New Essays on Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy

3: The “Adam Smith Problem” and Adam Smith’s Utopia

Doğan Göçmen 45 The “Adam Smith Problem” and Adam Smith’s Utopia1 Doğan Göçmen For Michael Freudenberg I. INTRODUCTION The Adam Smith Problem concerns the relationship between Smith’s two major works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (WN).2 Two passages in particular, one in TMS and the other in WN, triggered off the whole debate some 150 years ago. In TMS, Smith asserts: How 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] Yet in WN he observes: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. [WN, I.ii.2] In these two statements Smith makes two fundamentally different claims about human nature. In the quotation from TMS, Smith suggests that in human nature there are some original principles that make us interested in the happiness of our fellow creatures. If our fellow creatures are unhappy, we feel sorrow and want to help them to overcome their unhappiness. If they are happy, we enjoy their happiness without expecting anything except seeing their happiness. By contrast, in the passage from WN, Smith describes human beings 1 This essay draws upon my PhD dissertation (Adam Smith’s Utopia: Society as an Open and Progressive System of Mutial Sympathy), which I presented to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in 2005. 2 Bibliographic information for all references can be found in the Select Bibliography at the end of this essay. 46 new essays on adam smith’s moral philosophy merely as self-interested or egocentric beings. It is not the pleasure of seeing others’ happiness that primarily motivates them but pure self-interest. The conception Smith relies on here is a conception of pure utilitarian self-interest or self-love. Accordingly, we have to expect our dinner from the butcher, brewer, or baker not from their benevolence or humanity, but solely from their regard to their own self-interest. It is this seeming paradox in Smith’s anthropological and in effect social theoretical accounts that gave rise to the whole debate about the “Adam Smith Problem”.3 The main question in this debate is whether Smith’s work contains two fundamentally different conceptions of human nature. If it does, how should this contradiction be explained? In this paper I make two fundamental claims. First, unlike many scholars, I claim that Smith has one conception of human nature. But I suggest that his conception has two complementary aspects—a general and a particular. The aspect of human nature he develops in TMS I take for his general conception, and the one in WN I regard as his particular conception of human nature in the age of commercial society. Second, I claim that all attempts to explain the contradiction between these two aspects of Smith’s conceptions of human nature have failed because they approached it merely as a conceptual problem of Smith’s.4 Unlike these scholars, I suggest that this is a historical-practical problem arising from social relations in commercial society. Moreover, I suggest that Smith is very well aware of this problem and that he develops a solution to it. In this paper, I endeavor, therefore, to show Smith’s own solution to the Adam Smith Problem. To do this, I will first reconstruct the problem by working out Smith’s theory of social individuality in TMS. I move on then, secondly, to explore Smith’s account of the situation of the individual in commercial society as is given in WN. And finally, I shall refer to Smith’s utopia of a sympathetic society as his projected solution to the problem. II. SMITH’S THEORY OF SOCIAL INDIVIDUALITY IN THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS 1. Where to Begin? To show that Smith’s anthropological view is not an individualistic one, many scholars begin their analyses with the first paragraph of TMS, which is a general conclusive statement. At first sight, its objective methodological and analytical background is...