Metascientific Perspectives: The Individual and Society

During the seventeenth century, the dominant mode of philo­sophical and psychological explanation of human behaviour was rooted in a belief that man was possessed of innate capacities, dispositions and knowledge.

... the natural light by whose aid we can discern lines of structure running like the veins of a leaf through the fragment of nature which is open to us. These lines run out and away into the world beyond, and are continuous with that web of relations on which the world appears to be woven. And because these lines are necessary they are intelligible.¹

This is the view that found clear expression in the writing of Descartes, and was developed by the later Cartesian Rationalists; notably by Spinoza and Leibniz. Closely coupled with this view of the relationship between the knowing mind and nature, was what Mandlebaum has called ‘nativism’ in the realm of psycho­logical theories. Human thought and action were regarded as being explicable in terms of innate capacities common to all men, so that:

... the themes of man’s malleability had not deeply pene­trated either the explanation of human behaviour, or views which were held regarding the history of mankind.²

The publication of Locke’s Essay in 1689 constituted a radical attack upon this position. Locke held that all the primitive elements of knowledge were derived from experience, there being no innate ideas. Men

... by the use of their natural faculties, may attain all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impres­sions, and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles.³

The mind is ‘furnished’ with knowledge through the senses, and through introspection into its own workings.

We thus find in the work of Smith’s close friend, Hume, a highly mechanistic account of the association of ideas, in which language, the operation of the imagination, the growth of complex emotions, and the basis of morality are all derived from simple ideas, or ‘impressions’, received through the senses. Central to this belief was the notion that reason was ‘the slave of the passions’; since all knowledge was derived via the senses, which in turn were affected by the passions, reason was intrinsically inadequate to a full and certain understanding of reality.

This of course is in direct contradiction to the Cartesian Rationalist view of reason outlined above. The empiricists thus dethroned reason as the defining characteristic of man, and substituted emotional drives (dependent upon ‘human nature’) which were beyond man’s complete control. The springs of human action were the passions which were inborn as was the inherent tendency of all men to pursue their own interests in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Further, since the perception of‘sense-data’ was conceived of as being, what we would now call, a logically private act, the individual was regarded as being intrinsically atomistic, rather than social.

It is important to realise that those who held to this doctrine of the ‘association of ideas’ did not in general use it to explain diversity in men, but rather, similarity, since all men had the same inherent passions, and were subject to continual repetitions of broadly similar impressions, then much of human experience would overlap.

... our original bodily Make and the Impressions and associations which affect us in passing through life, are so much alike, and yet not the same, that there must be a great general resemblance amongst Mankind.⁴

Thus, Smith was firmly within this tradition when he wrote:

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions... is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. (J4^zA, I.II.4.)

This view was to have important implications for Smith’s labour theory of value which not only sees labour as the source or origin of value, but also as an invariant measure of value, since it has, more or less, equal disutility for all men. (Chapter 8.)

Despite its emphasis on the similarity of men, the Associationist view of man does, unlike the earlier doctrines of ‘fixed’ human nature, open up thepossibility of a dynamic view of human society. Since the customs and institutions established by one generation, would help to shape the range of individual experiences undergone by the next, there could be a slow transition from one type of society to another. This view has been called ‘geneticism’.⁵

The above discussion can be summarised as follows: Smith to a large extent accepted the Associationist view of human psychology that was current in his time, and this yields a picture of man as a logically discrete, egocentric individual, motivated largely by self-interest and emotion. This, we can call the ‘individualistic’ strain in Smith’s thought.

The influence of this line of thought is particularly clear in the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, where (as discussed in Chapter 3) Smith’s epistemological discussions tend to take, as their starting point, the tenets of Associationism. Part of the task of these essays is to explain how the individual, locked in a logically private world of internal experience comes to gain a shared understanding of external reality.

Now anyone holding such a theory of individual behaviour is going to have severe problems when seeking to explain the more complex aspects of collective social behaviour. It is, for example, difficult if not impossible to derive a coherent explanation of morality from Associationist premisses and it may well be that, without the aid of ad hoc hypotheses (such as divine intention) which clearly beg the question, it is logically impossible to move, within the confines of such a perspective, from the notion of the individual to that of the general good.

What we have here is, at bottom, a ‘social’ variant of the age-old philosophical problem of the relationship of the particular to the universal — in this case of the individual to his society. This will be examined in depth when we come to look at the nature of the ‘social’ side of Smith’s model, and at the checks which Smith thinks will restrain the individual from excess in pursuing his own self-interest. Here it is sufficient to note that ‘reason’, because of its dependence upon the passions has, in Smith’s view, inherent defects which make it inadequate to supply directly the requisite social bonds. This is one reason why Smith, like Hume, rejects the ‘contract’ theory of society and government.⁷

This conceptual framework — and the problems of aggregation that are its logical concomitants — forms the ‘individualistic’ side of Smith’s metascientific perspective.

In order to reconstruct the ‘social’ side of the dialectical interaction used in Smith’s model, we must examine a line of thought which has its roots in the belief in the power of reason that was the idee directτice of much of the French Enlightenment. It is not my intention to present a systematic treatment, however brief, of the thought of the French Enlightenment, nor to probe the very considerable differences of perspective that existed amongst the members of that loosely affiliated ‘school’. The purpose here is much more limited, being confined to providing a highly selective and generalised characterisation of some aspects of thought that were more or less common to the men of the Enlightenment, which had a very considerable influence on the members of the Scottish Historical School in general, and Smith in particular. The perspectives to be examined, which are closely interrelated can be labelled, the organic view of society, the historical perspective, materialism, and the idea of progress. These will be briefly discussed in turn.

Firstly, the organic view of society. This can be defined as the belief that men are, to a very large extent, shaped by the institu­tions and cultural patterns of the particular society in which they live. At first sight, this appears to be a thesis closely similar to ‘geneticism’, but there is a crucial difference. For whilst geneticism also holds that men are, to a degree, malleable in the sense of being formed by experience, it does so from the perspective of the individual. That is to say, it is & psychological theory of the formation of the individual, which focuses on the role of individual experience, whereas the organic view approaches the issue from the macro-social perspective.

It could be argued that geneticism and organicism are simply two aspects of the same process, and as such are complementary, rather than mutually exclusive, and there is indeed a sense in which this is true. But they are rooted in radically different philosophical traditions, aspects of which are mutually exclusive; it is the overall perspective which is different.

Both the genetic and the organic view first began to emerge as explicit doctrines during the Enlightenment (although their origins are much older) when they gradually replaced the ‘nativist’ conception of man as being shaped by an inborn ‘human nature’. The genetic approach was, as we have seen, developed by the associationist tradition, whilst the organic view finds the beginnings of a clear expression in the work of Montesquieu⁸ and Turgot⁹, although the orientation is at least implicit in the ‘Romanised’ presentations of Greek Stoicism that were of con­siderable influence in the mainstream of European thought in the eighteenth century. The emphasis of writers like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius is upon the notion of the individual’s obligation to a ‘natural’ society.¹⁰

Secondly we have the historical perspective, which has often been called ‘historicism’. Here the development of any aspect of a particular society is seen as part of an overall historical process so that specific events are seen, as it were, against a background of unfolding historical development."

The systematic presentation of this approach can be traced back at least as far as Vico’s Scienga Nuova (1725), in which he claimed that an adequate understanding of reality required a historical perspective.¹² This notion gained ground rapidly and is obvious in the work of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists; it finds clear expression in Turgot’s On Universal History (1750) and in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748).

The third perspective, which had a very considerable influence on those now known as the Scottish Historical School, was materialism. The term is used here in a restricted sense and is taken to mean that an inductive and empirical (‘scientific’) approach is taken to the explanation of society', rather than a deductive approach which ‘explains’ observed events by reference to either theology, or some form of ‘natural’ state.

This trend in European thought has a much older history than the other three we are examining, and has been identified as far back as Nicholas of Cusa’s De docta ignorantia (1440). It is beyond the scope of this book to trace its subsequent development, but we can identify two major works, both well known to the Scottish Historical School, in which it finds an unambiguous presentation. The first of these was Bacon’s Novum 0rganum (1620) where the concept was set forth as a methodological prescription for scientific practice, whilst the second was the bible of ‘hard’ empiricist science, Newton’s Principia (1678).

Both Bacon and Newton advocated a form of inductivist approach to explanation, although there were, as one would expect, considerable differences in the interpretation of just what was involved in this process. Such an approach could indeed arguably be labelled simply ^linductivism^,, but in the case of the Scottish Historical School, we can add a further restriction which renders the term ‘materialism’ appropriate. For them, social explanation is made with ultimate reference to the economic organisation of society.

Here again, we can find clear antecedents of this perspective in Montesquieu, although in his case, economic materialism centered upon the property relationships of society. At the risk of some oversimplification, his fundamental thesis could be characterised as being that the distribution of property — especially land — is the ultimate determinant of most other aspects of social life. In the work of the Scottish Historical School, this thesis was modified; for them it is the way labour is organised, not property, that is the crucial factor.

Finally, we have the idea of progress, which can be taken to be the notion that society can, in some sense, develop and improve. This idea was to have enormous influence upon subsequent thought and could well be called the dominant ideology of nineteenth-century European culture, and is indeed still pervasive, despite the fact that events since 1914 have tended to destroy the overwhelming hold it once had on men’s imaginations. Given the influence the idea has had, it is difficult to appreciate that it is of comparatively recent origin.¹³ For all practical purposes the idea of progress arose with the post-Reformation cult of Pietism,¹⁴ which held that the Reformation had not gone far enough and must develop as time went on. Whilst there had previously been numerous ‘theological’ conceptions of progress, in the sense of an after-life in some better realm of existence, we are here concerned with progress as occurring in society, and the development advo­cated by the Pietists, although rooted in theology, was conceived of as being embodied in the real world.

The idea of progress gradually became secularised, and by the time Smith was writing the notion was commonplace. The degree to which this perspective influenced the thinkers of the Enlighten­ment — French or Scottish — varied enormously, but the belief in progress tended to be heavily qualified in most cases. The near-Messianic fervour of the Marquis de Condorcet, with his vision of a Europe reborn, free and enlightened (with Reason playing the role of midwife) was largely atypical. In general the all-embracing Rationalism of Descartes had given way to a much more heavily qualified position; reason had the potential to steer human progress, but the pitfalls were many, and the road steep. Smith, explicitly rejecting ethical rationalism and always cynical as to human wisdom, none the less shared this qualified belief in progress, which, as we shall see, plays a central role in his model.

The four ideas outlined above were of course closely inter­connected, both logically, and in terms of actual historical development. The idea of progress, for example, is partly dependent upon the historicist notion of a universal history, and the links between the concept of progress and the organic view of society are almost as strong. All four notions were clearly present in Montequieu’s Spirit of the Laws — a book which greatly influenced the thought of the Scottish Historical School and perhaps to an even greater extent, the thought of Turgot.¹⁵ Smith, himself, frequently makes direct or indirect reference to this work in the Wealth of Nations, and there can be little doubt that one reason for the close similarity between some aspects of Smith’s work and that of Turgot is that both were making similar exten­sions of ideas and perspectives taken from Montesquieu.

Summing up we can say that the Scottish Historical School shared, to a greater or lesser extent, a common perspective; they saw man as the product of his historical society and they saw that society itself as a potential vehicle for progress. They held that the economic structure of society has an overwhelming influence upon its institutions, laws and customs, and their notion of progress thus tended to be linked with economic development.¹⁶ The fundamental unit of enquiry was seen by them as being, not the individual, but rather society. Their approach tended to be inductive and empirical, rather than speculative and deductive.

Given these outlines of the two central influences upon Smith, it can now be seen that there is, prima facie, a tension between the Associationist tradition, and the progressive conception of man. With the former we have an individualistic model of logically discrete man, who is shaped by private experience which is filtered by the passions, and who lives in a society which has grown by a natural, immutable process. The latter perspective, on the other hand, sees man as a social being who lives in, and is shaped by, a society which has at least the potential for collective moral and socio-economic progress, which is guided by the principles of human rationality.

Such a tension is far from uncommon in the history of European thought and elements of it have found expression in numerous ways. An obvious example is the dispute (somewhat sterile in my view) between supporters of ‘methodological individualism’ and ‘methodological holism’, and the same themes occur in the far richer pastures of Kant’s perception of the tensions between Classical Empiricism and Cartesian Rationalism.

In the case of Smith, commentators have noted various aspects of the tension within his work, often seeing it as a dichotomy between the approach of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and that of the Wealth of Nations, but, in contrast to the present interpretation, have tended to see it as unresolved.¹⁷

It has also been suggested that the same tension is present, and unresolved, in the Wealth of Nations, where it has been interpreted as an ambivalence between Smith’s faith in the homeostatic properties of a perfectly competitive market economy, and his emphasis upon regulation and control. As Douglas Vickers has pointed out (in a somewhat different context):

‘... the notion of the self-interest of economic entities and the invisible hand that guides their actions to socially beneficient outcomes is set against the considerable, and even on a careful reading of the work, pervasive argument for an appropriate institutional structure or framework of

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economic society.

The position taken here is that the tension does exist in Smith’s writing, in that he wishes to hold both of the positions discussed, but that, because of his methodological approach, his model offers a resolution in which individual and social interact. In other words what could have been left as a dichotomy is, in Smith’s dynamic model, presented as a dialectical interaction in which the individual, depicted largely in terms of the Associationist perspective, is defined in terms of a progressively evolving social context.

Let us now come down to detail, and look at what Smith says about his model of socio-economic interaction.

To start with, there are two distinct, but interconnecting links between the individual and the social in Smith’s work, the first being based upon the individualistic strand of his thought, and the second upon the social. The first of these starts with human vanity, which leads on to pride, and in turn to the social virtue of magnanimity. The second route stresses the role of sympathy and the effects of the ‘impartial spectator’. Let us examine these in order.

Vanity, pride and magnanimity: All men, says Smith, are possessed of ‘self-love’¹⁹:

Every man is, no doubt, by nature first and principally recommended to his own care... much more deeply interested in whatever directly concerns himself than in what concerns any other man. {TMS, II.ii.2.1)

and this gives rise to a universal

... desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us until we go into the grave. (JfW, II.III.28; see also III.III. 12 and IV.IX.28.)

Related to this is one aspect of the ‘trucking urge’ to barter, as a means of bettering our condition, and this is the individualistic premiss for Smith’s central economic concept — the division of labour. The second element in the trucking urge is social in origin, being related to our need for the ‘help of our brethren’; this will be examined below.

In the Wealth of Nations the urge to better our condition is itself treated as the basic human propensity, but in the more philosophi­cal Theory of Moral Sentiments the model is given a fine structure, by introducing ‘vanity’ as the underlying cause. Smith asks:

... to what purpose is all the toil and bustle of the world? What is the end of avarice or ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and pre-eminence? Is it to supply the necessities of Nature? {TMS, I.iii.2.1.)

It is not, says Smith, for even the meanest labourer has these necessities. On the contrary:

To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency and approbation are all the advan­tages which we can propose to derive from it. It is the vanity, not the ease, or the pleasure which interests us. (Ibid.)

Vanity leads on to pride, says Smith, and to the desire for the esteem of others — ‘to be loved and know that we deserve it is the highest human happiness’ (ibid.).

Thus vanity can grow into pride and (encouraged by the social forces to be discussed below) on into ‘magnanimity’ — prudent acts which justifiably gain the respect of others.

This then is one link between the individual and the social; starting from individualistic, psychological premisses, and without significantly departing from the associationist model of ‘ego­centric’ man, leading to actions consistent with social harmony. But Smith is well aware that ‘magnanimity’ as it stands, is inadequate to control the potential excesses of‘self-love’ and thus the interacting social element is needed to provide a system of institutional and cultural restraints.

The second basic human propensity, says Smith, is ‘sympathy’. When we contemplate the actions of another we can, to the extent that we consider them appropriate to the particular situation, enter into a sympathetic bond with the actor. We consider his action proper and approve of both its fitness to the emotion which prompted it, and of the emotion itself. Further we can also enter into a sympathetic bond with the emotions of the third parties affected by the action, so that there is a double element of sympathy involved.²⁰ Thus, for example, if an agent performs a benevolent act (which is generous but not rashly so) we can fully approve of his action, and can also approve of, and enter into, the gratitude of the recipient. The constant action of sympathy, coupled with the desire to be loved (generated by vanity, as outlined above) provides moral checks upon behaviour, and further, in the process of socio-historical development, these checks become embedded in general rules of conduct, and laws.

Smith draws a distinction between ‘propriety’ and ‘merit’; in considering the first of these we evaluate the intensity of a ‘passion’ and assess its fitness relative to the events which occasioned it, whilst in the second case we consider the action which the emotion stimulates. As Smith puts it:

... the sentiment or affection of the heart, from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations: first in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce... (TMS, II.i.2.)

But there is more to sympathy than this, for Smith introduces the notion of the ‘impartial spectator’; when we contemplate our own actions and assess their merit, we do so from the standpoint of a supposed impartial observer — i.e. we abstract from the actual judgements of our fellow men, which may be coloured by prejudice, and attempt to form an ideal judgement of our actions. It is important to recognise that sympathy is a social concept; it is not created by each individual, but by a process of social inter­action and then is internalised by the individual and acts through his own human propensities. Like language, the results of sym­pathetic interaction confront men at the level of social rules and structures.

Closely associated with this view of sympathy is Smith’s belief that man at all times needs the ‘help of his brethren’. Man is a social animal and can only exist in a civilised state by depending upon the assistance of others. Observe, says Smith:

... the accommodation of the most common artificer or day labourer in a civilised and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, thought but a small part, has been employed in producing him this accommodation, exceeds all computation.’ (WN, 1.1.II.)

We find the same notion expressed in the Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766), where he says: ‘When we consider the conveniences of the day labourer, we find that even in his easy and simple manner, he cannot be accommodated without the assistance of great numbers...’ (pp. 161-2).

This generates the social aspect of the ‘trucking urge’ and thus forms a second premiss for the ‘division of labour’ concept. Smith suggests that the trucking urge is probably ‘... a necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech... and... is common to all men and to be found in no other race of animals’ (WW, I.II.2).

In the Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766), the social nature of this aspect of the division of labour is even more clearly brought out, for here its being a ‘necessary consequence of reason and speech’ is shown to be rooted in ‘... that principle to persuade which so much prevails in human nature’ (p. 493).

The picture drawn is of reasoned argument in a social interaction, giving rise to the urge to bargain.

We will return to this aspect of Smith’s work in Chapter 5, when the full model is reconstructed. The next step in the present argument is to examine the role played by human reason in the formation of general rules in the process of sympathetic interaction.

We begin by noting that Smith explicitly rejects the view now commonly known as ‘ethical rationalism’, which holds that reason is adequate to generate directly standards of morality and general behaviour. As he puts it:

... it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the experience of which the general rules are formed. These first percep­tions, as well as all other experiments upon which general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling. (TMS, VII.iii.2.7.)

It is, therefore, to the ‘passions’ that we must turn to find the origins of morality, and it is thus:

... by finding in a vast variety of instances that one tenor of conduct pleases in a certain manner, and that another con­stantly displeases the mind, that we form the general rules of morality, (ibid.)

Thus far we appear to be well within the confines of Associationism (the last quoted passage could easily be taken from Hume), and this impression is reinforced by the fact that Smith claims that: ‘The general maxims of morality are formed, like all other general maxims, from experience and induction’ (TMS, VII.iii.2.6) — a position fully compatible with the doctrine of the association of ideas.

Campbell has taken Smith’s position at its face value and con­cluded that the only role of reason in Smith’s model is the induction of general rules from a series of particular events.²¹ He sees that, for Smith, the individual is capable not only of internalising the moral rules that are ‘given’ to him by his society, but also of going beyond them — this indeed is the way in which they gradually evolve. But Campbell regards this transcendence as being merely inductive — i.e. the individual extrapolates from a given moral rule, and to the extent that his extrapolation agrees with that made by other individuals, it becomes ‘objective’ and is incorpora­ted in a modified variant of the original rule. As Campbell puts it:

The objectivity which attaches to such a spectator’s moral judgement is the sort of objectivity which arises out of agree­ment and not that which implies an external standard known through the exercise of some rational faculty which tran­scends the normal sources of moral judgements, (ibid., p. 139)

Thus, on the numerous occasions when Smith speaks of the part played by reason in the formation of general rules, Campbell interprets him to mean simply induction, and not ratiocination in some wider sense, and concludes that:

The fundamental causes of human behaviour are therefore the passions. These are conceived on the analogy of physical forces and may be regarded as the principles of movement in the human constitution, (ibid., pp. 66-7)

This seems to be correct as far as it goes, but, if we accept the epistemological arguments put forward in Chapter 3 above, it will be clear that for Smith, ‘induction’ does not mean quite the same as it does for Campbell. In Smith’s view the mind plays an active role in ‘working-up’ and interpreting sense experience. Induction is not merely extrapolation, but involves judging the coherence of each individual experience, relative to a pre-existing contextual framework. This interpretation is confirmed by the text of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith repeatedly lays stress upon the fact that a judgement must be made of the propriety of any particular action, relative to the situation in which the action was taken. He is quite explicit on this point:

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 that 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, Li.3.8.)

and he goes on to say that if the sentiments of another

... not only coincide with our own, but lead and direct our own; when in forming them he appears to have attended to many things which we had overlooked, and to have adjusted them to all the various circumstances of their objects; we not only approve of them, but wonder and are surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acuteness and comprehen­siveness, and he appears to deserve a very high degree of admiration and applause. {TMS, I.i.4.3; see also I.i. 1.10 and IV.2.6.)

When we are called upon to assess the propriety of some action, we judge its adequacy in terms of the context in which the action takes place. The standards we apply in making such judgements are also contextual; our perceptions of right and wrong, of propriety and impropriety depend upon the general rules and conventions that have already been induced, by the process of reason guided sympathetic interaction. As Smith puts it:

We observe in a great variety of particular cases what pleases or displeases our moral faculties, what these approve or disapprove of, and by induction from this experience, we establish those general rules. But induction is always regarded as one of the operations of reason. From reason, therefore, we are very properly said to derive all those general maxims and ideas. {TMS, VII.iii.2.6.)

The general rules and conventions thus formed be∞me the value system within which context we evaluate future actions:

It is by these... that we regulate the greater part of our moral judgements, which would be extremely uncertain and precarious if they depended altogether upon what is liable to so many variations as immediate sentiment and feeling, (ibid.)

We thus evaluate the propriety of any particular action relative to the value system which we have already internalised. Such judgement is, therefore, like that made within scientific systems, contextual, in that it involves relating a new ‘observation’ into the nexus of our preconceptions. The criteria presented by Smith in his epistemological discussions would seem to be appropriate here as well. That is to say, that we evaluate any particular act in terms of its coherence (measured in terms of familiarity, simpli­city and generality) relative to our existing system of values. Indeed Haakonssen has gone so far as to claim that:

The principle of impartiality... really amounts to a principle of universality. What the impartial spectator approves of is what everyone is able to go along with, if they are properly informed. It is, in other words, what is possible as a general rule.²²

and further, that:

Closely connected with the requirement of universality are two others which we might call consistency and coherence. One of the elementary requirements for an impartial specta­tor’s judgement must be that it is not contradicting any of the other judgements he would make, and another is that the behaviour to which it leads and the rest of the behaviour following from the spectator’s judgement must cohere. (Ibid.)

This seems to me to be a fundamentally sound interpretation of the role of the impartial spectator in Smith’s model.

If we accept the argument as presented so far, Smith’s extensive development of the impartial spectator, in the final revision of the Theory of Moral Sentiments can be seen as an attempt to develop his model along lines suggested by his basic epistemological per­spective. The impartial spectator is, in a sense, a proxy for dispassionate, contextual, ratiocination, which attempts to incorporate new perceptual experience into an existing perspective whilst preserving the overall coherence of the contextual frame­work in question.

Smith in fact makes clear the link between our judgement of moral propriety and his basic epistemological perspective when he says, earlier in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that: ‘It is in the same manner that we judge of the productions of all of the arts which address themselves to the imagination.’ (TMS, Li.5.10) which as we have seen includes science (see Chapter 3).

It is, however, important to recognise that the process of ‘impartial’ contextual judgement involved in sympathetic inter­action is of a much lower order than that postulated by either Cartesian, or ethical, rationalism. Reason for Smith is not ‘adequate to reality’ in the sense that it can deduce general maxims from first principles; it is rather that informed ‘low level’ judgement working through innumerable instances, can aggregate into social structures which are appropriate within a given context. The contribution made by reason in any individual instance of sympathetic interaction is, therefore, very small, although its overall role is highly important. To avoid conflating this inter­pretation of Smith with either Cartesian, or ethical, rationalism, I will in future, refer to the process involved as ‘practical reasoning’.

Further, most of the variants of rationalism suggest that general maxims can be deduced which, by their conformity with ‘universal’ standards of rationality, transcend social context, and are, in this sense, objective. This is not the case with Smith’s model, which is intrinsically contextual. Here the interpretive framework is produced by practical reasoning within a social context, and its standards of evaluation are internal. We evaluate the adequacy of a particular general rule relative to the context in which it operates, and there can be no external (non-contextual) standards of evaluation beyond this. As with scientific systems, there is a qualitative transition when we move from one interpre­tive context to another.

At first sight, this would seem to leave Smith in a position of total relativism, but this is not, in fact, the case. Even though the adequacy of a particular product of sympathetic interaction can only be evaluated relative to the context in which it is formed, the mechanism by which it is formed is common to all societies, and thus bridges the qualitative gap between one context and the next. It is crucial to recognise that it is not any particular set of laws, rules and conventions that makes society possible, but the actual process of forming these social structures. Men have a need for the approval of their fellows (based on ‘vanity’)²³ and also require their help (a need which increases with the division of labour). In order to obtain these objectives, they control the impulses of the passions and modify their behaviour, so as to bring it into line with that expected by the impartial spectator.²⁴ The impartial spectator is, in effect, a proxy for dispassionate judgement, based upon an adequate contextual knowledge, both of the value system involved, and the particular circumstances of the act to be judged. It is this modification of behaviour that provides social cohesion, rather than the specific value system that happens to be current at the time; this interactive mechanism is the ongoing process which bridges the qualitative gaps between successive contexts of interpretation.

The process itself can thus be the carrier of human rationality, which is reflected in the social structures that it creates. There is thus at least the possibility of ‘progress’, be it moral, legal or economic.

This, I will suggest in due course, is as close as Smith comes to having a teleology in that he holds that human (practical) reason, working through a long process of sympathetic interaction will develop and evolve, and that the results of this process are embodied in changing social structures. Individuals both create these structures, and are in turn shaped by them, in an ongoing dialectical interaction.

The individual in any specific social setting may well be unaware of this process, and has in any case no criteria for assess­ing its adequacy. Social structures confront him, as does language, as determinate and objective, though he in fact is engaged in the process of creating both. We can indeed make a distinction between the short run, in which the individual functions within an apparently ‘given’ environment, and the long run, in which the reason guided evolution of social institutions forms an overall pattern. This leads into a discussion of unintended consequences and what I shall call Smith’s ‘deception theory’, and this will be dealt with in Chapter 7. For the present it can be said that Smith’s position appears to be that, by taking a ‘high level’ and dispassion­ate view, the social scientist/philosopher can discern at least some aspects of the long-run dynamic process. Given the above, Smith’s model can be seen as a synthesis of key elements of the two lines of thought, which were discussed at the start of this chapter. His ‘individual’ is that of Associationism, driven by the passions and pursuing his own self interest; but the social context within which he interacts is capable of reason guided progress.

Some support for this interpretation is to be found in the views of Macfie who has come to similar conclusions (although by a somewhat different route) about this synthesis. Smith’s main feat, he says,

... was his interpretation of eighteenth-century individualis­tic theory in terms of the actual working of reason as it evolves and in turn builds on ‘general rules of conduct’ and social institutions. These stem from the vigour of self-love and conscience, themselves held in a living unity of social feeling by sympathy; the rules themselves reflecting the constant criticism of the ‘impartial spectator’ and the constant pressure of propriety.

If we accept this interpretation, we are no longer faced with the choice of seeing Smith either as an ethical rationalist, such as Wollaston or Clarke, or as a mechanical associationist such as Hartley. His model is dynamic synthesis of Associationism with some of the more ‘rationalist’ perspectives of the European Enlightenment. The idea of progress, the historical perspective and the organic view of society are all reflected in this model, as is the notion of qualitative change.

Two tasks remain in the reconstruction of Smith’s model. Firstly, it still has to be demonstrated that his work is ‘materialist’, as defined in Chapter 2 and discussed above in connection with the Scottish Enlightenment. Secondly, it has so far been shown that qualitative change is possible within Smith’s world-view, but it still has to be shown why it in fact does take place. As we shall see in the next chapter, both of these tasks will be accomplished by an examination of the division of labour concept in Smith’s work — for it is the changing way in which labour is organised that supplies the dynamic element in Smith’s model of qualitative social change.

Notes

1. B. Blanchard, Reason and Analysis (The Carus Lectures for 1959, Illinois, 1962), p. 73. Quoted by S.V. Keeling, Descartes (Oxford University Press, London, 1968), p. xviii.

2. M. Mandlebaum, History, Man and Reason (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 1971).

3. J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Collins, London, 1964), p. 67.

4. D. Hartley, Observations on Man (Richardson, London, 1749), Part 1, Proposition 14.

5. Mandlebaum has used the term ‘geneticism’ to mean the belief in the malleability of man. M. Mandlebaum, History, Man and Reason (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 1971), Chapter 8.

6. Haakonssen has said that ‘... according to Smith economic factors can only be socially determining through their influence on individuals. One supra-individual phenomenon does not bring about another without the intervening activity of particular persons.’

And: Tn this sense Smith is a methodological individualist.’

However, he continues — and the qualification is crucial for the present treatment — ^l... this does not prevent the motives and behaviour of individuals from being explained with reference to a social framework.’ K. Haakonssen, The Science of the Legislator (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981).

7. Smith also has an empirical reason for rejecting the contract theory — the fact that men never mention such a contract as being the foundation of their adherence to society (LJ-. 1762-3, p. 12 et seq.) and this is coupled with what might best be called, a moral reason; that they have in general no choice about being members of a particular society.

8. Cf. Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) (Hofner, London, 1962). For discussions of Montesquieu’s work, see R. Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought (2 vols., Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1968), vol. 1; R. Shackleton, Montesquieu, A Critical Biography (Oxford University Press, London, 1961) and L.M. Levin, The Political Doctrine of Montesquieu’s ‘Esprit des lois’ (Columbia University Press, New York, 1936).

9. A. Turgot, Reflections (1766) (Macmillan, New York, N.Y., 1898). Cf. also R. Meek, Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971) and D.D. Groenewegen, ‘Turgot and Adam Smith’, Scottish foumal of Political Economy (1969). Material contained in Smith’s reported lectures shows clearly that there was parallel development in the work of Turgot and Smith rather than a direct influence.

10. See D.A. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (eds) Introduction to the Theory of Moral Sentiments (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976), for a discussion of the influence of Stoicism on Smith. There they claim that the ‘... Universalist ethic of Stoicism became enshrined in the “law” of nature’, in Smith’s work (p. 7).

11. The most celebrated documentation of the rise of historicism is F. Meinecke’s Die Enstehung des Historismus (Oldenbourg, Berlin, 1936). See also the essay by J.S. Mill, ‘The Spirit of the Age’ (1831) (Chicago University Press, Chicago, Ill., 1942).

12. J.C. Morrison has suggested that the source of Vico’s historicism might well lie in Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise and that: ‘A common link which unifies these apparently quite disparate works is found in the concept of history, for as Vico laid the basis for the modern historisation of philosophy, so Spinoza laid the basis for the modern historisation of religion.’ J.C. Morrison, ‘Vico and Spinoza’, foumal of the History of Ideas (1980).

13. The development of this notion of progress is traced by J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (Dover, New York, N.Y., 1955); cf. also W.W. Wagar (ed.), The Idea of Progress Since the Renaissance (John Wiley, New York, N.Y, 1969).

14. In fact we can find the beginning of a secularised presentation of the idea of progress in J. Bodin, Methodfor the Easy Comprehension of History (1565) (Columbia University Press, New York, N.Y, 1945). Bodin attacked the, then, almost universal view that the ‘golden age’ lay in the past: ‘The age which they call “golden”, if it be compared with ours, would seem but iron.’ However, it was only in the hands of the Pietists that the notion was given an unambiguous presentation. A similar perspective to that of Bodin is to be found in Bernard la Bovier de Fontenelle’s Digression sur les Anciens et les Modemes (1688).

15. For a detailed analysis of the place of Montesquieu in the stream of European thought which flows from Machiavelli to the American Revolution, see J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1975). (See also Chapter 6.)

16. This is perhaps less true of Hutcheson, whose main concern was with moral progress, but even here there is a clear linking of the development of morality with the development of civilisation as a whole.

17. Cf. for example, P. Walton and A. Gamble, From Alienation to Surplus Value (Sheed & Ward, London, 1972). A notable exception here is A.L. Macfie, The Individual in Society (Allen & Unwin, London, 1967) who take a position much closer to the present exposition. Macfie’s views will be discussed below.

18. D. Vickers, ‘Adam Smith and the status of the theory of money’ in A.S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds), Essays on Adam Smith (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976).

19. Not for Smith, identical with ‘selfishness’, which is regarded as a limiting ease of self-love. Cf. E. Fromm, Man for Himself (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Eastbourne, 1967); J. Bonar, ‘The theory of moral sentiments by Adam Smith’, Philosophical Studies (1926). For a more general treatment, see A.O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1977).

20. Smith distinguishes between the ‘unsocial’ and the ‘social’ passions. In the unsocial passions (such as resentment) ‘our sympathy is divided between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them’ (TMS, I.ii.3.3), whilst in the case of the social passions (generosity, humanity etc.), our sympathy is reinforced.

21. T.D. Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (Allen & Unwin, London, 1971). Campbell is concerned with moral general rules but as the last quoted passage from Smith makes clear the mechanism applies to ‘all other general maxims’ as well.

22. K. Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981).

23. This of course is taken from the ‘individualistic’ side of the model. The need for approval is regarded as being an extremely powerful ‘passion’ and indeed: ‘Compared to the contempt of mankind, all other external evils are easily supported’ (TMS. I.iii.2.12). The word ‘external’ was inserted in the sixth edition, and seems to reflect Smith’s distinction between internal states and external events.

24. This indeed is Smith’s answer to Hobbes. The passions are not intrinsically evil, to be restrained only by the ‘extraordinary use of reason or a constant severity of punishing them’. If unconstrained they can indeed be socially disruptive, but they themselves help to generate the social cohesion which holds them in check. T. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (Collins, London, 1962), p. 268.

25. A.L. Macfie, The Individual in Society (Allen & Unwin, London, 1967), p. 57.