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Summary Adam Smith Political Thought Complete Notes
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- Cambridge University (CAM)
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- Wealth of Nations
Notes that got me a high mark in Second Year Cambridge politics exam.
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General Notes 3Chronology 3
Intellectual influences 3
Summary 6
Adam Smith on Civility and Civil Society Richard Boyd 8
Set Texts 9
Theory of Moral Sentiments 9
General Info 9
Book Notes: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, reprinted Indianapolis, 1982) (E) 10
Wealth of Nations 20
Key Concepts 20
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, eds. T. Campbell,
A.S. Skinner and W. Todd, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, reprinted
Indianapolis, 1981): 31
Major Interpretations Error! Bookmark not defined.
A. O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism
before its Triumph (Princeton NJ, 1977) 38
Hont 39
*I. Hont, Jealousy of Trade (Cambridge, MA., 2005) 42
Review Error! Bookmark not defined.
Hont, ‘Adam Smith’s History of Law and Government as Political Theory’, in R,
Bourke and R. Geuss (eds), Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn (Cambridge,
2009), pp. 131-171 (E). 45
HONT Politics in Commercial Society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith,
(Cambridge, MA., 2015) 47
*D. Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, (Cambridge, 1978) 48
Theory of Moral Sentiments 53
A Sen 53
Berry, C. (2010). Adam Smith's moral economy. The Kyoto Economic Review, 79(1
(166)), 2-15. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43213382 54
P. Sagar, ‘Beyond sympathy: Smith’s rejection of Hume’s moral theory’, British
Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2017), 681-705 55
Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau’s Diagnosis and Adam Smith’s Cure. Ryan
Patrick Hanley 57
Wealth of Nations 58
P. Bowles, ‘Adam Smith and the “Natural Progress of Opulence”’, Economica, n.s. 53
(1986), 109-118. (E) 58
The Adam Smith Problem 60
A. Oncken, ‘The Consistency of Adam Smith’, Economic Journal 7 (1897), 443-450.
63
K. Tribe, ‘“Das Adam Smith Problem” and the Origins of Modern Smith Scholarship’,
History of European Ideas 344 (2008), 514-525. 64
,Questions
1. Did Adam Smith provide commercial society with a moral justification?
2. What did Adam Smith take to have been the consequences of the ‘unnatural and
retrograde order’ of Europe’s historical development?
3. To what extent did Adam Smith believe that governments should intervene to prevent
particular economic interests from disadvantaging others?
4. Did Adam Smith believe that the pernicious consequences of international commercial
competition could be satisfactorily contained?
5. Which was more basic to Smith’s theory of moral sentiments, sympathy or propriety?
6. Why did Adam Smith regard justice as a more important virtue than benevolence for
commercial society?
7. Why was Adam Smith confident that moral values stemming from the human capacity for
sympathy would be compatible with economic relations based on self-interest?
8. Is virtue for Smith more a question of nature or of artifice?
9. What is the significance for Smith’s theory of sociability of his distinction between
praiseworthiness and the love of praise?
,General Notes
Chronology
● 5 June 1723: born in Kirkcaldy
● 1737-1740: studied in U of Glasgow
● 1740-1746: a Snell exhibitioner at Balliol College, Oxford
○ 1745: Jacobite Rebellion
● 1748-51: Edinburgh Lectures
○ 1749-50: met Hume
● 1751-64: Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Glasgow
○ 1759: publication of TMS
● 1764-66: his years in Europe
● 9 March 1776: publication of WN
Intellectual influences
Francis Hutcheson:
● reputation based on principles of human nature, nature of virtue and meaning of
sociability.
● important influence from Shaftesbury. Human beings are benevolent agents.
Exercises in self-improvement can foster sociability and public spirit.
● Moral action motivated by disinterested feeling of benevolence. The morally best
action is one that produces the greatest happiness (utility). Approval of virtue is like
the appreciation of aesthetics in a spectator.
● Reasons and calculations have no place in shaping our moral personality. There are
natural feelings in our heart he calls ‘the moral sense’
● Greatest bête noire—Mandeville, who suggested that all our passions are to serve
our ‘self-liking’. We are deluded by Politicians to curb our passions to gratify our
pride. Virtue, justice and liberty are simply delusions and products of our hypocrisy.
Hutchison was shocked by the cynicism.
● Goes on to argue that in benevolently inclined society there can be less
regulation. Subjects have the right to change their rulers whenever they feel like it.
—put him in the radical Whiggery thinking.
● Influence on Smith
○ Smith would constantly return to the problem of sociability. However, he
thought that Hutcheson's thinking lacked historical vision, and the image of
benevolent agents too arcane. Smith is closer to Hume on this issue.
○ Aesthetics from Hutcheson remains v. important. Explains the value attached
to utility. Sheer efficiency can charm humans, and that is what sustains
economic and political planning—v. original
○ Smith's Glasgow lectures were closely modelled on Hutcheson's lectures—
dealing with economic subjects within the frame of moral philosophy.
○ John Rae, Smith's biographer suggests that his deep love for liberty must
have been kindled or strengthened by contact with Hutcheson.
David Hume:
, ● he was a Humean by the time he met Hume. Follow him in understanding human
nature
● Hume put the question of morality and justice in relation to the civil society. Shows
that reason has no role to play in morality was to influence the Scottish intellectual
community for the next half-century.
● Influence from Hutcheson too, but differed in that he differentiated between natural
virtues and acquire/artificial virtues. Hume distinguishes natural virtue from
artificial virtue. Hutchinson's benevolence is the former, and justice belongs to
the latter. Idea of justice underpins sociability and government. Moral approval
explained by sympathy. Artificial virtue depends on utility.
● The most influential concepts
○ Smith followed Hume’s improvement on Hutcheson, but Smith differs from
Hume in that the first moral approval is incurred by the person's motive.
Sympathising with someone's motive approves of the action as proper. A
benevolent action induces double sympathy—also sympathy with the
gratitude felt by the person benefitted. Justice is built on sympathy with
resentment for harm. Consideration of utility is the last determinant of moral
judgment.
○ sympathy, which humans' capacity for sociability is based on (for Hume)
○ government is to preserve the property of subjects. All attempts to redistribute
property is detrimental to both material and moral progress of society.
‘Property was the mother of the civilising process’
○ essays on commerce, money, interest and balance of trade. He saw humans
as naturally active species who use they labour to secure the ‘necessities’
and ‘conveniences’ of life (Hume's quotes). We are driven by our desires to
satisfy our needs.
● Hume was much more optimistic about commercial society. He wrote about
commercial society in 'Of Commerce', 'Of Luxury' primarily, but also in 'Of the Rise
and Progress of the Arts and Sciences' and 'Of Civil Liberty'. Winch agrees with
Forbes that Hume had an unquestioning view that good life is dependent on
economic progress—he was at his least sceptical.
○ Lack of manufactures make people slothful for lack of incentives and
opportunities.
○ He found that luxury is not incompatible with virtue, rather it may be a
conditions for its realisation. People's temper would become milder, but this
does not undermine the martial spirit, as men would be more willing and able
to defend their country and their own liberties, because now they are not
accustomed to servitude. Free governments, same as the arts and sciences,
is likely to thrive under a commercial society.
○ However, he conceded that there could be exceptions. Luxury could be
vicious and debilitating, but it is still better than idleness.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (according to Istvan Hont 2015):
● Easy to see Smith and Rousseau as opposite side of the aisle when it comes to state
and commerce. Since Rousseau seems to be critical of inequality that gives
commercial society its fundamental attributes—'enemy of modernity'
● by showing how Smith is engaged w/ Rousseau in TMS, shows how Smith arrived at
the concept of the impartial spectator; by showing how Rousseau is engaged w/
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