Adam Smith’s Non-foundationalism

The expression “doing-duty” seems apt for the motivation highlighted by Amitai. He describes it as “the sense one has after doing something considered to be a moral duty,” and “attempting to live up to moral commitments.” He proceeds to give as appellation for such motivation “affirmation.” It seems to me that doing one’s duty, avoiding disappointment, is what Amitai describes; it would be yet another step (though, admittedly, a small, natural step) to reflecting on one’s duty and doing-duty to experience affirmation (see Klein 2012, 270–271). So I refrain from using Amitai’s appellation (“affirmation”) and instead use “doing-duty.”

Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al,” 1986.

Numerous 18th and 19th century commentaries on TMS are contained in Reeder (1997), and several make “relativism”-related criticisms, including Thomas Reid (81–82, 87), Thomas Brown (152–156), James Mackintosh (164–166), Theodore Jouffroy (177, 180, 190, 198, 200), and James Anson Farrer (219–230). Cropsey (2001) holds that “Adam Smith’s explicit doctrine is that each man will act virtuously when he wins the approbation of his conscience, of ‘the man within the breast’” (21), which is wrong, I think. Similarly, see Prior (1949, 91), who seizes upon a passage in Smith (at 117.7, “Nature…what he himself approves of in other men”) that does, alas, lend itself to the interpretation that Prior gives it. Melzer (2001) criticizes Smith’s antifoundationalism, saying that Smith’s theory “tries to use the principle of manners to explain morals” (153).

Smith writes of life in society as “the great school of self-command” at TMS 145.22 and 146.25.

On the idea that the word should evolved from (or with), and may be understood as, (would) have been schooled to, and likewise for ought and owed, see Klein 2014.

For discussion on lexical ordering, see Griswold (1999, 82) and Forman-Barzilai (2010, 172, 174).

On the wonder, surprise, and admiration evoked by those who impress us by the “uncommon and unexpected acuteness and comprehensiveness” of their sentiments, and the emulation of such exemplars, see 20.3, 75.3,114.3,192.11, 323.10, and 336.24.

See entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, but the Online Etymological Dictionary suffices (http://​www.​etymonline.​com/​). The common roots of holy and whole remain clear in Swedish today: One would translate “the holiness of the whole” as heligheten av det hela or helhetens helighet.

Going beyond humankind certainly makes sense; Smith speaks of “all rational and sensible beings” (237.6).

Smith speaks of an impartial spectator being well informed at 130.32 and 294.94.

I think that a subtle way in which Joy differs from any human being is that, outside of her interests deriving from the pleasures she finds in our good living, she has no other interests, or, if she does, they would have to pertain to matters off on another planet, as it were, with no connection to our good living. The following quotation about the Deity would, it seems to me, go also for Joy: “Benevolence may, perhaps, be the sole principle of action in the Deity, and there are several, not improbable, arguments which tend to persuade us that it is so” (305.18). But man, even when he is as virtuous as Adam Smith, “must often act from many other motives.”

Incidentally, there is a curious feature of Part IV of TMS. Smith represents Hume as holding that “our whole approbation of virtue” comes from “the appearance of utility” (188.3, see also 179.2, 188.5, 327.17, as well as the title of Part IV, and of its chapters). Hume, however, in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, distinguishes between utility and agreeableness—utility meaning useful to some further aim, agreeableness meaning immediately pleasurable (like in eating chocolate ice cream)—and Hume plainly, schematically holds that both utility and agreeableness go into moral approval, not just utility. (I should note that at 188.3 there is one sentence in which Smith indicates that agreeableness, too, is part of Hume’s theory.)

I write overall propriety because, it seems to me, Smith uses propriety both with respect to an aspect of one’s conduct and with respect all aspects considered more holistically. The latter, described by Smith at 202.5, is what I mean by overall propriety, and it seems to be the sense Smith means in Part IV.