The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy [Hardcover]

Raphael(R) has done a masterful job in presenting an exposition of Smith's moral philosophy.Smith conceives that all individuals activate their conscience by postulating the existence in each human being of an impartial mental spectator who is able to discern ,independently from the subjective biases of the individual human observor,what is objectively happening in any particular decision context.The emotion of sympathy is triggered.Sympathy is the key emotion that needs to be understood if one truly wishes to understand moral judgement.Sympathy is not a synonym for pity ,compassion,or expressing feelings of sorrow or regret.The proper role for evaluating the role of sympathy occurs in judgement and not motivation.Essentially,we are all able to put ourselves in the shoes of the human decision maker and walk a couple of miles along the particular path of life that he is taking.Our judgement of rightness or wrongness is based on this mental reconstruction of this path and our own assessment about how WE would behave if stuck in his shoes.

R correctly concludes that Smith has integrated many major aspects and concerns of the Stoic philosophers and early Christian fathers concerning the importance of justice as it relates to all aspects of a human beings life.

The only criticism I have of R's treatment is ubiquitous to all extant writings on Smith's moral and economic theories for the last 248 years.There really is no mystery as to why Smith was compelled to put out a 6th edition of TMS in 1790,some 15 years after the last revision in 1775.Smith's entirely new part VI on the character of virtue and the essential neccessity of promoting morality as a necessary social good follows directly from his discussions in the Wealth of Nations(1776;Modern Library[Cannan] edition)concerning major undepletable,negative externalities,and spillover effects which impact the moral,social,political,martial,and intellectual well being and development of practically the entire workforce,that are a direct byproduct of the workings of the powerful wealth creating process of individual self interest,comparative advantage, and the division of labor that Smith characterized as an Invisible Hand(of the market mechanism)on p.423.Smith discusses these negative spillover effects in great detail on pp.734-741 of the WN.Smith's solution is that government is the ONLY institution that can deal with this immense and massive problem.How will this severe externality ,created by the workings of the Invisible Hand, be dealt with ? Smith states that the entire work force MUST be provided with education and religious instruction,which will be provided free of charge ,if necessary ,to all those who can't afford to pay.Smith's entire discussion on pp.716-768 should be carefully read by all modern day economists since there is not a better discussion of market failure,public goods,and externalities-spillover effects in the current literature.Smith is not merely arguing for public schools.

WE can now see more clearly the connections between the new part VI of the 1790 edition of TMS and the WN.This new part of TMS is the new theoretical construct and foundation that provides the theoretical support for the applied policy analysis advocated by Smith in the WN, in Part V,pp.716-768, that is needed to deal with the dark side of the Invisible Hand Process.What happens if it is NOT dealt with by government action ? What will occur is the "...almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of people "(Smith,p.734;Smith repeats this conclusion 5 times over the next 7 pages).It is now obvious that a major tenet of Marxist analysis is that this severe undepletable externality,first identified by Adam Smith in 1776 and regularly deemphasized by the economics profession for nearly 250 years,will NOT BE DEALT WITH BY GOVERNMENT.This is one of Marx's major premises.This,of course,will result in a very depressing future for the entire working class.Marx's prediction was that, eventually,the working class would rise up to deal with this problem themselves in a revolutionary way.On the other hand,Government actions to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts created by the Invisible Hand process ,leads to a very different outcome-an increased economic well being that is combined with a completely educated and intellectually developed working class applying the principles of Smith's final edition of the TMS,which were virtue and morality.This is ,of course,a 180 degree turn from the wide claims made by economists that Smith was an advocate of free market,laissez faire capitalism that concluded that private greed and avarice would lead to a social optimum if only government would get out of the way.This latter characterization of Smith is simply a bad joke .

An interesting topic for development is WHY no economist,philosopher or political theorist had dealt with this issue since 1759.Perhaps Raphael will write a future book correcting this lacuna.

Smith's foundational theory of Moral Sentiment is usually misunderstood--turning the innate human power of sympathy (an imaginative power into what other people are doing, and why) into merely feeling nice about other people's action, when instead it activates our conscience, where we exercise the power of judgment between sympathy and antipathy (for the actions of others). Conscience thus for us is an intuited Impartial Spectator, impartial because not partisan even toward our own actions (since we can imagine how others see how we act and why, and how they'd judge us.)

Conscience is not w/o practical effect, however, we need to realize, even though it has an impartial touchstone; nor is conscience merely a matter of private morality: indeed, it is directly connected to the role of self-interest and comparative advantage in generating the perhaps positive outcome of the market which he calls the Wealth of Nations. We misunderstand Smith's economic analysis, furthermore, if we think that he sees only positive effects of the Invisible Hand of these market forces; the problem he identifies in the latter book is the likely negative outcomes of that private motive and this public market process; so he adds a whole new section to the sixth ed. of the earlier book, detailing the solution in a just political oeconomy, of univerally provided education in virtues (Stoic and Christian) and religious training.

Conscience is a moral factor and therefore a political factor as well: Smith's philosophy of political economy includes more than just capitalism. Smith anticipates Marx's critique of capitalism, and Smith is not to be confused with the purely libertarian or Utilitarian laissez-faire politics. When he authorizes government to provide for moral and religious education 'free if necessary,' he probably doesn't mean just a welfare or educational bureaucracy; it's a matter of political constitution first, and private charity second, the capitalist provision of public needs via the market's Invisible Hand moreover, third, and only a gov't safety net as a last resort (since official charities are relatively ineffective at doing what they are supposed to do, as Smith and our own experience testify.)

So conscience is the key to pragmatic philosophy, and Socrates would agree; too often people leave the conscience out of the ethical equation, when they endorse what they call 'practical' or 'pragmatic' actions, which turn out to be motivated by an uncritical self-interest or ideology, and which specifically lack the imaginative power of sympathy that must inform judgment. William James, Dewey, and more recent, Sophistical neo-pragmatists should take note of this psychological underpinning that must serve to correct our self-interested, self-serving decisions.