The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Part 3

This is another in a series of posts anticipating the July 2009 Liberty Fund colloquia dealing with Adam Smith

Part 3 - Duty

Chapter 1 - Self examination

What is required of the individual - that is our own duty. How do we judge ourselves? This section is the most intense application of the impartial spectator.

"The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerning the conduct of other people. We either approve or disapprove of the conduct of another man according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives which directed it. And, in the same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, according as we feel that, when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it."

1. View our conduct as we image the impartial spectator would. (This is the only looking glass by which we can, in some measure . . . scrutinize the propriety of our won conduct." III.1.5

2. Praise virtue and condemn (punish) vice.

Chapter 2 - Praise v blame

1. Must deserve the praise or blame by motive and action.

2. Behavior should conform to measure of conduct we know to exist (these are the emergent and evolutionary informal norms and conventions as well as formal institutions)

3. Smith argues we are endowed with a desire to please others and a desire to be pleasing in character.

4. Golden median or place between pleasure and pain. And pain a greater motivator than pleasure.

5. Poets v mathematicians

6. Judgments from society (external) and conscience (internal) - how are these a part of the impartial spectator?

Chapter 3 - Conscience

1. Natural eye of the mind (eye of the impartial spectator)

2. Impartial spectator

3. China example hundred million dead v my pinky - self love countered by reason, principle, conscience

4. Famous perspective (Stoic) act and regard ourselves "as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature" III.3.10

5. How to get self command? - page 145 "sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct."

6. 2 philosophies - whining and melancholy v Stoics

7. Back to a pinky (147) fortitude in the face of scratched finger not the same as lost leg

8. Happiness = tranquillity and enjoyment

9. Misery = discord

10. Man of perfect virtue - page 152

Chapter 4 - Self deceit and general rules

Challenge to self judgment - self deceit

Response - general rules from experience

1. Rules emergent and evolutionary

2. Come from moral faculties, natural sense of merit and propriety

3. Also called general rules of conduct - Hayek

Chapter 5 - Influence and authority of the rules of morality

1. Key point - page 102-3 - course clay can reach a minimum standard, not perfection

2. Is God the ultimate enforcer of these rules of conduct/morality - 165?

3. Basis for moral faculties - reason and/or moral sense

4. WN anticipated on pages 166 - incentive of "success in every sort of business" and 168

Chapter 6 - role of Duty

1. Self interest in "common, little and ordinary cases" - follow the general rules

2. Self interest in extraordinary and important objects"(173) - subject to passion called ambition - this can be very positive.

3. Rules of conduct - grammar v aesthetics that is p175 precise, accurate and indispensable (commutative justice) v loose, vague and indeterminant (distributive justice).


Podcast 4

"Thinking of yourself as being observed, not comfortable place to be. Thinking about it unconsciously all the time. Allows for independence, but founded on dependence of internal spectator which itself is derived from society."

Podcast 1 - Introduction

Dan Klein anticipates the discussion of justice and the famous differences between commutative and distributive justice and the rules that govern each:


Justice

Smith is explicit about that remaining "loose, vague, and indeterminate." Rules like grammar, that are precise and accurate, versus the rules of aesthetics, what critics lay down for what is sublime and elegant in writing.

Everything in TMS except for Smith's demand for commutative justice which he says is precise and accurate and indispensable like grammar--the punishment fitting the crime and that you shouldn't commit crimes that violate property or contract, which are black and white; also adds reputation, shouldn't do something to injure someone's reputation (p. 84 doesn't mention reputation but other times does). Apart from that justice--reserves that justice as justice, means this commutative justice--everything else for Smith is in the category of "vague, loose and indeterminate."