ‘habit of mediocrity’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12) and Plato’s ‘state
of mind in which every faculty confines itself within its proper sphere’
(TMS VII.ii.1.11)’ (ibid., p. 192). In fact, the actual quote of Smith refer-
ring to Aristotle states that ‘[v]irtue, according to Aristotle, consists in
the habit of mediocrity according to right reason’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12,
p. 270), and as Vivenza is quite aware, propriety ‘[a]bove all it is not
virtue’ (Vivenza, 2002, p. 192). It is true that at the end of that paragraph
Smith finishes with a rather panegyric sentence to the effect that ‘[i]t is
unnecessary to observe that this account of virtue corresponds too
pretty exactly with what has been said above concerning the propriety
and impropriety of conduct’ (TMS VII.ii.1.12, p. 271). But if propriety
actually corresponds to the golden mean, why does Smith conclude,
(Vivenza, 2002, p. 197), therefore why is Diogenes Laertius not also an important
source of Stoicism?). For example, I believe she is wrong when she tries to
ascribe oikeíosis to Aristotle or to the Peripatetics (see Vivenza, 2002,
pp. 204–6). She is certainly right in saying that Max Pohlenz’s great authority
is important for its connection with the Stoics, though textual evidence had
also made this point clear to previous scholars (and maybe to Smith himself),
but she is wrong when she says that ‘[s]cholars cannot agree either on the ori-
gin of oikeíosis (Peripatetic or Stoic) or on its character’ (ibid., p. 205). The con-
cept and its philosophical conception are clearly Stoic, and there is much
evidence of this not only in Hierocles (especially in his Elements of Ethics and
the passages preserved in Stobaeus), but also, and more significantly, in
Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertius and Galen.
53
It is interesting to note, that a careful scholar like Norbert Waszek also inter-
prets the sense of Smith’s mediocrity simply as that, as the necessary level of
virtue needed in order to gain sympathy, as ‘a “mediocre” conduct is quite suf-
ficient’ (1984, p. 596). Laurence Berns (1994), though he is aware that ‘Smith
was not an Aristotelian’ (ibid., p. 74), attempts to show that Smith ‘could be
thought of as “working together” with Aristotle’ (ibid., p. 75). In his work he
defends the same link between Smith’s passage and Aristotle’s mean (ibid.,
p. 78), but he wrongly, in my view, suggests a connection between Smith’s
sympathy and Aristotle’s philantropia (ibid., pp. 72–4).
with respect to Plato, that the nature of virtue ‘consists, according to

him, in that state of mind in which every faculty confines itself within
its proper sphere without encroaching upon that of any other, and per-
forms its proper office with that precise degree of strength and vigour
which belongs to it. His account, it is evident, coincides in every respect
with what we have said above concerning the propriety of conduct’
(TMS VII.ii.1.12, p. 270, emphasis added)? In what follows I would like
to offer an alternative interpretation that has much to do with the sense
of proper office.54
I believe these interpretations (propriety as decorum or mesótes), are
both possible, in light of Smith’s references to ‘propriety as decency’ and
‘point of propriety’, respectively, (though I see more grounds for defend-
ing the former), but I want to propose a third concept of propriety that
seems to me quite reasonable and superior to these previous accounts.
Given the understanding of propriety put forward in this chapter, as a
fundamental and distinctively Smithian philosophical concept that
relates to one’s duties in society, my position is that Smith’s propriety is
influenced by Cicero’s officium.
Cicero chose the Latin word officium as the nearest equivalent for the
Stoic technical term kathékon, or ‘appropriate action’.55 The Roman
word officium refers to one’s duties in society. It reflects the citizen’s
responsibilities to the res publica, and the father’s obligation towards his
household. In summary it relates to the roles of man within the social
54
The perspicacious reader who remembers the discussions about vir virtutis
discourse in Chapter 3, has probably already noticed that the proper office in
the last quote is related to that ‘precise degree of strength and vigour which
belongs to it’.
55
Cicero, in De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum says ‘ “appropriate act” (for so I ren-
der the Greek kathékon)’ (officium (id enim appello ␬␣␪␩␬␱␯)) (Cic.Fin, III.iv.20,
1997, p. 239). But in his De Officiis, he distinguishes more precisely: ‘between
“mean” duty, so called, and “absolute” duty. Absolute duty we may, I presume,
call “right”, for the Greeks call it ␬␣␶␱␳␪␻␮␣, while the ordinary duty they call
␬␣␪␩␬␱␯. And the meaning of those terms they fix thus: whatever is right they
define as “absolute” duty, but “mean” duty, they say, is duty for the perform-
ance of which an adequate reason may be rendered’ (Cic.Off, I.iii.8, 1997,
p. 11, cf. Cic.Off, III.ii.13–16, pp. 281–3). Norbert Waszek (1984) has duly pin-
pointed this distinction between perfectum officium and commune officium in
order to establish that Smith inherits this Stoic perception of two levels of
morality: proper conduct and perfect virtuous conduct, respectively. However,
commune officium (kathékon), what is appropriate, is the foundation of any
morally right action (katorthoma), in sum, of virtuous action (what Cicero
defines as perfectum officium, cf. Cic.O I.iii.8; on this distinction see also
Stobaeus’s Eclogae 2.85 and Diogenes Laertius VII.108).
domain, implying a sense of responsibility, of literally ‘responding’ from

your own position within your social setting. In this sense it is possible
to argue, in support of my argument, that propriety for Smith involves a
sense of officium, of doing what is right to be done. In fact, Smith explic-
itly links not only propriety to duty (see supra note 21), but also explic-
itly links officium to propriety. For him, the ‘practical morality of the
Stoics’ consists in those ‘imperfect but attainable virtues’ that Smith
defines as ‘proprieties, fitnesses, decent and becoming actions, for
which a plausible or probable reason could be assigned, what Cicero
expresses with the Latin word officia, and what Seneca refers to, more
precisely in my opinion, as convenientia’ (TMS VII.ii.I.42, p. 291).56
Finally, it also noteworthy that this passage is found within a discussion
of the Stoics, as kathékon or officium (or kathékonta – officia) is a funda-
mental concept for their moral philosophy.57 Certainly Smith, a learned
classicist who had mastered Latin and Greek, as well as a keen reader of
the Stoics and Cicero, was well aware of this concept and its relation to
officium. In this sense, in my opinion, to act with propriety looks much
more like Cicero’s officia than Cicero’s decorum or Aristotle’s mesótes.
56
The last part of this passage might seem quite surprising, and even contradic-
tory to what I defend, but is not inimical to my argument. On the contrary, it
reinforces it. The Latin word convenientia, from convenio, is also a Ciceronian
philosophical word that Cicero relates to ‘harmony’ or ‘concordance’. In De
Officiis, it appears as ‘harmony with Nature’ (Cic.Off, I.xxviii.100, 1997, p. 103)
and in De Finibus it directly relates to the Stoics’ idea of living in accordance
with Nature, as Cicero translates the Greek homologia as convenientia (Cic.Fin,
III.vi.21, 1997, p. 239). Seneca in his Epistulae Morales refers to this idea of con-
venientia as agreement: ‘For the underlying principle of virtue is conformity
(convenientia)’ (Sen.EM, lxxiv.30, vol. 2, p. 133). But Seneca’s definition of con-
venientia is not instrumental, but foundational. If we compare Seneca’s state-
ment to Smith’s idea of ‘the propriety of our own conduct, which constitutes
the real essence of virtue’ (TMS VI.iii.18, p. 244), both, propriety and conveni-
entia, are perfectly consistent. Moreover, in a period in which Seneca fell
increasingly out of favour, this confirms Smith’s command of classical writers.
Norbert Waszek, in his excellent investigation showing that Smith was well
aware of the Stoics’ notion of two levels of morality – a common one attain-
able by the majority, and the admirable one reached by those few wise people –
refers to the concept of kathékon as proper conduct, and indistinctly finds that
‘the generally attainable level of propriety, as opposed to the rare cases of per-
fect virtue can also be seen as echoing the special attention which the Roman
Stoics paid to the medium kathekon, convenientia or commune officium’
(1984, p. 605).
57
kathékon is also alternatively translated as a ‘proper function’, referring in
general to living beings, and involving an action that accords with nature
(cf. Long and Sedley, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 365–8).
In summary, while decorum stresses the external role of the agent,

officium underlies virtues in terms of obligations towards society. While
propriety, within the framework of the supposed impartial spectator and
the humanistic virtue of self-command, seems to share some features of
Cicero’s decorum, it has been my aim to prove in this chapter that it is
more likely that it was the concept of officium that shaped Smith’s philo-
sophical concept of propriety. The recurrent idea that ‘[t]here is no
virtue without propriety’ (TMS VII. Ii.1.50, p. 294), is grounded in a
much more pervasive sense of duty. Therefore, the meaning of propriety
as related to officia corresponds to an interpretation that supports my
thesis that there are more grounds for defending a deontological stance
in Smith’s TMS which is in clear apposition to his contemporaries who
were turning towards classical utilitarianism.
4.6 Conclusions
Jacob Viner once remarked that ‘[w]hen Smith revised his Theory of Moral
Sentiments he was elderly and unwell’ (Viner, 1927, p. 217). Although cer-
tainly there are some passages added to the sixth edition in which Smith
misquotes some classical sources, this chapter implicitly argues that the
late additions to the TMS not only reinforce Smith’s original claims, but
also reveal his mature thoughts on moral issues. In particular, the elderly
Smith stresses the nature of virtues and emphasises a more deontological
position in which motivations add moral worth to the consequences.
This emphasis reveals Smith to be a fascinating case in an epoch that was
paving the road to classical utilitarianism. In this setting, his complex
triad of propriety, self-command and supposed impartial spectator (moti-
vation, virtue and conscience), is significant not only for being distinc-
tively Smithian, but also for its philosophical implications.
A proper understanding of what propriety is, underpinned by a dis-
cussion of another interpretation of what Smith might have meant by it
with reference to its classical connections, sheds further light on the
triad – motivation, virtue and conscience – this book attempts to
develop. The sympathetic process, as the pillar of Smith’s moral system,
is enhanced further by the virtue of self-command and the sense of pro-
priety. This trilogy allows us to assess Smith’s broader aim by reading
sympathy not only in terms of moral approbation, but also moral dis-
positions that imply duty as an important component of how to act.
The role of an agent, acting with moral autonomy, and not determined
by a particular felicitatis calculus, places Smith in a methodological posi-
tion that differs from the neoclassical picture of the homo oeconomicus.
Just as the TMS has ironically been overshadowed by the success of

the Wealth of Nations, Smith’s philosophical concept of propriety has
been eclipsed by the beneficial unintended consequences of the invisi-
ble hand. This has resulted in a great loss for economists and philoso-
phers alike. Fortunately, the rapidly growing field of Smithian studies
has revived interest in Smith’s moral philosophy, but in spite of this fact,
the importance of propriety has received little attention. Its deontologi-
cal facet poses a challenge, as the nexus between Smith’s ethics and eco-
nomics presents an inexhaustible source of research. Amartya Sen
complained that ‘the role of ethical considerations in human behaviour,
particularly the use of behaviour norms [in Smith’s writings], have become
relatively neglected’ brilliantly concluding that ‘it is precisely the nar-
rowing of the broad Smithian view of human beings, in modern
economies, that can be seen as one of the major deficiencies of contem-
porary economic theory’ (1987, 28, emphasis added).
The thesis I have defended throughout this chapter certainly has
implications for economics. An understanding of propriety as a funda-
mental philosophical concept that focuses upon the motives that gener-
ate actions, as an internal process of deliberation encompassed by the
role of conscience and the command of one-self, gives pre-eminence to
the individual as an end in itself, not as a means to an end. Classical util-
itarianism would stress the latter in terms of the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Respect for human beings, as diverse and unique indi-
viduals, but always considered as members of society, is a conception
that contrasts with the homo oeconomicus of neoclassical economics, and
is conspicuously absent in modern mainstream economics. A reassess-
ment of the original ethical thought of the father of the science certainly
encourages a sense of propriety for our discipline. One hopes that this
motivation adds ‘lustre’ to the outcome, and it is not the outcome that
determines or simply ignores the motivations.
5
Smith and Newton:
Some Methodological Issues
Concerning General Economic
Equilibrium Theory
5.1 Introduction
There is general consensus that in economics Adam Smith is, in the

words of Jevons, the ‘father of the science’. In this setting it has regularly
been argued that neoclassical and modern mainstream economics carry
through the methodological impetus brought into the discipline by
Smith. Moreover, economists conventionally take it for granted that
Smith applied Newton’s method to political economy. Because Newton’s
method is thought to be similar to that of modern mainstream eco-
nomics, the association of Smith with Newton is taken to further bolster
the claim that modern mainstream economics continues the Smithian
tradition. Support for this commonly accepted view is gathered from
Smith’s panegyric attitude to Newton’s conception of philosophy. This
shared conviction among economists underpins some interpretations of
the ‘invisible hand’ and of the intention behind the controversial chap-
ter 7 of Book I of the WN, baptising Smith as a forerunner, if not the
founder, of theories of general economic equilibrium (e.g. Robbins, 1962
[1932]; Schumpeter, 1994 [1954]; Arrow-Hahn, 1971; Jaffé, 1977;
Hollander, 1973, 1987; Samuelson, 1977, 1992). As an offspring of the
same tradition Walras, the architect of the ‘equilibrium system’, has
been set alongside Newton, the discoverer of the ‘world system’
(Samuelson, 1952, p. 61). In this framework, Newton’s atomistic/mech-
anistic description of the celestial order provides evidence that Smith
initiated the tradition of neoclassical and modern mainstream econom-
ics, having the same underlying ontological preconceptions that are
130
Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues 131
pervasive and fundamental in the development of general economic

equilibrium theory since Walras, whose achievement represents ‘the
peak of neoclassical economic’ (ibid.).
This chapter will argue that this is wrong. In the second half of the eigh-
teenth century, Newton was the intellectual hero, venerated by all the
philosophes, and Smith was certainly no exception. However, whilst
shared admiration does not necessarily imply a common methodology, I
suggest not only that Smith was not a Newtonian in the commonly
received sense, but also that Newton was not either. Specifically, I shall
argue that Smith did not have an atomistic–mechanistic view of the world
in the tradition of neoclassical and later modern mainstream economics,
and that Newton did not simply conform to the axiomatic–deductive
methodology fostered and adopted by ‘mechanical philosophy’.
Mainstream economists have ignored this situation, relying on too nar-
row a reading of Newton. As a consequence, Adam Smith’s rich, complex
and broadly philosophical approach has been overshadowed by a biased
and obsolete positivistic interpretation of the Newtonian method.
It will be helpful to my argument if I start, in Section 5.2 below, by con-
sidering Newton’s method and its impact. The image of Newton as the
father of the ‘Age of Reason’ will be questioned. More emphatically,
it will be argued that this inherited association of Newton with the
axiomatic–deductive tradition is misleading. Newton’s analytic-synthetic
method is broader, and his all-encompassing philosophical project,
including theology and alchemy, reveals that their influence and his
intentions were much more complex. I suggest that the positivistic inter-
pretation of Newton’s method is a product of the French Enlightenment
that paradoxically adopted a mechanical philosophy founded on the
success of his Principia.
In Section 5.3, I examine the nature and viability of the widely held
view of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, that is, the idea that Adam Smith sim-
ply applied a particular mechanistic version of society that presupposed
an atomistic view of human beings. This interpretation will be jetti-
soned; I show that Smith’s methodological position is radically different
from this narrow neoclassical and mainstream misunderstanding of
Newton’s methodology. In arguing my case I shall focus, in particular,
on the popular version of Smith as a precursor of general economic equi-
librium theory. Section 5.4 will contrast Walras’s idealistic position con-
cerning pure economics with what I consider to be the realist Smithian
view. Also, the controversial chapter 7 of Book I of the WN is reassessed
in order to bring to an end the flawed but relatively common view of
Smith as the founder or forebear of general equilibrium theory.
In Section 5.5, I suggest some similarities between Smith’s broad and

interdisciplinary project and some recent developments in methodology
and economics represented by critical realism (see, in particular, Lawson,
1997). Finally, in Section 5.6, I present a brief conclusion underlining the
main issues at stake and their relevance for modern economics.
5.2 Was Newton a Newtonian?
Before questioning whether, or in what sense, Smith is a Newtonian, let

me ask the same question of Newton himself. The argument, in brief, is
that Newton’s contribution can be viewed under two aspects: his
method and his results. These have been confused by neoclassical and
mainstream economists. The former is a combination of analysis and
synthesis, terms I shall expand upon below. His discovery was a system
of mechanics, which under certain conditions – but certain conditions
only, namely those of a closed system – gives rise to event regularities
facilitating the use of mathematics. Neoclassical and modern main-
stream economists, following the tradition of the French Enlightenment
thinkers, have mistakenly interpreted as Newton’s general method one
particular case of his results. They have focused on Newton’s results as
they pertain to a closed system with a production of event regularities,
relying upon a narrow axiomatic–deductive methodology. Noticing the
latter’s conduciveness to methods of mathematical modelling, they
have supposed that reliance upon mathematics represents Newton’s
a priori methodological orientation. This, though, is not correct. His
method was that of analysis and synthesis, and primarily analysis in
search of underlying causes. This is the true method of Newton, and it is
the philosophical conception adopted by Smith. Thus the method
of the modern mainstream is neither Smith’s nor Newton’s, but simply
a procedure used in a particular case of Newton’s highly specific results
that has been erroneously universalised. Let me first elaborate on
Newton’s methodology and its setting.
A characteristic feature of the Enlightenment in general was a confi-
dence in the power of human reason, in which Newton epitomised the
triumph of human intellectual capacity over nature. Alexander Pope’s
intended epitaph for Newton (1730) is a clear reflection of this belief:
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.
However, during the last few decades, the image perpetuated by

the Victorians of Newton as the father of the ‘Age of Reason’, and our
understanding of the nature of Newtonianism, have radically changed.

John Maynard Keynes was quite original in challenging the received
apotheosised image of Newton with his biography ‘Newton, the Man’
(Keynes, 1972). This essay was pathbreaking in anticipating a renewed
interest in the life and character of Newton, and much speculation
regarding certain previously omitted aspects of the same.1 Today,
Stukeley’s devotional account of his hero and friend (Memoirs of Sir Isaac
Newton’s Life, 1752), and Brewster’s classical biography (Memoirs of the
Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 1831), are to be taken
cum grano salis. But regarding the nature of Newtonianism, Keynes, who
in 1936 bought at Sotheby’s 120 lots of Newton’s papers and studied
them, failed to realise the importance of Newton’s manuscripts when he
declared that his ‘secret heresies and scholastic superstitions’ were
‘wholly devoid of scientific value’ (1972, p. 370).2 Although this view
was widely accepted until recently, today the image of Newton as the
father of modern science, thinking ‘on the lines of cold and untinctured
reason’ (ibid., p. 363) is open to question, especially as more research is
carried out on his writings about theology and alchemy. The last
decades have witnessed a rapid growth in the ‘Newtonian industry’.3 It is
clear that Newton not only pursued alchemical studies with great
vigour, but also that his theological quest occupied a great part of his
intellectual energies. If the public Newton was the Cambridge Lucasian
Professor, the Master of the Mint and the President of the Royal Society,
privately he was an Arian, a doctrine unacceptable to orthodox
Anglicans4 and a devout alchemist.
1
For example, Manuel’s iconoclastic Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (1968) offers a
Freudian account of Newton’s life, although sometimes it is overspeculative. In
my view, Westfall’s Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), is still the
best and most objective biography of Newton. Andrade (1954), Hall (1992) and
White (1998) are also worth reading.
2
Keynes even declared that Newton’s manuscripts ‘have, beyond doubt, no sub-
stantial value’ (1972, p. 368, emphasis added). He was mistaken not only in aca-
demic, but also in economic terms: two years ago Cambridge University Library
paid over £6 million for the Macclesfield Collection. However, ironically, in 1888
the University Library returned some of Newton’s manuscripts because they
lacked scientific value.
3
For a perceptive but perhaps outdated review of the ‘Newtonian industry’, see
Westfall (1976). In his A Guide to Newton’s Principia, Cohen provides additional
references (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 293–8). He also announces George
Smith’s recently published Companion to Newton’s ‘Principia’.
4
Arianism denied Trinitarianism, and it was specifically excluded from the
Toleration Act of 1689, which offered religious freedom to all faiths, except
Catholicism and any form of Unitarianism (which included Arianism).
The reception of Newton’s legacy during the eighteenth century was

multifaceted, especially when we discuss what has commonly been
labelled ‘Newtonianism’. It is widely believed that Newton synthesised,
but also transformed, the mathematical rationalism developed by
Descartes with the experimental emphasis in vogue in Great Britain after
Francis Bacon. Although from a general perspective this is accurate, nev-
ertheless ‘Newtonianism’ has many meanings depending on the set-
ting.5 Nowadays, when we refer to Newton’s system we commonly
mean his Principia (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687),
and the Opticks (1704) essentially represents for the layman a piece of
interest only to the historian of science. The former, written in ‘the
mathematical way’, was extremely difficult to understand even for the
educated. In fact, Newton made his Principia strenuous to read expressly
to avoid ‘being baited by Smatterers in Mathematicks’ (quoted in
Westfall, 1980, p. 459).6 But the Opticks, written in English by Newton
rather than Latin,7 was then much more accessible to the general public.
The impact of the Opticks, reaching a wider audience during the eigh-
teenth century, perhaps exceeded that of his magnum opus. If celestial
mechanics was the grand science, the subject of the Opticks was not only
more spectacular, but also inherently speculative.
Although the Opticks presents some important discoveries, it deals
with experiments and hypothesis, not concluding with irrefutable
propositions, like his Principia, but simply stating at the end thirty-one
‘queries’.8 But Newton’s Principia, founded on the three laws of motion,
5
Schofield distinguishes Baconian, Leibnizean, Cartesian and Newtonian
‘Newtonianisms’, and argues that during the eighteenth century ‘it seems clear
that Newton was not a Newtonian in any one of the many versions which can
be identified’ (1978, p. 177). For a challenging and insightful account of these
issues, see Buickerood (1995) and also the essays in Jones (1989).
6
At the beginning of Book III ‘The System of the World’, Newton declares that he
had ‘composed an earlier version of book 3 in popular form, so that it might be
more widely read’ but that in order ‘to avoid lengthy disputations, I have trans-
lated the substance of the earlier version in a mathematical style, so that they
may be read only by those who have first mastered the principles’ (Newton,
1999 [1687], p. 793).
7
The Opticks was published in 1704 a year after the death of Newton’s life-long
rival Hooke (Newton had sworn not to publish it while Hooke was alive). A sec-
ond edition in Latin was published in 1706, followed by a second English edi-
tion in 1717.
8
The first English edition contains, at the end, 16 queries; the Latin edition
increases the number by 7 new queries (numbered 25–31) and the second
English edition adds 8 more queries (numbered 17–24).
establishes the law of universal gravity. Implications for the motion of

many different kinds of observed phenomena are then drawn from it.9
This is the great achievement of Newton’s ‘experimental philosophy’,
which consists in the method of analysis (method of resolution) and
synthesis (method of composition)10 and is defended not only in the
Principia, but also even more vehemently in his Opticks.
In his famous General Scholium, appended to the end of the second
edition of the Principia,11 Newton adds ‘[i]n this experimental philoso-
phy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made gen-
eral by induction’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 943). But probably the best
expression of his analytic-synthetic method is given in the last query of
his Opticks. There Newton clearly states that:
Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in

drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction ... . Synthesis
consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as
Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding
from them. (Newton, 1931 [1704], pp. 404–5)
Analysis allows the philosopher to infer causes from phenomena, and

synthesis to establish a (or some) principle(s) from which we can explain
other phenomena.
It is worth noting that Newton’s method was understood by the
philosophes of the Scottish Enlightenment.12 For example, according to
Maclaurin, a famous Scottish mathematician supported by Newton13
9
The laws of: (1) inertia, (2) force and change in motion and (3) action and reac-
tion, are in Book I. Newton acknowledged his debt to Galileo for the first two laws,
and to Wren, Wallis, Huygens and Mariotte for the third. In Book III he states the
law of universal attraction, and then applies it to the ‘system of the world’.
10
Analysis and synthesis have a Greek origin, and resolution and composition
are their counterparts of Latin origin.
11
Principia’s first edition was published in 1687. The second, edited by Cotes, in
1713, and the third, edited by Pemberton, was published in 1726. The first
complete English translation of Newton’s Principia was made by Andrew
Motte, and published posthumously in 1729. A revised version by Florian
Cajori was published in 1934. Recently Whitman and Cohen’s long awaited
complete translation of Principia, with Cohen’s excellent A Guide to Newton’s
Principia, was published in 1999.
12
For Newton’s early influence in the Scottish Universities, see Cant (1982).
13
Redman calls Maclaurin an ‘associate’ (1997, p. 106) of Newton and Drennon
‘a close friend of Newton’ (1933–34, p. 407). However Rupert Hall says cate-
gorically ‘they never met’ (1992, p. 367).
and author of the popular An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical

Discoveries (1748):14
[Sir Isaac Newton] proposed that, in our enquiries into nature, the
methods of analysis and synthesis should be both employed in a
proper order; that we should begin with phenomena, or effects, and
from them investigate the powers or causes that operate in nature;
that, from particular causes, we should proceed to the more general
ones, till the argument end in the most general: this is the method of
analysis. Being once possest of these causes, we should then descend
in a contrary order; and from them, as established principles, explain
all the phenomena that are their consequences, and prove our expli-
cations: and this is the synthesis ... the method of analysis ought ever
to precede the method of composition, or the synthesis. (Maclaurin,
1750 [1748], p. 9, original emphasis)
This is a lucid expression of Newton’s analytic-synthetic method.

Indeed, the law of universal gravitation, as a ‘power’ or ‘cause’ that oper-
ates in nature, is the cornerstone of Newton’s ‘system of the world’, from
which all other natural phenomena are derived. The philosophers of the
Scottish Enlightenment assimilated this method as one of dissecting
nature into its constituent parts, establishing a (or some) principle(s)
from which phenomena could be explained. The fundamental role of
the method of resolution or analysis was given its priority and prece-
dence.15 Maclaurin is also clearly aware that whereas the Principia:
describes the system of the world ... [Opticks] enquires into the more
hidden parts of nature ... the subject is more nice and difficult ... .
Hence it is what he has delivered in the first (though full capable of
improvement) is more complete and finished in several respects; while
his discoveries of the second sort are more astonishing. (Ibid., pp. 20–2)
14
I choose Maclaurin’s work not only because he was Scottish, and his book was
probably read by Adam Smith, but also as I believe it is the best early explana-
tion of Newton’s method. Pemberton, the editor of the Principia’s third edition,
wrote A view of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1728), but it lacks Maclaurin’s clar-
ity. Voltaire’s The Elements of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1738) is also defi-
cient, as he did not have the necessary mathematical knowledge.
15
As Wightman, the editor of EPS, acknowledges, in particular ‘Smith’s method-
ology would seem to conform to the requirements of the Newtonian method
properly so called in that he used the techniques of analysis and synthesis in
the appropriate order’ (EPS, intr., p. 12).
Certainly the curious nature of the Opticks fascinated the eighteenth

century, but people were also well aware of the Principia’s irrefutable
scientific success.
But regarding the nature of Newton’s methodology, more recently
Kuhn has observed that, although Newton:
has seemed to support the further assertion that scientific research can
and should be confined to the experimental pursuit of mathematical
regularity ... . Careful examination of Newton’s less systematic pub-
lished writings provides no evidence that Newton imposed upon him-
self so drastic a restriction upon scientific imagination. (1958, p. 45)16
Achieving ‘mathematical regularity’ was not Newton’s goal per se, nor a
precondition of his method. It is worth emphasising that at the beginning
of Book III of the Principia, ‘The System of the World’, Newton develops
his Regulae Philosophandi (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 794–6) putting for-
ward four rules for the study of natural philosophy. None of them men-
tions mathematics at all, and the fourth strongly stresses the role of
induction.17 The emphasis on mathematical regularity was a consequence
of his spectacular results that fostered synthesis, rather than of his actual
methodology. The former has overshadowed the latter. The Principia’s suc-
cess in creating a mathematical system of nature has determined a partic-
ular interpretation of Newton’s method, in which the results of his
mathematical natural philosophy encouraged the method of synthesis,
universalising this procedure as the scientific method par excellence.
In a fragment on method that was most likely intended for the
Opticks,18 Newton referred to the method of resolution and composi-
tion, adding that:
he that expects success must resolve before he compounds. For the

explication of Phaenomena are Problems much harder than those in
Mathematicks. (McGuire, 1970, p. 185)
16
Similarly Hall has recently argued that ‘though Newton did not assert
hypotheses as truths, he framed them throughout his life, and indeed made
them known to the world’ (1998, p. 58).
17
Rule IV states that inductions ‘should be considered either exactly or very nearly
true’ until new phenomena may make them ‘either more exact or liable to excep-
tions’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 796, emphasis added). I am indebted to Eric
Schliesser for calling my attention to the significance of these last three words.
18
Unfortunately, Newton suppressed the fragment. According to McGuire, in
this fragment ‘Newton gives a more elaborate account of his methodology
than is found in the later editions of the Opticks’ (1970, p. 179).
This passage is extremely important for my argument. Newton is not

only responding to the dominant ‘mechanical philosophy’, a point that
I elaborate below, but again reveals the fundamental aspect that has been
ignored in the axiomatic–deductive interpretations of Newtonianism,
that is, the priority of analysis or resolution. Furthermore, it carries a les-
son. For one of the greatest mathematicians of all times considered the
task of uncovering natural phenomena more difficult than the synthesis
or composition that necessarily follows.19 Traditionally, the method of
composition has prevailed over the method of resolution in modern
interpretations of Newton, leading to a biased axiomatic–deductive inter-
pretation of his methodology based on the Principia’s success. In my view,
this phenomenon most probably started during the French Enlighten-
ment. The ‘Age of Reason’, relying on Newton’s achievement, privileged
composition, instigating a historical process that increasingly ignored
the central role that resolution played in Newton’s great discoveries. The
attention given to the role of reason, on deducing from already given
principles, in explaining other phenomena, was detrimental to a rounded
understanding of Newton’s actual methodology, ignoring the impor-
tance of creative thought. Undoubtedly imagination and creative power
played a fundamental role in identifying celestial gravity with simple
attraction, and in introducing dynamics into cosmology. But neither can
Newton’s method of analysis simply be reduced, to use the famous leg-
end, to the fall of an apple.
From an ontological perspective, the Opticks presents a dialectical
movement between the experimental-mathematical description of rays
and colours, and the uncertain philosophical nature of light, and the
Principia between the mathematico-deductive description of natural
phenomena, and the uncertain philosophical nature of gravity. Indeed,
universal attraction, although observable in nature, remained a mystery
and a source of controversy for many philosophers. On the Continent it
was objected that Newton’s concept of gravity was a mere ‘hypothesis’
analogous to the invisible causes that fascinated the Schoolmen.20 This
19
Although Newton developed, independently of Leibniz, ‘the calculus of
fluxions’ – differential calculus – and his ‘method of flowing quantities,
or fluents’ – integral calculus – he would refer to his mathematical pursuits as
‘divertissements’.
20
Hypothesis is the Greek word for supposition. According to Koyré, ‘hypothesis’
became for Newton ‘toward the end of his life, one of those curious terms, such
as "heresy", that we never apply to ourselves, but only to others’ (1965, p. 52). His
aversion to the word ‘hypothesis’ definitely began in 1672, when he published
The New Theory of Light and Colours. Hooke considered Newton’s theory only a
allegation, mainly fostered by Leibniz, infuriated Newton, who, loyal to

his Christian but rather unorthodox beliefs, added to the second edition
of the Principia (1713) the famous General Scholium. This begins by insist-
ing that Descartes’s theory of vortices ought to be eliminated. Then
Newton explains that:
This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not
have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and
powerful being ... He rules all things, not as the world soul, but as
the lord of all. (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 940)
Finally, Newton acknowledges that he has ‘not yet assigned a cause to

gravity’ (ibid., p. 943). If the father of modern physics wanted ‘to treat of
God from phenomena’ (ibid.) as part of natural philosophy, he also
needed Him in his rebuttal of Leibniz’s attempt to reduce universal
attraction to a mechanical cause. Newton repeatedly criticised ‘mechan-
ical philosophy’, as he considered that mechanical principles were inad-
equate to explain all phenomena. His intellectual foes, Huygens, Hooke
and Leibniz, followed the mechanical philosophy tradition that had
been fostered by Descartes. For Descartes, as for Galileo, a force should
be caused by a mechanism. Newton’s philosophy could not agree with
the imposition of mechanical necessity, as a cause of force. Gravity,
which is observable but without a known cause, is the paradigmatic
example. In addition aware of the limits of a purely mechanical inter-
pretation of nature, Newton denied that, ontologically, reality could be
treated as a simple machine, complete and self-sufficient in itself.21
hypothesis and Huygens a ‘probable’ one. Newton’s reaction against the insis-
tence upon this accusation is the reason for his General Scholium’s famous dictum
hypothesis non fingo, and not the erroneously popular belief that in general he dis-
missed hypothesis (a belief that would certainly contradict his Opticks). Recently
Hall, who earlier had declared that Newton was not an alchemist, has argued that
‘though Newton did not assert hypothesis as truths, he framed them throughout
his life’ (Hall, 1998, p. 58). Although the famous phrase has been usually given
as ‘I frame no hypothesis’, following Motte’s 1729 translation, it should be
better translated as ‘I feign no hypothesis’ (Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 943), as has
been convincingly argued by Koyré (1965, p. 35), because feign implies false-
hood. On this, see also Cohen’s A Guide to Newton’s Principia (Newton, 1999
[1687], pp. 275–6).
21
In a letter dated 1715, Leibniz complained that ‘[a]ccording to their
[Newtonians’] Doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his Watch from Time
to Time’ (Clarke, 1717, p. 5), reflecting the idea of a complete and self-
sufficient world. It is important to point out that when Newton argued that
Mechanical laws do not explain all phenomena of reality. As Drennon

put it, for Newton ultimately:
the universe, in its true essence, is not a mechanism, for mechanical laws
cannot account for its origin and sustained existence. (1933–34, p. 405)
Newton was a realist in his search for explanatory phenomena. Although

he might appear to be suggesting a theological explanation for the cause
of gravity, he clearly asserts that in explaining the motions of the heav-
enly bodies ‘it is enough that gravity really exists’ (Newton, 1999 [1687],
p. 943). In fact, Koyré brilliantly argued that Newton found a new meta-
physical approach to nature in which the classic cosmos disappears, giving
birth to ‘an open, indefinite, and even infinite universe’ (1965, p. 7).
Indeed, Newton, the father of the universal law of gravitation, was even
open to the possibility ‘that there may be more attractive Powers’
(Newton, 1931 [1704], p. 376). Before his death he is reported to have said:
I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me. (Quoted in Westfall, 1980, p. 863)
Newton believed in truth; he very successfully uncovered part of it, but

he was aware that much more underlay the realm of actuality.22 He
believed in an all-encompassing natural philosophy; his theological and
alchemical interests were not simple leisure pursuits, but part of his
scheme of thought.23 His project even suggests a general micro–macro
move between his Opticks and the Principia, founded on the intuition
the cause of gravity could not be mechanical, he is implying that gravity

cannot be simply attributable to or determined by mechanical cause, that is,
matter and motion, which is at the core of Descartes’s theory of vortices. Koyré
points out: ‘As for the “mechanical” hypothesis, that is, those of Descartes,
Huygens and Leibniz, they have no place in experimental philosophy [Newtonian
method] simply because they attempt to do something that cannot be done’
(1957, p. 230, original emphasis).
22
In the suppressed introduction to the Opticks Newton asserts that ‘[t]o explain all
nature is too difficult a task for any one man or any one age. Tis much better to
do a little with certainty and to leave the rest for others that come after you then
to explain all things without making sure of anything' (McGuire, 1970, p. 183).
23
On alchemy’s importance to Newton’s system, Dobbs left us her wonderful The
Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (1975) and then Janus Faces of Genius: The Role
that ‘if Nature be most simple & fully consonant to herself she observes
the same method in regulating the motions of smaller bodies which she
doth in regulating those of the greater’ (quoted in Westfall, 1980, p. 521).
In fact, modern interpretations of Newtonianism mostly rely upon the
Principia’s stunning results, confining the complexity of his methodolog-
ical orientation to mathematical modelling, ignoring the importance of
analysis in seeking for underlying causes. A purely materialistic or mech-
anistic natural philosophy was utterly impossible for Newton. In particu-
lar, the Cartesio–Leibnizian reduction of natural phenomena to a pure,
self-sustaining and self-perpetuating mechanism was against Newton’s
philosophy, but ironically became the landmark of ‘Newtonianism’. As
Koyré pointed out, one consequence of the Newton–Leibniz debate
(especially through Clarke’s famous polemic with Leibniz between 1715
and 1716),24 was that:
The force of attraction which, for Newton, was a proof of the insuffi-
ciency of pure mechanism, a demonstration of the existence of
higher, non-mechanical powers, the manifestation of God’s presence
and action in the world, ceased to play this role, and became a purely
natural force, a property of matter, that enriched mechanism instead
of supplanting it. (Koyré, 1957, p. 274)
When we turn to the study of social phenomena, there is one passage of

Newton’s Opticks that perhaps adumbrated an ambitious Enlightenment
of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (1991); see also Figala (1977, 1992 [1984]).
McGuire and Rattansi, based on the ‘classical’ Scholia, give a fascinating analy-
sis of the influence of prisca sapientia in Newton (see also White, 1998), con-
cluding that ‘the heart of Newton’s philosophy of nature, the world of forces
and active principles, lay categorically beyond the systems of the Opticks and
the Principia’ (McGuire and Rattansi, 1995 [1966], p. 108). Nowadays there is
no doubt that alchemy, theology (for references see Verlet (1996, p. 337, note
20)) and the traditions of ancient sages and philosophers, played a role shap-
ing Newton’s conception of natural philosophy. However, the extent of its
influence is still a matter of debate. In A Guide to Newton’s Principia, Cohen pro-
vides an excellent account of this issue (Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 56–64),
arguing that certain concepts of Newton’s natural philosophy are closely inter-
twined with his general concerns in alchemy, ancient wisdom and theology.
24
Samuel Clarke, an intimate friend of Newton, represented the philosophical
views of his master replying to Leibniz’s famous five letters in a polemic that
finished with the latter’s death, in 1716. Clarke published Leibniz’s letters and
his replies in 1717 as A Collection of Papers which passed between the learned late
Mr. Leibniz and Dr. Clarke, in the years 1715 and 1716. Relating to the Principles of
Natural Philosophy and Religion.
undertaking. In query 31, the final paragraph of the Opticks, Newton

remarked:
And if natural Philosophy in all its Parts, by pursuing this Method,

shall at length be perfected, the Bounds of Moral Philosophy will be
also enlarged. (Newton, 1931 [1704], p. 405)
This suggestion was taken seriously at the time. The belief that Newton’s
‘experimental philosophy’ could be applied to social phenomena was
commonplace amongst the eighteenth-century intelligentsia, initiating a
longstanding intellectual tradition (see Myers, 1983). The idea of a uni-
versal order that could be explained from the simple principle of gravi-
tation was a discovery that fascinated the minds of the period. As
Newton had discovered the laws governing natural phenomena, it was
the task of moral philosophers to unveil the social realm. Therefore the
methodological move from the celestial bodies to human society, based
on what has been labelled the ‘principle of design’, could not wait any
longer. Hume’s project to develop a ‘science of human nature’, or the
‘science of man’, was a clear example of this pursuit.25 With no barriers
between the different branches of knowledge, the problem was not
whether the Newtonian method could be transferred to the social realm,
but how this new generation of ‘social scientists’ would attain this goal.
The overwhelming success of Newtonian natural philosophy made it
practically inevitable that the social sciences would try to conform to an
empirico-deductive pseudo-Newtonian pattern. But it was the spectacu-
lar nature of Newton’s results that dominated this process, not the
method used in achieving those results. This focus on results rather than
on method is mainly a consequence of the paradoxical fact that the intel-
lectuals of the French Enlightenment retained the Cartesio–Leibnizian
precepts of ‘mechanical philosophy’, but underpinned by Newton’s suc-
cessful discoveries. It was Condorcet, a friend and close collaborator of
the Physiocrat Turgot, who later formulated his project of mathématique
sociale. It was Laplace who answered, when asked by Napoleon about the
place of God in his cosmological system, ‘I do not need that hypothesis’.
25
In the Introduction to his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume refers explicitly to
the ‘application of experimental philosophy to moral subjects’ (Hume 2000
[1739–40], p. 4) and in his An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume
compares his attempt to ‘Newton’s chief rule of philosophizing’ (Hume 1998
[1751], p. 98), certainly referring to Newton’s four rules, in the beginning of
Book III of Principia (cf. Newton, 1999 [1687], pp. 794–6).
In political economy, the Physiocrats followed this pseudo-Newtonian

tradition, which was later adopted and adapted by Walras and played an
important part in the subsequent development of general economic
equilibrium theory.
The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Smith in particular,
are different in the respect that their project was supported by an unmis-
takably distinctive philosophical approach (see Dow, 1987).26 Certainly,
the views shared by Montesquieu, Diderot, d’Alembert, Helvétius,
Condorcet and d’Holbach were different from those shared by their
Scottish counterparts such as Smith, Hume and Ferguson, although
there are clear mutual influences. The role of ‘natural history’ as an
account of progress from the ‘early and rude state’ to ‘polished society’
is fundamental for the Scottish philosophers. Smith’s four stages theory
is a way to understand the successive steps from the hunting stage, pas-
toral life and agriculture towards commercial society. This was the objec-
tive of natural history, and no wonder why the Scots were fascinated
with the American natives. Yet the general search for first principles was
encompassed within a larger project: the spring of social science.
I have already questioned the widely accepted positivistic version of
Newton that has been taken for granted by the main proponents of the
marginal revolution and by mainstream economists alike.27 To put it
26
I believe that the character of the Scottish Enlightenment emerged from a
unique and challenging atmosphere. After the parliaments of Scotland and
England passed the Act of Union in 1707, for various reasons a provincial feel-
ing among the Scottish intellectual community sprang up. A kind of ‘keeping
up with the English’ feeling spread. This influenced the quality of their educa-
tion. In addition, if the Scots would refer to the British after the Union, the
English would still distinguish between them and the Scottish. Smith’s protests
that in Oxford ‘the great part of the publick professors have, for these many
years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching’ (WN V.i.f.8, p. 761) is
not only a consequence of personal bitterness, but also reflects a well founded
belief. Smith’s point against Oxbridge was that ‘[t]he great fault which I find
with Oxford and Cambridge, is that Boys sent tither instead of being Governed,
become Governors of the Colleges, and that Birth and Fortune there are more
respected than Literary Merit’ (Corr., p. 37). Smith’s opinion that the Scottish
Universities were ‘the best seminaries of learning that are to be found anywhere
in Europe’ (Corr., p. 173) was generally accepted. They had an outstanding rep-
utation in Europe.
27
Cohen states categorically that ‘Newton was not a positivist’ (Newton, 1999
[1687], p. 279), arguing that Ernst Mach’s influential The Science of Mechanics;
A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development had set out a biased inter-
pretation of Newton (cf. Newton, 1999 [1687], p. 277). Mach considered that
‘[a]ll that has been accomplished in mechanics ... has been a deductive, formal,
mildly, Newton was neither sympathetic to the mechanistic view of the

world, nor did he unconditionally endorse an axiomatic–deductive
approach to reality. Rather, his central method was primarily oriented to
uncovering causes, not to tracing the consequences of event regularities
given initial conditions. Now it is time to turn our attention to Adam
Smith, the ‘father of our science’.
5.3 Smithian Newtonianism
5.3.1 Some common views of Newton’s influence

Between 1752 and the beginning of 1764 Adam Smith was Professor of
moral philosophy at Glasgow University. His lectures on this subject, as
reported by his student and friend John Millar, basically comprised the-
ology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy or ‘expediency’ (EPS,
pp. 274–5). This classification reveals the humanistic character of his
project and reminds us of the noble origins of the discipline of econom-
ics.28 Indeed, an important feature of the Scottish Enlightenment in par-
ticular, and of the Enlightenment in general, was that the intellectual
atmosphere was intensely multidisciplinary.29 The classical breakdown
of philosophy into logic, moral philosophy and natural philosophy was
still applied, but only meant that Scottish men of letters were simply
philo-sophes in its wide etymological sense. Certainly ‘[t]he highest
and mathematical development on the basis of Newton’s laws’ (Mach, 1960

[1893], p. 226; note that, if we replace ‘mechanics’ by ‘economics’, this has a
curious relationship to the current state of our discipline; see also his interest-
ing section ‘The economy of sciences’, ibid., pp. 577–95). Incidentally, the
mathematician Karl Menger, son of Carl Menger, wrote the introduction to the
sixth American edition, and it was in his famous colloquium that Wald and
von Neumann presented in 1934 and 1937, respectively, important papers for
the development of general economic equilibrium theory (see Weintraub,
1983, pp. 5–15).
28
It was Marshall who, before retiring in 1908, finally won the battle to establish
economics as an independent subject of study. But the ‘moral philosophy tra-
dition’ of economics remained in Cambridge, with Keynes writing to Harrod
in 1938 ‘I want to emphasise strongly the point about economics being a
moral science’ (1973, p. 300).
29
This feature of the Enlightenment, and the role of reason, is evident when
Kant, in his An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, replies with
Horace’s motto ‘Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own under-
standing! Is thus the motto of enlightenment’ (Kant, 1996 [1784], p. 17,
emphasis in the original). Sapere aude literally means ‘dare to be wise’ or ‘dare
to learn’.
compliment a Scottish scholar could receive was that he commanded a

knowledge of wide-ranging subjects’ (Redman, 1993, p. 221; 1997,
p. 110). Knowledge, without bounds, was part of a systematic inquiry to
discover some simple philosophical principles governing all kinds of
phenomena. It is therefore not surprising that Smith wrote about meta-
physics, natural history, ethics, political economy, astronomy, rhetoric,
jurisprudence,30 had a perfect command of Greek and Latin and was also
interested in mathematics and physics.
It has become almost commonplace to label Smith as Newtonian, a
‘system-builder’ (Skinner, 1976) who not only found inspiration in the
father of modern physics, but also relied heavily on his method. In the
general introduction to the WN’s Glasgow edition, the editors consider
that ‘Smith sought to explain complex problems in terms of a small
number of basic principles, and each conforms to the requirements of the
Newtonian method in the broad sense of the term’ (WN, intr., p. 4).
Skinner also believes that Smith’s economics ‘was originally conceived in
the image of Newtonian physics’ (1979, p. 110). For Mark Blaug, the piv-
otal role of sympathy in TMS and that of self-interest in the WN ‘must be
regarded as deliberate attempts by Smith to apply this Newtonian method
first to ethics and then to economics’ (1992 [1980], p. 52).31 Few scholars,
to my knowledge, have assumed a different position.32 But the problem is
not whether Smith was or not a Newtonian, but what the actual nature of
‘Smithian Newtonianism’ is. We have already seen that the epithet
‘Newtonian’ raises complex issues, and I have demonstrated that the pos-
itivistic interpretation of Newtonianism is not only biased, but also
flawed. In this section we shall see that the answer to the question ‘How
did Newton actually influence Smith?’ is also not straightforward.
In particular, there is a widespread view that:
Adam Smith took Newton’s conception of nature as a law-bound sys-

tem of matter in motion as his model when he represented society as
30
Before his death, Smith ordered his executors to burn 16 folios that presum-
ably contained part of his ambitious project of a treatise on jurisprudence.
31
Soon after, Blaug adds that Smith ‘had a naïve view of what constituted
Newton’s method’ (1992 [1980], p. 53), which is very disputable. I would
rather agree with Cohen, who thinks that ‘Smith was well educated in
Newtonian science’ (1994, p. 66).
32
Phyllis Deane cautiously declares ‘[h]ow far Smith did apply a Newtonian sci-
entific method to his inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of
nations is debatable’ (1989, p. 61), and Deborah Redman, whose work has
been very influential for this chapter, regardless of some points of disagreement,
a collection of individuals pursuing their self-interest in an economic

order governed by the laws of supply and demand. (Hetherington,
1983, p. 498)
And also that Smith’s methodology ‘presupposed the view that society is
a compound of independent individuals, i.e. an aggregate of Robinson
Crusoes’ (Freudenthal, 1981, p. 135). Moreover, Smith has come to be
known as a precursor of Walrasian general equilibrium theory, because:
both authors [Smith and Walras] looked to Newtonian celestial mechan-

ics as a model for their vision of social science. (Jaffé, 1977, p. 19)
I shall refute this mechanistic and atomistic view that, for Smith, indi-
viduals are no more than self-interested atoms that interact in society.33
And I shall question the interpretation of Smith as a forerunner of gen-
eral equilibrium theory.34 But before I do so, it is useful to analyse some
clues Smith gives about his methodological position.
5.3.2 Smith’s methodological stance and

some misinterpretations
Smith not only refers to ‘the great work of Sir Isaac Newton’ (TMS,
III.2.2, p. 124), but also acknowledges numerous times his admiration
for Newton’s philosophy.35 He is reported to have lectured that ‘the
Newtonian method is undoubtedly the most Philosophical, and in every
science whether of Moralls or Naturall philosophy’ (LRBL, p. 146), restating
argues that ‘persisting today in labeling Smith’s method Newtonian would be

deceptive’ (1993, p. 225).
33
The literature on the generalised view that self-interest is the foundation of
Smith’s economics is enormous, but I think the quotation that best reflects my
point here is Stigler’s comment that the WN is ‘a stupendous palace erected
upon the granite of self-interest’ (Stigler, 1982, p. 136). Also interesting is
Stigler’s claim, at the bicentenary conference of the publication of the WN,
that ‘Adam Smith is alive and well living in Chicago’ (Skinner, 1988, p. 2),
though it must be acknowledged that during 2001–02 five PhD Dissertations
related to Smith were submitted at the University of Chicago.
34
Winch convincingly argues against those who still want to view Smith as a
precursor of general equilibrium theory, but he believes that ‘[w]hat Smith
praised as "Newtonian method" fits his own work as well as that of general
equilibrium theorists’ (1997, p. 399).
35
For example: ‘[t]he superior genius and sagacity of Sir Isaac Newton, therefore,
made the most happy, and, we may now say, the greatest and most admirable
improvement that was ever made in philosophy’ (EPS, p. 98).
Newton’s suggestion of his method of natural philosophy as being

adequate to moral philosophy.
Although the view that natural philosophy constituted a model for
the development of moral philosophy was widely accepted, in my
opinion Adam Smith did not unconditionally support it. In fact, he was
aware that the complexity of human phenomena, of which political
economy was a part, could not be simply reduced to a mechanistic ana-
logue of the natural realm. For Smith, human affairs cannot be reduced
to a mathematical-deductive method in order to emulate Newton’s
success in his Principia. Smith did not view man as an isolated atom but,
following the ‘civic humanistic tradition’ (Pocock, 1975, 1983, 1985), as
a zôon politikón. In my view, he has too readily been assimilated to the
natural jurisprudential tradition, neglecting the evidence that he is
thinking within a more ‘humanist’ tradition (see Chapter 3). The latter
implies a broader view of human beings as members of society, as
human beings situated in an economic/societal position.36 For example,
his reaction against the ‘man of system’ constitutes clear evidence of his
view of human beings as members of society, and not as isolated atoms.
Using the metaphor of individuals as pieces upon a chess-board, the
‘man of system’ who intends to control individuals as mere pieces for-
gets that ‘in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece
has a principle of motion of its own’ (TMS, VI.ii.2.17, p. 234). But this
movement is not uniform, neither it is the result of homogeneous human
natures. It is the member of society moving autonomously, as an internally
structured and complex human being who lives in an open and changing
society. That is why no one can control human affairs. In corroboration of
this point, Smith is continuously aware of the ineluctable ‘unintended
consequences’ that are pervasive in reality. Therefore, to restrict Adam
Smith to a mechanistic-empiricist-positivist view of human beings is to
ignore his humanistic legacy.
Another example of the social nature of human beings is when, refer-
ring to the fundamental role of the impartial spectator, Smith imagines
an isolated man:
Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in

some solitary place, without any communication with his own
36
Lawson has underlined the nature of social conflict in Smith’s WN as proof of
his non-atomistic view of human beings (1994, pp. 528–33). On Smith and dif-
ferent aspects of civic humanism, as it is clear in chapter 3, I am indebted to
some influential essays in Hont and Ignatieff (1983) and to Winch (1978,
1996, 2002) who, although cautious and even critical at times, is influenced by
this historical approach.
species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety

or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or defor-
mity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own
face. All these objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he
does not look at, and with regard to which he is provided with no
mirror which can present them to his view. Bring him into society,
and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted
before. (TMS III.I.3, p. 110)
This passage constitutes clear proof of the social nature of human beings
that underlies Smith’s system.
In his early essay ‘The Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical
Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of Astronomy’ – ‘the pearl of the col-
lection’, according to Schumpeter (1994 [1954], p. 182) – Smith hints at his
methodological position.37 Before investigating the different stages of
astronomical discoveries, he explains how psychological principles direct
scientific endeavour. Surprise (‘what is unexpected’), wonder (‘what is new
and singular’) and admiration (‘what is great and beautiful’) correspond to
the different and successive mental stages of our ‘philosophical enquiries’.
Surprise is ‘[t]he violent and sudden change produced upon the mind,
when an emotion of any kind is brought suddenly upon it’ (EPS, p. 35).
Wonder is ‘that uncertainty and anxious curiosity excited by its singular
appearance, and by its dissimilitude with all the objects he had hitherto
observed’ (EPS, p. 40). The sentiment of surprise exalts the novelty of won-
der, ‘the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy’
(EPS, p. 51). Finally, admiration is attained with the discovery of ‘the real
chains which Nature makes use of to bind together her several operations’
(EPS, p. 105). Curiosity, intellectual dissatisfaction and scientific success
that will soothe the mind, represent these three states of the mind.
The philosophical move underlying Smith’s methodology is that these
‘sentiments’ (surprise, wonder and admiration) must lead to uncovering
the ‘nature and causes’ of natural and social phenomena. Therefore
this particular psychological development of science entails not only
an aesthetic view, but also a methodological position that must not be
37
I use ‘hinting at’ advisedly as this essay was written before 1758 (see EPS,
p. 103), and perhaps much earlier, while Smith was studying in Oxford.
However, this does not mean that the History of Astronomy represents simply a
juvenile work. Its importance is evident, as Smith did not include it amongst
those essays that were burned just before his death. Moreover, it seems that he
cared about this piece, because in 1773, when Smith was ill, and Hume was his
literary executor, Smith mentions this essay as publishable (see Corr., p. 168).
exclusively constructed by looking to reason (Descartes), and certainly

not to hidden causes (Scholastics), but by surveying reality in its broad
realm. Experience, induction and also introspection play a relevant role
in this process. Smith defines philosophy recurrently ‘as the science of
the connecting principles of nature’ that ‘endeavours to introduce order
into the chaos of jarring and discordant appearances’ (EPS, pp. 45–6,
emphasis added). Moreover, its aim is to ‘lay open the concealed connec-
tions that unite the various appearances of nature’ (EPS, p. 51, emphasis
added). Smith’s philosophy, following Newton, gives priority to the
method of resolution, that is, to uncovering the real structures underly-
ing phenomena, as the task of the philosopher is finally to reveal these
’concealed connections’.
One particular feature of Newton’s natural philosophy, completely
different from Smith’s moral philosophy, is that the Principia, and to a
lesser extent the Opticks, are highly mathematical. In the Preface to the
Principia’s first edition, Newton declared ‘it has seemed best in this trea-
tise to concentrate on mathematics as it relates to natural philosophy’
(Newton, 1999 [1686], p. 381), and certainly he went very far in this
relation.38 However, Smith is very cautious, and rather sceptical about
the use of mathematics in moral philosophy. He explicitly declares, ‘the
utility of those sciences [the higher parts of mathematics], either to the
individual or the public, is not very obvious’ (TMS, IV.2.7, p. 189). In a
letter regarding Webster’s compilation of Scottish population figures for
a pension scheme, Smith declares:
You know that I have little faith in Political Arithmetic and this story
does not contribute to mend my opinion of it. (Corr., p. 288)
Again, Smith declares in his WN: ‘I have no great faith in political arith-
metic’ (WN, IV.v.b.30, p. 534). His method in economics (and a fortiori
in ethics),39 with the exception of some simple arithmetical operations
such as averages, is not mathematical at all.
38
Cohen (1980) argues that the uniqueness of Newton’s revolution was the
creation of a ‘mathematical’ system of nature. He labels the ‘Newtonian style’
as an unmatched stage of scientific progress, as Newton applied geometry,
algebra, fluxions, limit procedures and infinite series to natural phenomena.
In his A Guide to Newton’s Principia, he summarises this position (Newton, 1999
[1687], pp. 148–55).
39
For example, ‘the never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson’ (Corr., p. 309) would
occasionally resort to ‘applying mathematical calculation to moral subjects’
(Hutcheson, 1726 [1725], p. 194). See especially An Inquiry into the Original of our
Jevons’s attempt to treat economics as a ‘Calculus of Pleasure and Pain’

that ‘must be mathematical science in matter if not in language’ (Jevons,
1965 [1871], p. vii) is an important feature of the so-called marginal rev-
olution that has been exceedingly influential in modern mainstream
economics. Smith, in contrast to the general emphasis on mathematics
that characterises neoclassical economics, which has been taken even
further by modern mainstream economics, was sceptical about the use
of mathematics in the social sciences.40 But for Jevons, even Adam
Smith ‘the father of the science, as he is often considered ... is thor-
oughly mathematical’ (ibid., p. xxii). Indeed, celebrating the centennial
of the publication of the WN, Jevons emphasised that:
a hundred years ago it was very wise of Adam Smith to attempt no sub-
division, but to expound his mathematical theory (for I hold that his
reasoning was really mathematical in nature) in conjunction with con-
crete applications and historical illustrations. (Jevons, 1905, pp. 200–1)
It seems no mere coincidence that almost a century later, for the WN’s
bicentenary, Samuelson briefly endeavours a vindication of Smith, but
this time ‘to raise his stature as an economic theorist’ (Samuelson, 1977,
p. 42). Apparently his well-known dictum, ‘equations are sentences,
pure and simple’ (Samuelson, 1952, p. 59), not only establishes a neces-
sary relation between mathematics and language, but also a sufficient
one, as Samuelson states that:
Smithian functions, never before written down explicitly in quite this

way, are concave and first-degree-homogeneous. (Ibid., p. 48)
Adam Smith must be looking forward to the year 2076!

These misinterpretations have fostered the generally accepted view of
a peculiar ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, not only restricting Newton’s
method to just its mathematical and deductivist parts, but also confining
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1726 [1725], pp. 182–90) and An Essay on the Nature
and Conduct of the Passion with Illustrations upon Moral Sense (1728, pp. 34–40).
40
Smith’s position probably reflects the Scottish reaction against abstract math-
ematics and their preference for geometry (Olson, 1971), which, by the way, is
very ‘Newtonian’. Redman (1997, pp. 250–3) defends the thesis that Smith was
not an opponent of statistics, but only that he was simply reacting against a lot
of guessing. However, she endorses the view that Smith was against the use of
mathematics in political economy.
Smith’s broad philosophical project to the narrowness of mainstream

economics’ emphasis on axiomatic–deductive models. Indeed, one con-
sequence of this ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ is to make Adam Smith a
forerunner of general equilibrium theory. Chapter 7 ‘Of the natural and
market Price of Commodities’ of Book I of the WN has been routinely
considered as the foundation of general equilibrium, and the ‘invisible
hand’ is the popular metaphor used to explain this idealised order. For
example Schumpeter, not an admirer of Smith, considers Walras’s gen-
eral equilibrium as the ‘Magna Charta of economic theory’ (Schumpeter,
1994 [1954], p. 968), and repeatedly complains about Smith’s lack of
originality. But Schumpeter praises the:
rudimentary equilibrium theory of Chapter 7, by far the best piece of

economic theory turned out by A. Smith. (Ibid., p. 189)
Similarly, Lionel Robbins eulogises the achievement of the WN which is

‘in harmony with the most refined apparatus of the modern School of
Lausanne’ (1962 [1932], p. 69). Samuel Hollander, applying our modern
knowledge of general equilibrium to an understanding of Smith’s price
mechanism, refers to ‘the remarkable chapter’ (1973, p. 117). Later he
argues that ‘still a price-theoretic orientation to the Wealth of Nations’
has not been contradicted (Hollander, 1987, p. 61), concluding that
chapter 7 ‘contains an embryonic account of general equilibrium theory’
(ibid., p. 65). And Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn, in their first chapter,
written by Arrow, consider the invisible hand as ‘a poetic expression’ and
ascribe Smith as ‘a creator of general equilibrium theory’ (1971, p. 2).41
The expression ‘invisible hand’ occurs three times in Smith's writings, in
his essay in EPS, ‘The History of Astronomy’, in the TMS and also the best-
known version in the WN. Its first appearance is definitely ironic, react-
ing, as usual, against ‘the poison of enthusiasm and superstition’. Smith
refers to the origin of polytheism: ‘fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy
bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of
their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter ever apprehended
to be employed in those matters’ (EPS, p. 49, emphasis added). In the TMS
he mentions the ‘natural selfishness and rapacity’ of rich people who ‘are
led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the nec-
essaries of life’ (TMS, IV.I.10, pp. 184–5). Not in terms of distribution,
41
Kerr (1993) rebuts this neoclassical interpretation of Smith simply in terms of
the market mechanism, proposing a framework for understanding his theory
as one of endogenous technical change and growth.
but when analysing the restraints upon importation, does Smith in the
WN refer explicitly to the beneficial consequences of promoting self-
interest, as people are ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end which
was no part of his intention’ (WN, IV.ii.9, p. 456). There has been a vast
industry interpreting the invisible hand. Recently Grampp (2000) has
detected 10 possible interpretations for Smith’s metaphor (including his
own),42 but, the version that relates it to general equilibrium is probably,
as we have already suggested, the most popular and widely accepted
among mainstream economists.
Paul Samuelson, embodying the view of economic theorists, follows
Schumpeter’s insight, claiming that ‘these partial equilibrium relations
are well-determined by Smith’s relations of general equilibrium’ as with
‘the INVISIBLE HAND doctrine, self-interest, under perfect competition, can
organize a society’s production efficiently’ (Samuelson, 1977, p. 47, orig-
inal emphasis). Elsewhere, he praises openly ‘the genius of Smith’s
formulation of a general equilibrium model’ (Samuelson, 1992, p. 5).
Before analysing the famous chapter 7 to see whether it is somehow a
precursor of Walrasian general equilibrium, and thus confirming this
generally accepted interpretation, I shall comment briefly on Walras’s
methodological position.43 This is necessary to reveal a fundamental
and curiously neglected methodological difference between the archi-
tect of general equilibrium and its foremost forerunner. In addition, this
contrast will shed light upon Smith’s methodology, showing that the
view of Smith as a precursor of general equilibrium theory is simply
instrumental to the neoclassical economics project.
5.4 Walras versus Smith
5.4.1 The Walrasian methodology of economics

In his Elements of Pure Economics or The Theory of Social Wealth, Walras states
in the Preface to the fourth edition (1900) that ‘[i]t is already perfectly clear
that economics, like astronomy and mechanics, is both an empirical
42
Warren Samuels is working in a project on the invisible hand, and he has
already detected 48 different senses for Smith’s metaphor.
43
I shall concentrate exclusively on Walras not only because he is the father of
general equilibrium theory, but also because his methodological position per-
meates the modern development of general economic equilibrium theory, in
which the latter’s emphasis on existence surpasses even the former in terms of
its detachment from reality. However, a caveat must apply: we must not ‘con-
fuse Walras with the present day Walrasians’ (Morishima, 1977, p. 5).
and a rational science’ (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 47), foreshadowing his

concluding remark that in ‘[t]he twentieth century ... mathematical
economics will rank with the mathematical sciences of astronomy and
mechanics; and on that day justice will be done to our work’ (ibid.,
p. 48). It appears that even as we have entered the twenty-first century,
Walras’s aspiration still dominates our discipline.
Walras complains that Smith’s definition of political economy is inad-
equate,44 arguing that ‘[t]he primary concern of the economist is not to
provide a plentiful revenue for the people or to supply the State with an
adequate income, but to pursue and master purely scientific truths’ (ibid.,
p. 52, emphasis added). Emphasising the is and ought distinction, Walras
states that pure economics is as scientific as natural science, a clear
expression of the character of the Newtonian revolution applied to the
social realm. What happens in reality or what is normative is a different
issue:
What ought to be from the point of view of material well-being is the

concern of applied science or art; while what ought to be from the
point of view of justice is the concern of moral science or ethics.
(Ibid., p. 60)
Therefore, in the ought to realm, we have applied economics (category of

relations between persons and things: industry) and ethics (category of
relations between persons and persons: institutions).45
In conclusion, Walras posits a threefold classification of political econ-
omy as a social science into pure, applied and social economics (ibid.,
pp. 60–4). Science, or pure economics, differs from art and ethics in that
it deals with natural phenomena, not with human phenomena. Regard-
ing human phenomena, Walras distinguishes between art (applied eco-
nomics) and ethics (social economics). They differ, since the former
category comprises the relations between persons and things, and the
44
Jaffé suggests that ‘it is doubtful that Walras ever read the Wealth of Nations
attentively’ (ibid., p. 26), and attributes Walras’s neglect of Smith as a prede-
cessor of his theory of general equilibrium to his ‘fanatical anglophobia’ (1977,
p. 31).
45
This distinction is part of the partially unfinished project of Walras’s second
book, Elements of Applied Economics of the Theory of the Agricultural, Industrial,
and Commercial Production of Wealth, and his third book, Elements of Social
Economics or The Theory of Distribution of Wealth via Property and Taxation. Two
papers on these issues were published in 1898 and 1896 (Études d’économie poli-
tique appliquée and Études d’économie sociale, respectively).
latter category comprises the relations between persons. Walras’s classi-

fication is dissected in the following table:
Domain Criteria Object Generic phenomena
Pure economics Science Truth Universals Value in exchange

Applied Art Useful Material Industry or
economics well-being production of wealth
Social Ethics Good Justice Property or
economics distribution of
wealth
I refer deliberately to Walras’s object of pure economics as ‘universals’ in

order to underline his explicit, but neglected, Platonic view of science:
A truth long ago demonstrated by the Platonic philosophy is that sci-

ence does not study corporeal entities but universals of which these
entities are manifestations. (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 61)
Also, in a letter he declares:
I am an idealist. I believe ideas reshape the world after their own

image ... I am swimming against the current of my century. Facts are
now the fashion. (Quoted in Jaffé, 1980, pp. 532–3, note 14)
Walras not only has a Platonic view of science in itself, but the leap from
pure economics to applied economics is done in a Platonic way.46 As
economists we should proceed by reaching the world of ideas, and then,
like the philosopher-king, we should descend to our worldly reality. In
his own words:
the pure science of economics should then abstract and define ideal-
type concepts in terms of which it carries on its reasoning. The return
to reality should not take place until the science is completed and then
only with a view to practical applications. (Walras, 1954 [1900], p. 71)
Moreover, pure economics represented by ‘the theory of value in

exchange is really a branch of mathematics’ (ibid., p. 70), and it ‘must
46
Pokorny (1978) rightly underlines the Platonic nature of Walrasian economics,
to which Smith was clearly opposed, as their main and insurmountable differ-
ence. Unfortunately this philosophical feature of Walras has been generally
ignored.
precede applied economics; and this pure theory of economics is a science

which resembles the physico-mathematical sciences in every respect’
(ibid., p. 71). If Newton, observing the attraction between bodies, could
infer the law of gravity, Walras’s intention, after contemplating the phe-
nomenon of exchange, was to derive an analogous general equilibrium
theory.47 This conflation of pure economics with mechanics was a natu-
ral consequence of the ‘mechanical philosophy’ tradition, which, since
the French Enlightenment, and especially among the Economistes,
adopted Newton’s success as its scientific archetype. The application of
mathematics to social phenomena, as one fundamental characteristic of
the so-called marginal revolution, is an offspring of this tradition.48 Not
surprisingly, Walras wrote that ‘the natural economic mechanism is,
within certain limits, a self-moving and self-regulating mechanism’
(quoted in Ingrao and Israel, 1990, p. 386). This reduction of social phe-
nomena to mathematics evolved with Pareto until Debreu finally made
the crucial step: the theory’s axiomatisation, the culmination of Walras’s
Platonic ideal.
For Walras, ideas not only precede but also surpass reality,49 or, in
other words, pure economics has a ubiquitous priority over practical and
ethical issues. Jaffé (1980) summed up this argument:
It is clear that Walras had no liking for realism as such. In fact,

he vehemently denounced it in all its manifestations: in art and in
literature as well as in philosophy, science and economics. (Ibid.,
p. 532)
47
It is well known that Walras developed his general equilibrium theory with the
image of the equilibrium of mechanical forces in his mind, inspired by
Poinsot’s 1803 treatise Eléments de statique.
48
Cohen argues that the social sciences have failed in their attempt to emulate
the Newtonian sciences. He even claims, against those who would like to see
general equilibrium theory as Newtonian, that ‘[o]ne cannot even make a
mechanical model of the Newtonian system. In the Newtonian system ... there
is no equilibrium’ (1994, p. 61).
49
I agree with Walker (1984) who challenges Jaffé’s interpretation of Walrasian
general equilibrium as normative. The view of Walras’s methodology as ‘realis-
tic utopia’ (Jaffé, 1980, p. 533) is disputable, at least in its modern versions. See
Lawson (1989, p. 73, note 2) for a brief but insightful account of how contem-
porary general equilibrium theory has become more idealised. For a perceptive
treatment of the intellectual development of general economic equilibrium
theory Ingrao and Israel (1990) still provide, in my view, the best account.
Weintraub (1983) presents an interesting account of the modern development
of competitive equilibrium.
5.4.2 Smith’s controversial chapter 7 of book I

In Chapter 7, ‘Of the natural and market Price of Commodities’, of Book
I of the WN, Adam Smith succinctly develops what has been commonly
considered as the foundations of general equilibrium theory. He refers to
the natural (ordinary or average) rates of wages, profit and rent, which
define the natural price of commodities. This natural price differs from
the market (or actual) price that is determined by effective demand.
Smith explains how a decrease in the quantity supplied triggers compe-
tition among consumers, thereby increasing prices, and how an increase
in the ‘quantity brought to the market’ forces suppliers to lower prices.
And, as a conclusion, we have the following influential passage:
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which
the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. Different
accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it,
and sometimes force them down even somewhat below. But what-
ever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this
center of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards
it. (WN, I.vii.15, p. 75, emphasis added)
The use of the word gravitating and the idea of a center of repose have been
commonly accepted as additional evidence of Newton’s influence.50
Furthermore, Smith twice in this chapter refers to his system of ‘perfect
liberty’, suggesting a perfectly competitive market, a harmonious order
constituted by crypto-atomistic consumers and producers. This has been
fundamental to interpreting Smith as a precursor of general equilibrium
theory, and of the theorems of welfare economics. But after a couple of
pages discussing some facts about price volatility and how fluctuations
affect rent, wages and profits, Smith continues:
But although the market price of every particular commodity is in this

manner continually gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural
price, yet sometimes particular accidents, sometimes natural causes,
and sometimes particular regulations of police, may, in many com-
modities, keep up the market price, for a long time together, a good
deal above natural price. (WN, I.vii.20, p. 77, emphasis added)
50
Redman’s view that ‘[i]n Smith’s day invoking Newton’s name and borrowing
his terminology was a commonly used rhetorical device’ (Redman, 1993,
p. 225) is quite relevant. For the intellectually widespread use of this rhetoric
and its philosophical significance, see especially Myers (1983).
It is noteworthy that in this passage Smith carefully adds after gravitating,

‘if one may say so’, underlining its metaphorical character. Certainly, the
tone of this second passage is different, but the basic economic idea of a
tendency, in its vernacular sense, remains. But Smith then immediately
explores the three reasons why market prices can exceed natural prices.
Thus his attempt is to explain the causes of deviations in natural price,
to discover the nature of these ‘different’ and ‘particular’ accidents, not
to reduce these phenomena to a final state.
To conclude that Smith had a view of prices as teleologically ‘gravitat-
ing’ towards an equilibrium in which individuals behave as isolated
atoms motivated simply by self-interest – and thus a clear indication of
‘Smithian Newtonianism’ – is a conclusion that has to be laid to rest. The
universal law of gravitation, as I have already stressed, was fundamental
during the Enlightenment. It was the cornerstone of scientific success,
and its terminology was widely used. Smith was no exception,51 as most
intellectuals not only relied on Newton’s success, but also borrowed
directly from his rhetoric. But is Smith’s realistic account of economic
phenomena paving the way for an ontologically atomistic-mechanistic
general equilibrium theory? My answer is emphatically negative.
First of all, we know that general equilibrium theory, since Walras’s
early contributions, has become increasingly mathematical, basically
emulating the results of what Cohen (1980) terms the Principia’s
‘Newtonian style’. But we have already argued that Smith opposed the
use of sophisticated mathematics in political economy.
Second, unconditional faith in a rational order, characterised by har-
mony, stability, balance or equilibrium, was a particularly French phe-
nomenon, pervasive in Lavoisier, Laplace, Condillac, Lagrange, Condorcet
and particularly in the Physiocrats. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlight-
enment, and Smith in particular, did not consider that social phenomena
could be reduced simply to such an assumption. Indeed, Smith used the
word equilibrium only once in the WN, when criticising the doctrine
of the balance of trade (WN, IV.iii.c.2, p. 489). The word equilibrium, that
had been previously been introduced into the language of political econ-
omy by the Physiocrats,52 the real forebears of general economic
51
Cohen not only affirms that Smith understood Newton better than did
Montesquieu and Carey, but also shows that Smith’s notion of prices is closer
to the real Newtonian system (1994, pp. 65–6).
52
Rothschild points out that ‘Turgot and Condorcet use the word “équilibre”
fairly frequently in their economic writings’ (2001, p. 312, note 147). Indeed,
Turgot might be considered a closer forerunner of general economic equilibrium
equilibrium theory, does not appear in other relevant passages that might
suggest a relationship with general equilibrium theory. Moreover, regard-
ing Smith’s teleological view of the market, he is considering a process, not
a final state. Blaug has expressed this view bluntly:
The effort in modern textbooks to enlist Adam Smith in support of

what is now known as the ‘fundamental theorems of welfare eco-
nomics’ is a historical travesty of major proportions. For one thing,
Smith’s conception of competition was ... a process conception, not
an end-state conception. (Blaug, 1997 [1962], p. 60)53
And third, the development of general economic equilibrium theory has

produced progressively more idealised models, inspired by the Walrasian
Platonistic picture of pure economics,54 and increasingly removed from
reality. If the Walrasian tradition of pure economics, and especially its
contemporary mainstream inheritors, are highly idealist, Smith’s politi-
cal economy is definitely realist.
These three points are intertwined. Smith not only belonged to a tra-
dition that reacted against the metaphysics of Plato (third point), but
also against the Cartesian rationalism that influenced mechanical phi-
losophy (first and second points). He evidently shared Newton’s appre-
hension about reducing all phenomena to mechanical causes. This is
ontologically fundamental. Mechanical reductionism applied to eco-
nomics demands the use of sophisticated mathematics to explain the
harmony of market forces within an idealised general equilibrium model.
theory. I am indebted to Jochen Runde for pointing out that not mentioning
equilibrium does not necessarily imply not believing in it. However, I still
believe that the point, although far from conclusive, is important to my argu-
ment, and to me the possibility that Smith might have consciously avoided
the use of the word ‘equilibrium’ seems perfectly plausible.
53
For example Mas-Collel et al.’s popular Microeconomic Theory reads: ‘The first
fundamental theorem of welfare economies states conditions under which any
price equilibrium with transfers, and in particular any Walrasian equilibrium,
is a Pareto optimum. For competitive market economics, it provides a formal
and very general confirmation of Adam Smith’s asserted “invisible hand” prop-
erty of the market’ (Mas-Collel et al., 1995, p. 549; see also pp. 327 and 524).
54
Walras’s project is perhaps the most radical precursor of the conditions Lawson
attributes to what today would be termed as ‘economic theory’ or ‘pure theory’
(Lawson, 1997, pp. 86–7). Certainly, this idealised mathematical pure eco-
nomics project has become archetypal for mainstream economists with their
emphasis on formalistic deductivist models.
In conclusion, this reductionism presupposes a closed system, an

assumption that is at the core of mechanical philosophy and at the heart
of mainstream economics, especially in relation to general equilibrium
theory.
The conviction, held by mainstream economists, that social phenom-
ena can be treated mechanically, and individuals atomistically, has
been wrongly ascribed to something that might be called ‘Smithian
Newtonianism’. The latter is a doubly spurious interpretation of Newton
and Smith that has pervaded neoclassical and mainstream economics and
underlies the development of modern economic general equilibrium the-
ories. If mainstream economists have simply relegated Newtonianism to
forces in equilibrium, neglecting Newton’s method of resolution, this
mechanical order, in their view, influenced Smith’s conception of the mar-
ket mechanism. Moreover, economic theorists share the widespread inter-
pretation that Smith’s conception of market forces has been enhanced by
an atomistic conception of human beings. This mechanistic-atomistic
reading of Smith has been used to make him the ‘father of the science’, but
only of the science of neoclassical and mainstream economics.
5.5 Some possible methodological connections

with critical realism
Smith’s general attempt to uncover the nature of political economy, and

in particular to illuminate the ‘different accidents’ (WN, I.vii.15, p. 75)
of the market mechanism, cannot be considered either a philosophical,
or a theoretical, predecessor of general equilibrium theory. If the theories
of general economic equilibrium presuppose a closed system, Smith’s
realism in political economy cannot be confined to the narrowness of
this project. Indeed, ‘Adam Smith’s portrayal of the economy is hardly
reducible simply and unambiguously to a system of spontaneous harmo-
nious order’ (Lawson, 1994, p. 531).
I shall now briefly emphasise some similarities between Smith’s philo-
sophical position and the project recently systematised as critical realism.
I argue that a proper interpretation of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’, a serious
assessment of what Smith does share with Newton, reveals his project to
be closer to that of critical realism than to the axiomatic–deductive pro-
gramme embraced by modern mainstream economists. The intuition
that we live in an open system in which tendencies are ‘transfactual’, that
is, they are (or are in play) irrespective of what happens (the actual out-
come that emerges), is implicit in Smith’s general attempt to uncover the
‘nature and causes’ of the market mechanism. I maintain not only that
critical realism sheds further light on our understanding of Smith, but

also that critical realism can find in the ‘father of the science’ an eminent
ally for arguing against the mainstream insistence on axiomatic–deductive
models.
The idea of celestial order, strengthened by the ontology of mechani-
cal philosophy, proved to be extremely influential for the development
of economics. Tony Lawson has argued of the celestial closure associated
with Newtonian mechanics that:
it is precisely its spectacular nature that accounts for some part of the
general failure from Laplace onwards to realize that the situation is
relatively uncommon, to appreciate that the celestial closure is far
from being indicative of the phenomenal situation that can be
expected to prevail more or less everywhere. (1997, pp. 29–30)
Smith’s aim was not the realisation of a theoretical model of the market
mechanism from which a conjunction of events can be deduced.
Neither was he the traditional empiricist confining his philosophical
mind exclusively to the empirical and actual domains of reality. His
ambitious intellectual pursuit was to uncover the real structures under-
lying social and moral phenomena, and the aim of chapter 7 of the WN
is to unpack the ‘nature and the causes’ of the market. The mainstream
project of general economic equilibrium, in particular, deviates substan-
tially from Smith’s intention. If prices potentially tend to a natural price,
Smith never reduces the potentiality of the price mechanism to an actu-
ality defined in a closed system. In general, Smith’s political economy
does not presuppose a deductivist view of the world as a set of theories
erected upon the event regularity conception of laws.
Critical realism poses the concept of tendency as fundamental to its
scientific project. In its broader sense, tendencies are potentialities that
may not be actualised because we live in an open system (ibid., pp. 22–3,
and passim). They belong to the real or ‘deep’ domain of underlying
structures, powers and mechanisms that do or may ‘exist’, regardless of
being identified. Tendencies are non-empirical; they are rather ‘transfac-
tual’. They can either be manifest, as in Newton’s explanation of the
movement of planets, or underlying observable phenomena, like gravity.
It is the latter that reveals the real stability. Even planetary motion may
be disrupted, say by an undetected massive meteoroid (ibid., pp. 29–30).
This is a common and important feature of tendencies that has been rou-
tinely ignored within modern mainstream economics. Although Smith is
using ‘tending towards’ in a vernacular sense, his elucidation of the price

mechanism, encompassed within his methodological position, is an
attempt to reveal the ‘real’ causes underlying the phenomena, which is
the primary object of social science. Therefore his emphasis on uncover-
ing ‘the particular accidents ... natural causes, and ... particular regula-
tions of police’ (WN, I.vii.20, p. 77) does not necessarily imply a
ubiquitous and all-encompassing closed system.
Tendencies, simply viewed as manifest strict event regularities, miss
the ‘real’ but not necessarily actualised nature of most social phenom-
ena. This failure is represented by an unreal ‘decentralized economy
motivated by self-interest and guided by price signals’ (Arrow and Hahn,
1971, pp. vi–vii), disguised as a clear, simple and abstract, but closed
mathematical model. Uncovering the nature of the market mechanism
phenomenon was part of Smith’s intention. Looking for the causes was
his scientific motto. In this sense his aim was to reveal the ‘nature and
causes’ underlying social phenomena. Furthermore, Smith’s project, as
an interdisciplinary endeavour seeking to uncover the real causes
behind social phenomena, is not compatible with the currently domi-
nant idealised neoclassical and mainstream economics. It forms part of
an open system, not only in terms of its evident but neglected multidis-
ciplinary aim, but also in its methodological stance.
Newton’s analytic-synthetic method emphasises the precedence of
the method of resolution over the method of composition, underlining
his assessment that the major difficulties are in the former, and not in
the synthetic and mathematical deductions that necessarily follow.
Smith adopted the spirit of Newton’s method, but he does not favour
induction, and neither does he favour deduction. Both, Newton and
Smith react against reducing phenomena to mechanical causes, sharing
in common a philosophical project, in Smith’s words, to ‘lay open the
concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature’
(EPS, p. 51). Critical realism has defended a retroductive mode of infer-
ence, which is neither deduction, nor induction. Its aim is also to reveal
the ‘concealed connections’, that is, to uncover the mechanisms that
exist at a deeper level. Retroduction, as a mode of inference, involves a
dialectical movement that attempts to identify the factors responsible
for phenomena, and not simply to generalise them. It appears to me
clear that critical realism as a philosophical position, and retroduction,
as a primary method of uncovering the causes of phenomena, is closer
to Smith, and also to Newton, than is the restrictive mainstream econo-
mists’ emphasis on axiomatic–deductive models.
Smith’s methodological stance regarding ‘surprise, wonder and

admiration’ (see supra Section 5.3.2), which has a longstanding philo-
sophical pedigree, is also similar to that of modern day critical realism:
theoretical explanatory enquiry is likely to be initiated or further

stimulated where contrastive demi-regs occasion a sense of surprise,
doubt or inconsistency, either between the observed phenomenon
and a set of prior beliefs, or between competing explanations of it,
and so forth. (Lawson, 1997, p. 211)
It is certainly ‘surprise’ and the sense of doubt occasioned by ‘wonder’ that

play a central role for philosophy, triggering a process of uncertainty that
finally transforms our understanding into the illumination of reality. Also,
Smith’s definition of philosophy as aiming to ‘lay open the concealed con-
nections’ clearly reflects his conception of the nature of reality as not always
actualised. Therefore we can infer that Smith’s philosophical position
presupposes existence, while acknowledging that it is usually concealed.
In addition, the idea of change, as inherently embedded in social life,
and the evidence of ‘unintended consequences’ are fundamental to
Adam Smith and fully shared by the project of critical realism, with
its criticism of mainstream models that attempt to control reality as if
human beings were uniform molecules in a laboratory.
5.6 Conclusions
The popular and biased version of ‘Smithian Newtonianism’ that I have

attempted to expose has fostered a mechanistic reduction of social phe-
nomena, and an atomistic view of human beings. Indeed, Newton’s
Principia inspired a succession of Principles (Bentham, Ricardo, Malthus,
Mill, Jevons and Marshall, to name the most influential), but Smith’s An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with its sug-
gestive and original title, definitely inspired but did not necessarily lead
to the neoclassical project. The question that must be asked is, what
happened to the real ‘Smithian Newtonianism’? Regarding its neglect, I
believe there is a shared responsibility between what might be called an
enlightened mechanical reductionism of social phenomena and an
atomistic philosophical utilitarianism.55 In this context, the emphasis
55
‘It was this view of individuals as members of society, rather than isolated
atoms, which provided the basic principles underlying Scottish political econ-
omy, differentiating it from formal utilitarianism’ (Dow, 1987, p. 341). Veblen
on measuring, presupposing atomistic behaviour in a closed system,

represents the twilight of the Scottish political economy tradition.
In particular, as I have argued above, Walras’s methodological approach
in pure economics, as the foundation of general economic equilibrium
theory, is the historical predecessor par excellence of what Lawson (1997)
has defined as the ubiquity of spontaneous closed systems that charac-
terise deductivism in modern economics. Walras’s explicit reliance upon
Plato’s ideals clearly contrasts with the realist view of phenomena, which
prevailed during the Scottish Enlightenment, and was fully endorsed by
Smith. The Walrasian legacy of pure economics, as a particular version of
Newtonianism applied to economics, ignores the fundamental feature
that individuals are internally structured and inherently complex, and
that we act in an open and changing world. Faith in reducing the com-
plexities of economic behaviour to a mathematical model, inspired by
mechanical philosophy, is simply inconsistent with Smith’s broader
project.
The Scottish political economy tradition, represented by Adam Smith,
has been increasingly marginalised in contemporary economics (Dow,
1987). Even worse, Smith has been unjustly confined to the tight quar-
ters of mainstream economics. He became the father of a highly deduc-
tivist science: pure economic theorising. He has been praised as the
founder of general equilibrium theory, a Walrasian offspring whose
spirit could hardly be more contrary to Smith’s philosophical position.
Were he alive today, Smith would certainly lament the divorce of eco-
nomics and ethics, epitomised by the hackneyed fact/value distinction.
He would regret that currently mathematical axioms or assumptions not
evident in themselves have replaced familiar principles. He would also
complain that mathematics has become the method of economics. It is
not without relevance that the often quoted but rarely read WN was
written for the general public, not for the expert mathematician.
Political economy was a broad and interdisciplinary subject within
moral philosophy. Its realism and practical insight in tackling policy
matters are lacking in today’s mainstream economics. Such straight-
forward characteristics are not only shared by critical realists and
the majority of historians of economic thought, but are at the core of
their project. Unfortunately, the original aim of Smith’s broad philo-
sophical inquiry has been ignored, leading to diverse, and usually
defends the same thesis: ‘[a]fter Adam Smith’s day, economics fell into profane
hands ... it was the undevout utilitarians that became the spokesmen of the
science’ (Veblen, 1933 [1899–1900], p. 130).
opposing versions of the legacy of ‘the father of the science’. The voice
of critical realism is a healthy call for a more ‘realistic’ approach to our
discipline, and Adam Smith’s enduring whisper embodies a vigorous tra-
dition of political economy that has been overshadowed by somewhat
naïve if influential interpretations.
6
Conclusions
Mark Blaug (2001), in his recent ‘No History of Ideas, Please, We’re
Economists’, after questioning the growing interest in our ‘not
vocationally useful’ field, distinguishes between ‘rational reconstruc-
tions’ and ‘historical reconstructions’. As texts must be reconstructed,
the question is how to do it. There are obvious risks in following a
rational reconstruction, as the last chapter has shown in the particular
case of Smith, Newton and general economic equilibrium theory, but
historical reconstructions are not only inherently difficult, but also
riskier. In my opinion, the challenge for historians of economic thought
resides precisely in overcoming the inevitable difficulties of this enter-
prise and avoiding, whenever possible, the risks involved in too readily
interpreting our masters with the eyes of today.
As Blaug is aware, in contrast with rational reconstructions, historical
reconstructions:
which involve accounting for the ideas of past thinkers in terms that
these thinkers and their contemporary followers would have
accepted as a correct description of what they intended to say, are very
difficult to carry out. They require careful reading not only of the
texts of the economists that one is studying, but also of the previous
generation of thinkers in order to understand the context in which the
economists in question were writing. Historical reconstructions require
us to travel backwards in time, to drive the intellectual vehicle of
economics by looking in the rearview mirror. (Blaug, 2001, p. 151,
emphasis added)
The previous chapters have attempted to reconstruct some of the

central components of Smith’s thought by emphasising this particular
165
historical stance. As has been argued in the introduction, Quentin

Skinner’s methodology combined with an ontological approach, are the
foundations that underpin this book. Mark Blaug, an authority in our
discipline, fosters a similar methodology, warning historians of eco-
nomic thought about the temptation of using mainstream methodology
to adapt what our intellectual forebears have said.1 We learn from the
past, but we cannot only use it to explain the present, nor can we inter-
pret it simply from the present.
As I have repeatedly stressed throughout this book, Smith’s scholar-
ship is growing. Blaug also points out that ‘Smith has turned out to be
one of the subtlest and most complex thinkers in the whole of history of
economic thought. The flood of books and articles on various aspects of
his writings have been nothing short of amazing and we are sorely in
need of a new stock-taking’ (ibid., p. 158). If these chapters play some
part on this new ‘stock-taking’, one hopes that at least the methodolog-
ical approach proposed in this book can contribute to the debate on
how the history of economic thought should be done.2
Over 75 years ago, Jacob Viner, declared that ‘Smith was the great
eclectic’ (Viner, 1927, p. 199, emphasis in the original). He was right. But
only if we take the meaning of that word in its proper sense, and with-
out any pejorative connotation. The Greek ekléktikos derives from
eklégein, to select, to choose from what is best.3 Smith’s reliance on the
classics is a good example of his eclecticism, an eclecticism that he mas-
terfully combined with his own system. Smith’s concept of sympathy is
a paradigmatic example. He improved on Hutcheson and Hume by
developing the concept further. Sympathy is underpinned by the nature
of the inner impartial spectator and the concept of propriety. It bears
close relationship to the role of virtues, in particular the nature of self-
command that I attempted to uncover in Chapter 3. Moreover, how
Smith understood Newton, and how he combined his philosophy of sci-
ence with his own epistemology, is just another example of Smith’s
eclecticism. It is actually this eclecticism that many economists have
1
Margaret Schabas has recently reminded us that ‘[t]he more the past economic
ideas are treated in their own right, rather than as precursors to present theory,
the better’ (2002, p. 220).
2
Some scholars have made an important effort to create the annual Adam Smith
Review, and, apropos, the topic of the symposium for the first issue will be
‘Contexts of Interpretation’.
3
Incidentally, for Chrysippus ekléktikos also meant ‘capable of exercising moral
choice’ (cf. Liddell and Scott, 1996, p. 512).
Conclusions 167
failed to acknowledge while interpreting Smith’s Newtonianism and its

relationship with general economic equilibrium theory.
Adam Smith will continue to be a subtle and complex thinker. This
has, with justice, granted him the title of the father of our discipline, a
discipline that must not forget the real meaning and intention of what
its most eminent forebear said.
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Index
admiration in scientific endeavour Clarke, Samuel 141

148, 162 classical economics 25–6
Age of Reason 131–2, 138 Cohen, I. Bernard 157
alchemy 133, 140 composition, method of 161
d’Alembert, Jean le Rond 17, 143 Condillac, Etienne de 157
Ambrose of Milan 73 Condorcet, Jean 8, 142–3, 157
amiable virtues 110 conscience 104–5, 129
analytic-synthetic method consequentialism 52, 58, 84, 86, 95,
135–6, 161 107, 113
Aquinas, Thomas 73–5, 95 corruption 113
Aristotle 47, 72, 81–6 passim, 90–7 courage, virtue of 58, 60, 69–73, 108
passim, 111, 125 critical realism 5, 14, 132, 159–64
Arrow, Kenneth 151, 161 Cropsey, Joseph 69–70
astronomy 148
Augustine of Hippo 73–4 decorum (Cicero) 123–8 passim
axiomatic-deductive methodology deism 37–8
131–2, 138, 151, 160–1 Delatour, Albert 33
Democritus 71
Bacon, Francis 134 Derrida, Jacques 4
beneficence 11, 57, 77, 85, 92–6, Descartes, René 134, 149
106–7 Dickey, Laurence 16, 40
benevolence 70–1 Diderot, Denis 143
Bentham, Jeremy 114–16, 162 distributive justice 94–5
Blaug, Mark 145, 158, 165–6 division of labour 68–9
Bonar, James 35–6 Drennon, H. 140
Brentano, Lujo 29–30 Dupuy, Jean-Pierre 42
Brewster, D. 133 duty, sense of 112–13, 122–4, 127–8
Brown, Vivienne 4, 43, 78, 94
Buccleuch, Duke of 17 Eckstein, Walther 39, 46, 118
Buckle, Henry Thomas 15–16, 31–4, eclecticism 166–7
39, 45–6 economics, pure theory of 154–5,
158, 163
cameralism 21, 24 egalitarianism 121
Campbell, Thomas D. 115 egoism 28
Cannan, Edwin 10, 34, 36 Enlightenment, the see French
cardinal virtues 71–5, 78, 83 Enlightenment; Scottish
categorical imperative 118, 120, 122 Enlightenment
Cato 76 Epicureanism 87, 90, 94–5, 116
Christianity 113 Epicurus 47
Cicero 12, 50, 60, 70–3 passim, 86, ethics 10–12, 52–4, 57, 70, 89, 98,
89–91, 98, 123–8 112, 118–21, 129, 145, 153, 163
civic humanism 11, 40, 57–63 Evensky, Jerry 41
passim, 67–9, 86, 92, 96, 111, 147 ‘experimental philosophy’ 135, 142
183
184 Index
Feder, Johann Georg Heinrich 20 Hope, Vincent 70, 104, 124

Ferguson, Adam 64, 66, 100, 143 human nature 46–7, 52, 55, 88–9
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 21, 23 science of 142
Fitzgibbons, Athol 70, 124 Hume, David 9, 17–18, 31, 46, 49,
Fleischacker, Samuel 8, 46, 54, 115, 64, 66, 98, 100, 114–18 passim,
118–21 123, 142–3, 166
Fontaine, Phillippe 49 Hutcheson, Francis 63–4, 75, 98,
fortitude, virtue of 73–5, 95, 111 100, 102, 114, 117, 166
Foucault, Michel 4 Hutchison, Terence 39
Frederick the Great 123
French Enlightenment 131–2, 138, idealism 30, 154
142, 155 Ignatieff, Michael 92
French Revolution 22, 27 imagination, faculty of 48
Freudenthal, Gideon 146 ‘impartial spectator’ concept 110–22
passim, 128, 147
Galbraith, John K. 19 imperatives (Kant) 119–20
Garve, Christian 21 industrialisation 26
general economic equilibrium theory ‘invisible hand’ metaphor 13, 37, 56,
13–14, 130–1, 143, 146, 151–63 129, 130, 151–2
passim, 167 ‘invisible self’ metaphor 121
German Historical School 9, 20–9,
35, 38, 46 Jaeger, Werner 83
‘Older’ and ‘Younger’ 26–7, 29 Jaffé, William 146, 155
German nationalism 21 Jevons, William S. 130, 150, 162
Glossop, Ronald J. 114 Johnson, Samuel 99
Grampp, William D. 152 Journal of Economic Literature 39
gravitation, law of 140, 142, 157 justice 11, 57–8, 70–7, 85–6, 91–6,
Griswold, Charles 7–8, 41–2, 52, 71, 106–7
124
Grotius, Hugo 91–4, 115, 123 Kant, Immanuel 6, 8, 12, 53, 56, 98,
114–15, 118–22
Haakonssen, Knud 8, 10, 40, 44, 54, Keynes, John Maynard 133
63, 71, 85, 92, 119 Khalil, Elias 46
Hahn, Frank 151, 161 Knies, Karl 28–30
Harcourt, Geoff 42–3 Koyré, Alexandre 140–1
hedonism 116 Kraus, Christian Jacob 22
Heilbroner, Robert L. 40
Helvétius 17, 29–30, 143 Lagrange, Joseph 157
hermeneutics 4, 7, 41–2 laissez faire doctrine 15, 20–6 passim, 36
Herz, Marcus 118 Lange, Friedrich Albert 34, 38, 42
Hetherington, Norriss S. 146 Laplace, Pierre Simon 142, 157, 160
Hierocles 41, 93 Lawson, Tony 160–3, 159
Hildebrand, Bruno 22, 27–8 Leibniz, Gottfried 141–2
historical reconstruction 165 List, Friedrich 24
history of ideas 1–6, 9, 122, 165–6 Locke, John 92, 99
Hobbes, Thomas 48–9, 98 Lueder, August Ferdinand 22
d’Holbach, Paul H.D. 17, 143
Hollander, Samuel 151 Macfie, Alec A. 10–11, 16, 39, 45–6,
Hont, Istvan 92 53–4, 115
Index 185
Machiavelli, Niccolò 3, 60, 63, 69 patriotism 62–3

MacIntyre, Alasdair 82 Peil, Jean 7
Mackenzie, Henry 83 Philip of Macedon 66
Maclaurin, Colin 135–6 Physiocrats 29, 142–3, 157
Malthus, Thomas 162 Plato and Platonic philosophy 47, 58,
Manchester School 24 71–3, 81–7 passim, 92–7 passim,
manly virtues 59–61, 68–9, 76–8, 96 111, 125–6, 154–5, 158, 163
market mechanism 159–61 Playfair, William 17
Marshall, Alfred 162 Plutarch 60, 72, 80
Martin, Marie 114 Pocock, John G.A. 58–9, 64, 69
materialism 30 ‘political arithmetic’ 149
mathématique sociale 142 political economy 25–8, 44, 58, 96,
merit in relation to propriety 103, 153, 158–60, 163–4
108–9 Pope, Alexander 132
Mill, John Stuart 162 positivism 13, 131, 143, 145
Millar, John 16–17, 30 ‘principle of design’ 142
Montesquieu, Baron de 143 propriety, concept of 11–13, 53–6,
moral approbation 105–10, 117, 128 58, 77, 82–8 passim, 95, 97–101,
moral autonomy 52–5, 83, 93, 128 114–29
moral duties 113 as grounds for sympathy 101–5
moral judgement 16, 45–6, 51–5, and moral obligation 105–10
104, 107–8 prudence, 11, 57–8, 70–7, 80, 84–91,
morality: different levels of 87 96, 106–7
general rules of 112–13 superior and inferior 87
social nature of 114, 122
Morrow, Glenn R. 36–8, 55 Rae, John 35–6
Müller, Adam Heinrich 23, 29–30 Raphael, David D. 10–11, 16, 39,
45–6, 53–4, 115
natural jurisprudence 57–8, 64, 147 Rawls, John 114, 116
natural law theory 91–2, 115 realism 14, 158–9, 164; see also
natural order of things 37 critical realism
‘natural price’ concept 156–7, 160 Recktenwald, Horst C. 39
Nelson, Eric 67 Redman, Deborah A. 145
neoclassical economics 132 Reid, Thomas 33, 42, 48, 100
Newton, Sir Isaac 13–14, 37, 130–40 ‘Renaissance man’ 60–1
passim, 146–7, 161, 166 resolution, method of 149, 159
Opticks 134–5, 138, 140–2, 149 retroduction 161
Principia 134–41, 147, 149, 157, 162 retrospection 2
Newtonianism 132–4, 138, 141, 145 Ricardo, David 162
Smithian 150–1, 156–9, 162–3, 167 Robbins, Lionel 151
Nieli, Russell 40–1 Roscher, Wilhelm 25
Rosen, Fred 115
officium, sense of 126–8 Rothschild, Emma 8, 108, 114–15
Oncken, August 35, 38–9, 118 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 28
ontology 5, 7, 138, 166
Otteson, James 8, 16, 43–4, 54, 71 Samuelson, Paul 150, 152
Sandbach, Francis H. 79–80
Pack, Spencer 16, 32 Sartorius, Georg 22
Pareto, Vilfredo 155 Schmoller, Gustav von 27
186 Index
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 148, 151–2 Stukeley, William 133

Scottish Enlightenment 5, 13, 57, surprise in scientific endeavour 148,
135–6, 143, 157, 163 162
self-command, virtue of 11–13, 53, sympathetic process 51–4, 92, 97,
57–60, 70–1, 76–88, 93–6, 101, 107, 110–15 passim, 128
105–22 passim, 128–9, 166 sympathy: concept of 8–13, 15–16,
self-interest, doctrine of 9–10, 15, 20, 31–56 passim, 114, 166
19–20, 28, 32–45 passim, 53–6, direct and indirect 103, 109
88, 96, 146, 152 synthesis in scientific method 135–8
self-love 112–13
Sen, Amartya 56, 129 Teichgraeber, Richard 16, 36, 40
Seneca 127 temperance, virtue of 58, 70–8
Skarzyński, Witold von 29–33, 39, 45 passim, 90
Skinner, Andrew S. 33, 39, 145 textual interpretation 4
Skinner, Quentin 4–6, 59, 61, 166 theology 133
Smith, Adam: French connection
theory about 28 University of Göttingen 21–2, 27
influence of 2; and liberalism 2–3, utilitarianism 12, 51, 53, 55, 98,
38 113–17, 121–2, 128–9, 162
life and work of 16–19
literature on 7–8, 39–44, 114 Veblen, Thorstein 114
methodological stance of 146–52 Viner, Jacob 36–8, 128, 166
range of interests 2 vir virtutis tradition 57–61, 68, 75–8,
religious beliefs 37–8 95
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) Virgil 99
1–2, 8–12, 15–20, 29–46, 51–7, virtue ethics 96
69, 76–8, 84–90, 94–124, 128–9, virtues, theory of 11–12, 20, 36, 53,
145, 151 56–61, 69–96, 125–8, 166
The Wealth of Nations (WN) 1–2, Vivenza, Gloria 8, 71, 87–8,
10, 13, 15–23, 29–45 passim, 61, 124–5
65, 68, 78, 88, 96, 129–31, 145, Voltaire, François-Marie
149–52, 156–9, 162–3 Arouet 17
Smith Problem 9–10, 15–17, 20,
28–46, 53–5 Walras, Leòn 14, 130–1, 143, 146,
current debate on 39–45 151–8 passim, 163
Smithianismus 24 Waszek, Norbert 70, 87, 125
social science 142–3, 161 Webster, Alexander 149
Socrates 71, 73, 81, 86 Werhane, Patricia 42, 53, 90, 94
‘spheres of intimacy’ 40–1 Winch, Donald 39–40
standing armies, debate on 11, 57, wisdom 71–4 passim, 80, 86
61–9, 78, 95 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 4, 7
Stein, Karl von 23 Witzum, Amos 43
Stephen, Sir Leslie 15–16, 32–8 wonder in scientific endeavour 148,
passim, 42 162
Stewart, Dugald 17, 30, 34
Stigler, George 19, 88 Xenophon 81
Stobaeus 89
Stoic philosophers 8, 11, 37, 41, 47, Young, Jeffrey 44, 53–4
50, 58, 70–81 passim, 86–95
passim, 127 Zeno 71–2, 75, 80, 89, 97, 111

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Adam Smith in Context

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2 Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins and the Debate 15

3 Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis Discourse and Civic Humanism 57

4 Adam Smith’s Concept of ‘Propriety’: Its Meaning and

5 Smith and Newton: Some Methodological Issues

My interest in Adam Smith is quite recent. As a young scholar, I can only

Journal of Economics, vol. 27, no. 5. Earlier versions of Chapters 3 and 4

I have used the LibertyClassics editions (Liberty Fund) of Smith’s works,

TMS The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and

Ar.EN Aristotle’s Ethica Nichomachea

1.1 Methodological framework

This book is the result of an intellectual journey, an expedition which

a framework that was not completely familiar to Smith himself. He

my opinion, lies in the combination of the specific weight of each

consist of stories: a further feature of historical stories is that they are

1.2 Summary of the book

At the beginning of this journey, my primary concern was to understand

familiar picture of Smith as the paradigmatic precursor of the doctrine of

critique is also disconcerting, and at times unfair, especially when one

understanding of sympathy, but simply that there is a point worth

one Socratic virtue that definitely corresponds to Smith’s broad defini-

purpose neither mathematics nor pure deduction constituted the only

Scholars have long been interested in the apparent dichotomy between

2.2 A brief historical background

Dear Mr. Smith: I am much pleased with your performance’, acknowledg-

2.3 The origins of the ‘Smith Problem’ and

2.3.1 The German context and Das Adam Smith Problem

August Ferdinand Lueder and Georg Sartorius12 both studied and

If a nation enjoys a fortunate government, which directs it to

Yet the idea of shaping a Nationalökonomie in combination with a

Friedrich List (1789–1846) published his Das Nationale System der

Although it has been generally accepted that Wilhelm Roscher’s

by the then predominant classical view of political economy. This later

a Political Economy for the world and humanity (Welt und

Although there is a longstanding tradition in Germany of Adam Smith

Smith’s ‘one-sidedness’ (einseitigkeit) and his ‘abstract cosmopolitanism’

If Karl Knies, as a representative of the ‘Older School’, set up the

Müller did, to the ‘one-sidedness (einseitigkeit) of the Smithian School’

Smith was an Idealist, as long as he lived in England under the influ-

The Umschwungstheorie, perceived by Knies (1853), then suggested by

Ironically perhaps, Skaṙzyński’s attacks on Smith were influenced by

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, simplified the study of human

human nature the quality of which the Wealth of Nations had

2.3.2 Some early reactions

familiar charge, it was also formed as a response to Buckle’s earlier

as an answer to the question: given man as a predominantly selfish

In a way Stephen, as a later convert to what today might be called evo-

himself recognises in the Advertisement to the sixth edition of the

It is interesting to note, however, that the leading British political econ-

the question [Das Adam Smith Problem] at issue’ (Oncken, 1897,

formal ‘Smith Problem’ has been clearly surmounted, the Problem is a

2.4 A review and assessment of the current debate

For the bicentenary of the publication of the WN, Oxford University

‘what most scholars accept, that there is no Adam Smith problem’

intimacy. Therefore the market is regulated by self-interest in its pursuit

thrust of the argument of TMS is the need to design institutions which

2.5 Sympathy and moral approbation

He [Buckle] cannot have ‘studied’ TMS if he thinks that it ‘ascribes

moral approbation. This view of sympathy, as just a criterion for appro-

an inner principle in human nature.52 Smith is aware that common lan-

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle.