Adam Smith’s Reconstruction of Practical Reason

Abstract

IN THE LAST PART of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1) Adam Smith puts his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation. (2) Despite recognizing important differences with both of them, he thinks that since he has placed the origin of moral sentiments in sympathy, and in particular the fact that we are able to enter into the motives of the agent and get pleasure from finding them appropriate (proportionate) to their cause, sentiments are the foundation of his theory of morals. Many of Smith's commentators, in fact almost all of the most important studies over the last few years, reaffirm the author's self-description. (3) However, my aim in this paper is to challenge this view by showing that Smith's system can also be plausibly seen as a theory of practical reasoning, and in some important aspects very similar to Aristotelian ethics. (4) Surprisingly few scholars have seen this parallel. Laurence Berns, Samuel Fleischacker, Charles Griswold, and Gloria Vivenza are the latest exceptions, (5) identifying several points of coincidence between Adam Smith and Aristotle's ethics. None of them, however, has tied all these similarities under a unified interpretation, such as the one I propose here: The basic analogy between these theories, and the source of those particular coincidences, is the operation (implicit in TMS) of practical reason. Moreover, and besides the common elements with Aristotle's ethics, Smith's reconstruction of practical reason simultaneously announces some of the main features of modern accounts of ethics, such as impartiality and universality as preconditions of moral judgment. The integration of these ancient and modern elements in a single coherent theory allows Smith's TMS to overcome the insufficiencies and paradoxes of both these traditions, (6) and it constitutes one of the most interesting and challenging proposals of modern ethics. The first obvious question to be raised, therefore, is why Smith and his commentators underestimate the role played by reason in this system. Although this will not be my topic, I would like to suggest that the problem is mainly a wrong labeling due, it seems, to historical and contextual reasons. In Smith's time the concept of practical reason was in complete disuse until Kant rehabilitated it, in a totally different form, at the end of the century. The classical Aristotelian concept of practical reason, though, had to wait until the twentieth century for its vindication. (7) Moreover, one of Smith's main motivations for articulating his theory, just like Hutcheson and Hume, was to refute Hobbes's and Mandeville's egoistic ethics. Therefore, discarding medieval theological systems and the implausible (for them) rationalistic theories of some of their modern predecessors (the Cambridge Platonists), sentiments were the natural alternative for these three philosophers, especially since they aimed to found morality on a naturalistic basis, rejecting metaphysical explanations. Hutcheson and Hume accomplished their goal, proposing two different sentimentalist accounts of ethics. Smith, however, mainly through the introduction of the supposed impartial spectator, (8) ended up constructing a system of practical reason. This paper will start by showing why the principle of approbation in TMS is neither theoretical reason nor sentiments, or, in other words, why we should reject both the rationalistic and the sentimentalist interpretation of Smith's ethics. In the second and third sections I will give a brief account of the theoretical framework of my argument: the general structure of the human faculty of practical reason (section 2), and three of its Aristotelian features that I want to highlight (section 3). The main thrust of my argument comes in section 4, where I interpret TMS as a system of practical reason, identifying the topics which I believe give enough evidence to support my thesis. …