Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a renewed debate over the costs at which the benefits of free markets have been bought. This book revisits the moral and political philosophy of Adam Smith, capitalism's founding father, to recover his understanding of the morals of the market age. In so doing it illuminates a crucial albeit overlooked side of Smith's project: his diagnosis of the ethical ills of commercial societies and the remedy he advanced to cure them. Focusing on Smith's analysis of the psychological and social ills endemic to commercial society - anxiety and restlessness, inauthenticity and mediocrity, alienation and individualism - it argues that Smith sought to combat corruption by cultivating the virtues of prudence, magnanimity and beneficence. The result constitutes a new morality for modernity, at once a synthesis of commercial, classical and Christian virtues and a normative response to one of the most pressing political problems of Smith's day and ours.

Educational theory and the social vision of the Scottish Enlightenment

“…Smith's worry was that in this state of 'drowsy stupidity' or 'mental mutilation, deformity, and wretchedness' that 'all the nobler parts of the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people' (Wealth of Nations 5.1.f.51, 60). Much of Smith's later moral philosophy can be understood as an attempt to provide a normative solution to this problem (Hanley, 2009). But more immediately, Smith turned to educational institutions as a remedy for this particular form of corruption (e.g.…”

Adam Smith on the subordination of wage-earners in the commercial society

“…Several extracts of Rousseau's second discourse were translated by Smith for the Edinburgh Review in 1756 (see EPS, 250-6). On the relation between Smith and Rousseau, see Ignatieff (1986), Winch (1996, 70-5), Pack (2000), Rasmussen (2006), Hurtado Prieto (2004, and Hanley (2008Hanley ( , 2009). 30 "those tumultuous combinations which (.…”

A ‘Third Culture’ in Economics? An Essay on Smith, Confucius and the Rise of China

“…But at the same time he believed that the driving force of emulation will misguide individual behavior, as social status does not necessarily coincide with moral status: So, Smith implicitly distinguished between social status (mianzi) and moral status (lian), and proposed an ethics of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Working Paper No. 159 virtue, which is certainly Confucian in essence (though Aristotelian in terms of the genesis of ideas, see Hanley 2006). The most dangerous force working against a moral order is deceit (Gerschlager 2005): High status individuals display signs of status, society strives to attain them, and eventually follows wrong moral standards.…”