Richard F. Teichgraeber, III: ‘Free Trade’ and Moral Philosophy: Rethinking the Sources of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.
Originally published in the New York City Tribune, March 30, 1988.
They are not the same thing, the wealth of nations and the power of nations. Wealth is a form of social and political power, not the whole of it. Communist regimes restrict their own potential wealth in the name of redistributing what they have; nonetheless, they compare rather well militarily to the commercial republics. A political morality of discipline can overcome regimes of liberty, as Sparta defeated Athens. Combine Spartan discipline with Athenian ambition in one man and you get Alexander the Great. Combine them in a nation and you get Rome. In this respect the twentieth century differs not at all from the first.
Adam Smith tried to reconcile commerce with self-defense, liberty with morality. Although remembered as a political economist, he considered himself first of all a moral philosopher. Professor Teichgraeber shows how Smith integrates commerce into a defense of morality, while refusing to sacrifice philosophic realism to ideology.
Along with his teacher at the University of Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson, and the philosopher, David Hume, Smith did not conceive of moral virtue as the rule of reason or as the deliberate pursuit of virtue. Virtue is rather “the result of the proper orchestration of private passions.” Who or what, then, does the orchestration?
Hutcheson followed the teachings of the political philosopher Hugo Grotius, who Teichgraeber regards as a cautious opponent of the Christian-Aristotelian natural law tradition. In this interpretation, Grotius inaugurated the modern natural law tradition—modern because it accepted certain profoundly anti-Aristotelian and un-Christian thoughts of Niccolò Machiavelli, including the reorientation of human attention from heavenly salvation to earthly ambition. Hutcheson to some extent ‘re-moralized’ Grotius by positing the existence of a “moral sense,” a secularized version of Christian conscience.
Moral sense or sentiment governs the virtuous man, orchestrates his passions—not reason or divine law. Morality should not govern political life, however; Hutcheson regards attempt to use political power for moral ends profoundly mischievous. Politics properly gives private life a stable framework. The peaceful spirit of commerce “supersede[s] the formal requirement of religious worship” and the stern, often warlike exigencies of classical politics. The commercial spirit replaces spirituality and spiritedness.
David Hume takes Hutcheson’s moral sense and de-moralizes it. He wants a modern science of human nature, a psychology. ‘Value-free’ modern science aims not at improvement but predictability, Teichgraeber claims, and the tame passions of commerce are much more predictable than the grand passions aroused by politics and religion. Government should refrain from attempts at ennobling citizens. It should see only to their defense from violence and to the protection of their property.
Smith seeks to reestablish a Hutchesonian moral dimension to the commercial system, and to “assimilate Hume’s naturalism to the normative and didactic discourse of Hutcheson’s [slightly] more traditional moral philosophy.” In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith argues that one can study human passions scientifically, while also providing moral counsel. Such counsel requires some criterion of judgment; Smith finds it in the concept of the “impartial spectator,” who observes the passions of others but also naturally judges them—not with the intellect, with reason, but with ‘his’ own moral sentiments. It is the impartiality of the spectator, not ‘his’ rationality, which proves a sound criterion of judgment. The spectator has no ox to be gored, no skin in the game—indeed, not ox nor skin at all, only moral sentiments. The Impartial Spectator consists of natural human sentiments abstracted from the natural human body. (We are only a step or two away from Kant’s Categorical Imperative, whereby nature is jettisoned altogether.)
Limited government protecting a commercial economy defends the natural right of property and thus encourages the virtues of frugality and prudence, albeit at the expense not only of many traditional virtues—particularly those of soldiering, classical and Christian—but, to a lesser extent, at the expense of Smith’s favored private virtues, impartiality and sympathy. Smith distinguishes himself from ideologues who came later, by accepting this sacrifice, knowing the risks but insisting that human society can sustain the private virtues he cared for only if public power limited its moralism and provided sufficient ‘space’ for the quieter virtues to survive, even if to a degree most religious men find lamentable.
The Wealth of Nations was published in a year that turned out to augur well for a great commercial regime: 1776. The final edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments appeared in another noteworthy year, 1789. Without mentioning events in France, Smith added a warning: If “public spirit” mixes with “the spirit of system”—that is, systematic doctrine sternly enforced—the result will be a fanaticism in scientific garb as uncompromising as any religious passion. The French Revolution would soon offer a glimpse of that. Our century has offered a panorama.
“Smith remains an eminent companion for those who ponder the limits as well as the achievements of largely free commercial societies, and wonder why there is no better practical arrangement to serve the common public purpose.” Teichgraeber admits that Smith offers “an unheroic and unromantic view of life, and there are of course other nobler visions of our purpose. Smith’s achievement was to see that there is nonetheless a great and difficult project here, one that men will never pursue consistently.” He continues, “In an age when capitalism has facile champions and dogmatic critics in equal abundance”—would that this were true, worldwide—”Adam Smith remains lucid and realistic about a world he only helped to create.”
In Professor Teichgraeber Adam Smith has found a lucid and realistic interpreter.
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