Adam Smith remarks in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that once the division of labour has taken hold and interdependence is the norm, ‘Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.’ To be a merchant is not just to sell goods, one might claim, but to sell oneself. It is not difficult to imagine exchange as an invitation to manipulative and debased relations not just in a commercial context but also in a broad range of interactions in society.

In this essay I will focus on one of the ways in which Rousseau articulates what he takes to be a key problem that besets society (particularly one devoted to commerce), and on Smith's contrasting take on the issue. That problem concerns a split between ‘to be’ and ‘to appear’ (DI 1997a: 170.2/OC III: 174) that involves deception about who or what one is, as well as play-acting of which even the actor may be unaware. The matter involves a distinction, indeed contrast, between the self as it truly is and how the self appears to others (and possibly even to oneself). I will refer to this multifaceted problem as ‘self-falsification’. It turns out that, for Rousseau, self-falsification corrodes freedom (a contested notion that will therefore draw my attention here as well). Remarkably, two of the three passages from the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men that Smith translated in his Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review discuss the being/appearing theme. Modern interpreters too have frequently focused on those passages.

On one occasion Smith speaks of ‘commerce’ in the broad sense of the term, as meaning social exchange (TMS I.ii.4.1: 39). In that sense commerce has always been with us.

Preface

Charles L. Griswold

Talk about forgiveness has reached astonishing proportions in the contemporary world. Forgiveness is said to do it all: it is the cure for wrongs both personal and political, the road to eternal salvation, and the secret to mental and physical health. Related notions such as apology, pardon, excuse, mercy, pity, sympathy, empathy, and reconciliation have also gained wide currency. One can hardly open the newspaper without reading about an apology being offered by, or demanded from, some organization, state, or prominent individual. We want apology and remorse from convicted criminals so as to decide how harshly to punish them; we praise South Africa’s famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the path to forgiveness and civic unity; countless self-help and religious tracts urge us to forgive our enemies unilaterally and instruct us how to do so, promising that we shall thereby rid ourselves of toxic resentment. Forgiveness and related notions are now so thoroughly woven into the fabric of culture that it is hard to imagine a moral world without them.

Especially in the modern age, Socrates is sanctified as a defender of free speech, honest and relentless inquiry, and the love of truth. Other philosophers too have shared these commitments. But Socrates stood up for them at the cost of his own life. In enacting his commitments as he did, Socrates became more than a theorist: in some sense, he was also an actor on the political stage.

In light of the enormous difficulties inherent in the effort to locate either the philosophy of the historical Socrates, or a Socratic philosophy about whose content the major ancient authors on Socrates agree, in this chapter I will confine myself principally to the Platonic “Socrates.” When referring to “Socrates,” I mean the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues. I have taken note of several interesting and relevant points of contact with other portrayals of Socrates where doing so is useful to my discussion. While confining myself mainly to the Platonic Socrates, I shall, unless otherwise noted, suspend judgment about the relation between Plato and Socrates.

Adam Smith's thought is known to us primarily through his Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. We also possess a number of posthumously published essays on the history of science and the arts, as well as several sets of student notes of his lectures on jurisprudence and on belles lettres and rhetoric (none was authorized or reviewed by Smith). Smith conceived of himself as constructing a comprehensive system; what we have are parts of that system. The fragmentary character of the corpus, and the absence of a treatise on “the theory of the imagination,” mean that Smith's theory of the imagination must be woven together from a number of passages, of which fortunately there are quite a few. The imagination is a continuous and important theme throughout his work and would likely have been an important theme in the work he did not live to complete. In this claim about the imagination's crucial role in human life and cognition, Smith was not (and did not pretend to be) radically innovative; his emphasis on the imagination, and indeed on its creative capacity, unquestionably represents an appropriation of Hume.

I began this book with a general discussion of the Enlightenment and of the widespread unease about its prospects and about its virtues. I suggested that Adam Smith is both a partisan and critic of the Enlightenment; he purposes to preserve what is best about the movement by drawing upon resources ancient and modern, while also analyzing its unintended shortcomings. I have argued throughout that the old problem of the relationship between philosophy and ordinary experience is itself fruitfully seen as a principal theme in his reflections on what it would mean for human life to be enlightened. At several junctures I queried the persuasiveness of the manner in which particular themes and arguments are treated in Smith's work – for example, the priority of the spectator over the actor in matters of ethical evaluation, the safeguards against the possible degeneration of the pleasure of sympathy into selfishness and vanity, the circularity of ethical reasoning, and the prescriptions for liberty of religious belief and their implications for the survival of energetic religion. On each occasion I sought to articulate Smith's likely reply to questions that might legitimately be put to him.

Smith's account of the passions does not mention the love of wisdom. The “intellectual sentiments” of wonder, surprise, and admiration are the basis for our praising the “intellectual virtues” (I.i.4.3). But these emotions are spectatorial and not especially strong. They do not seem to have a place in any of the three categories of passion we examined in Chapter 3. By characterizing the intellectual sentiments as “spectatorial” I mean to underline the relative detachment they entail; whether the spectator is the philosopher-scientist observing the great “theatre of nature” (“History of Astronomy,” III. 1, EPS, p. 48) or the person admiring the philosopher-scientist's acumen, “theoretical” knowing seems propelled not by a desire to live out our lives with greater perfection but by a desire to restore a certain tranquillity to the nonsympathetic imagination. Consequently Smith's theory of the passions provides no explicit place for philosophy, in the etymological and edifying Platonic sense of the term.

To be sure, in its natural proclivity to enter into and understand the situation of another, to take interest in and weave together the other's story, the sympathetic imagination resembles the urge to comprehensiveness and unity tied to eros in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. But of course for Plato, eros also binds together mortal and divine, providing a “ladder” ascending from the ordinary (such as another's physical beauty) to the extraordinary (such as of the Forms).

Virtue occupies Smith's attention throughout the The Theory of Moral Sentiments and is the chief topic of an entire section (Part VI). Virtue is the “natural object of esteem, honour, and approbation”; it is that on which moral evaluation focuses (VII.i.2). “Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful” (I.i.5.6), and that excellence concerns primarily the perfection of self, though we also speak of virtuous or vicious action or conduct. Morality is to be understood primarily in terms of an ethics of character. In the course of an approving summary of Aristotle's ethical theory, Smith writes: “When we denominate a character generous or charitable, or virtuous in any respect, we mean to signify that the disposition expressed by each of those appellations is the usual and customary disposition of the person” (VII.ii.1.13). This, in turn, means that Smith must place significant weight on excellence of character, on the right “pitch” or “tenor” of the emotions, and on judgment. Smith is unusual, among modern moral philosophers, in according judgment so important a role.