Aristotelian Liberalism (5): Adam Smith's "Moral Sociology"

Since Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue for an Aristotelian defense of liberalism, one might expect that they would find common ground with Adam Smith, who promoted liberalism and developed a theory of the moral sentiments that he thought largely coincided with Aristotle's moral theory.

Contrary to this expectation, Rasmussen and Den Uyl criticize Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. They write:

". . . Although this work appears to offer a moral theory, that theory is marred by an insoluble dilemma: the 'impartial spectator' who makes the final judgment about moral propriety must either make that judgment on the basis of his sentiment or not. If so, what justifies that sentiment over the others being observed in the actions considered? If not, a standard other than sentiment is being used, which seems disallowed by the theory itself and would require its own justification. Nevertheless, it is possible to ignore this problem and treat this work as expressing a theory of moral sociology. If we do this, the actions of the impartial spectator can be considered as descriptive of moral attitudes rather than justificatory, and the work as a whole could be regarded as an account of how moral attitudes and norms are generated in a free society.

". . . the free society undoubtedly allows for the free-flowing of the passions, or sentiments. Assuming that people are guided more by their passions than anything else, it is plausible to conclude that the most common personality of such a society would reflect the most common passions. . . .

". . . Smith's TMS was predictive of moral discussion in a free society. . . . We can, for example, criticize wealth by pointing to the presence of the poor and imagining ourselves in their place. Indeed, the anticapitalist literature is filled with images appealing to sentiments: 'sweatshops,' 'greed,' 'selfishness,' 'exploitation,' 'price-gouging,' and numerous others could be cited. And political battles are generally won or lost today on the basis of how appealing or evocative the issue in question can be made to the general public. In essence, moral discourse has resulted in what Smith describes in his opening chapters: simply putting oneself in another's place and reflecting upon one's feelings. Feelings are decisive; rational analysis serves to clarify, not justify, the sentiments" (LAN, 214-15).

Rasmussen and Den Uyl worry that although Smith's "correspondence of sentiment" is true sociologically, it will not provide normative stability in a pluralistic society, because it will lead to "the abandonment of an objective theory of value" (LAN, 216-17). They suggest that the only escape from this outcome is to see the truth in Plato's Allegory of the Cave--"the self-conceptions and values of a culture are largely dependent upon the beliefs of the intellectual class." Philosophers have a duty to shape popular culture to conform to their rational understanding of the truth. Philosophers must take responsibility for shaping the souls of their fellow citizens (LAN, 218-29).

Rasmussen and Den Uyl write:

"We agree with Adam Smith that we are largely other-oriented from the beginning, or at least as much other-oriented as self-oriented. . . . our real problem is one of learning how to develop the self, and what that means is that we need to figure out how to bring the other into the self--that is, finding ways to integrate our other-orientation into our own nexus. The Smithian position of developed sentiment is not a solution. We never integrate others into ourselves by sentiment even if they 'correspond.' This is why Smith must employ the device of the 'impartial spectator' as a deus ex machina of ethical integration to get it to work. In our view, the integration can only come through practical reason or practical wisdom of the agent as applied to the agent's own project of eudaimonistic flourishing" (NOL, 316-17).

But I would say that what Rasmussen and Den Uyl suggest in this last sentence--integrating others into ourselves through practical reasoning--is exactly what Smith suggests. Smith's "impartial spectator" is not totally disinterested. When Smith lays out "the order in which individuals are recommended by nature to our care and attention," he makes it clear that each individual is "first and principally recommended to his own care." With oneself at the center, one can move outward in an ever expanding circle to care for family members, friends, fellow-citizens, one's country, and even all of humanity. But that care and concern become weaker as one moves farther out (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Liberty Classics, 219-27). That's why Smith rejects Stoic cosmopolitanism as contrary to human nature. The "impartial spectator" moderates but does not deny our partiality for ourselves (TMS, 292-93).

This expansion of one's care for oneself to embrace care for others arises from our nature as social animals, and it requires a combination of reason and sentiment. Rasmussen and Den Uyl object to Smith's appeal to moral sentiments. But, oddly enough, they concede that Smith is accurately describing what happens in a free society governed by "the free flowing of the passions, or sentiments." Like Plato, they imply that philosophers can become purely rational beings, free from the passions or sentiments that move other human beings, and these purely rational philosophers have the duty to shape the souls of those less rational than they are. But doesn't this contradict what Rasmussen and Den Uyl say about the necessary union of reason and desire? Are philosophers purely rational beings, or are they moved by an erotic desire for intellectual understanding?

Smith's account of the moral sentiments arises from a rhetorical tradition of thought that began with Aristotle's Rhetoric, particularly Aristotle's study of the moral emotions in Book 2. Smith thought he was continuing the teaching of Aristotle and the other ancient philosophers who thought that each virtue was rooted in some "sentiment of the heart" (TMS, 271, 328). This same rhetorical moral psychology of the sentiments continues today in the Darwinian understanding of the moral emotions.

The appeal to moral emotions is inescapable. For example, Rasmussen and Den Uyl use the example of a starving man stealing food to illustate an "emergency situation." Here we might judge the starving man to be acting morally, even though he violates the moral property rights of those from whom he steals. In such a case, we must allow for the discretion of judges, who see that "rights of any kind do not apply" (LAN, 144-50). This is an example of "moral tragedy." But isn't this a case where we judge that the starving man has done no wrong, because his theft doesn't elicit any emotion of moral disapproval? Doesn't every assertion of a natural right make some claim upon our moral emotions?

The Esoteric Atheism of Adam Smith's Impartial Spectator

 In July, 11-13, I will be in Bogota, Columbia, for a conference of the International Adam Smith Society.  I will present a paper on "The Three Waves of Adam Smith's Sociobiological Morality of Liberalism."

Adam Smith needed Charles Darwin, I will argue, because beginning with his book The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin showed how evolutionary biology could support Smith's theory of moral sentiments.

Smith also needed Edward Westermarck.  Because beginning with his book The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas in 1906, Westermarck elaborated this Smithian and Darwinian account of the biology of the moral sentiments, particularly in explaining the evolutionary psychology of the moral universals such as the incest taboo.

Smith also needed Edward O. Wilson.  Because beginning with his book Sociobiology in 1975, Wilson showed how the growing biological science of social behavior could deepen the empirical science of morality supporting a Smithian theory of moral sentiments, which has become, over the past fifty years, a new intellectual movement for studying evolutionary morality.

These are the three waves of Adam Smith's sociobiological morality.

This is a liberal morality because it rests on the fundamental idea of liberalism that society is a largely self-regulating unintended order--a largely self-enforcing spontaneous order that emerges from the social interactions of individuals seeking to satisfy their individual desires.  Smith elaborates this liberal view of morality in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.  

This breaks away from the traditional Western idea that moral order must conform to a transcendental cosmic order--the moral law of a cosmic God, a cosmic Reason, or a cosmic Nature.  Instead of this transcendental moral cosmology, liberal morality is founded on an empirical moral anthropology, in which moral order arises from within human experience.  Darwinian science supports this liberal moral anthropology by showing how it arises from the coevolution of human nature, human culture, and human judgment.

One objection to my argument is that Smith's theory of moral sentiments does seem to depend on a transcendent divine law insofar as Smith often invokes God as the "Author of Nature" and the "Great Judge of the World," who will be the ultimate enforcer of the moral law by punishing the bad and rewarding the good in the afterlife.  

In answer to this objection, I have suggested in some previous posts (here and here) that there is plenty of evidence that Smith shared the atheism or skepticism of his friend David Hume, but Smith had to be more cautious than Hume in hiding this so that he could avoid persecution.

Here I will point to some of the evidence for this in what Smith says about the "impartial spectator" as the standard for moral judgment in two chapters of The Theory of Moral Sentiments-Part III, chapters 2 and 5.  I will cite the page numbers of the Liberty Fund edition of 1982, which is the sixth and final edition of Sentiments, originally published in 1790.  I will also cite the page numbers of the Liberty Fund edition of The Wealth of Nations.

If morality is rooted in our desire for a mutual sympathy of sentiments, and if we judge ourselves to be good when those around us approve of our conduct, then it would seem that morality depends on the judgment of our fellow human beings.  Sometimes, however, the social judgment of our conduct can be unfair or misinformed, and then we must appeal to a higher court--to the court of our own conscience, to our imagined impartial and well-informed spectator, who can see that our conduct is praiseworthy even when we are not actually praised by other people.

But when the imaginary praise of our conduct by the impartial spectator is contradicted by the real blame of our conduct by the actual spectators in our lives, it is hard not to be thrown into despair.  "In such cases," Smith observes, "the only effectual consolation of humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still higher tribunal, to that of the all-seeing Judge of the world, whose eye can never be deceived, and whose judgments can never be perverted" (TMS, 131).  Thus, our happiness in this life is often dependent on our belief in a life to come after death, when God will reward the good with eternal bliss and punish the bad with eternal suffering.

Immediately after speaking about this religious doctrine of eternal judgment, however, Smith observes "that the virtuous man who has the misfortune to doubt of it, cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe it" (TMS, 132).  The virtuous man doubts this doctrine because some of the most zealous believers in the doctrine have described a divine distribution of rewards and punishments "too frequently in direction opposition to all our moral sentiments."  For example, Christians have often asserted that all of the virtuous pagans--all of the heroes, the statesmen, the poets, the philosophers, and other benefactors of humanity in the ancient world--will be condemned to eternity in Hell.  This is contrary to our moral sentiments, to our natural sense of the praiseworthiness of such virtuous people (TMS, 133-34).

(I have written a series of posts on life after death here, here, here, here, and here.)

Elsewhere in Sentiments, Smith warns that "false notions of religion" can grossly pervert our moral sentiments (156, 170, 176).  And he observes that some thoughtful people might entertain the "suspicion of a fatherless world" (235).  In The Wealth of Nations, he laments that in the medieval Christian universities, both moral and natural philosophy were corrupted by being made subservient to Christian theology (771).  Comments like these have convinced some readers of Smith that he was not a sincere religious believer, but that he had to feign religious belief to avoid being persecuted or being offensive in a society where Christian orthodoxy was pervasive.

Smith has a chapter on "the influence and authority of the general Rules of Morality, and that they are justly regarded as the Laws of the Deity" (TMS, 161).  Notice that Smith does not say that the rules of morality truly are the laws of God, but that they are "justly regarded" as the laws of God.  He says that this "opinion" is "impressed by nature" on the minds of human beings.  He explains:

"Men are naturally led to ascribe to those mysterious beings, whatever they are, which happen, in any country, to be the objects of religious fear, all their own sentiments and passions.  They have no other, they can conceive no other to ascribe to them.  Those unknown intelligences which they imagine but see not, must necessarily be formed with some sort of resemblance to those intelligences of which they have experience. . . . They could not fail, therefore, to ascribe to those beings, for the excellence of whose nature they still conceived the highest admiration, those sentiments and qualities which are the great ornaments of humanity, and which seem to raise it to a resemblance of divine perfection, the love of virtue and beneficence, and the abhorrence of vice and injustice.  The man who was injured, called upon Jupiter to be witness of the wrong that was done to him. . . . These natural hopes and fears, and suspicions, were propagated by sympathy, and confirmed by education; and the gods were universally represented and believed to be the rewarders of humanity and mercy, and the avengers of perfidy and injustice.  And thus religion, even in its crudest form, gave a sanction to the rules of morality, long before the age of artificial reasoning and philosophy.  That the terrors of religion should thus enforce the natural sense of duty, was of too much importance to the happiness of mankind, for nature to leave it dependent upon the slowness and uncertainty of philosophical researches" (TMS, 163-64).

Here, like Hume in his Natural History of Religion, Smith explains religious belief as a natural psychological propensity for anthropomorphic projection of human mental experience onto the universe, so that human beings imagine that there are invisible spirits with minds like their own.  And since human beings have moral sentiments and passions, they imagine that these divine beings have the same moral sentiments and passions.  In this way, religion sanctions morality as divine law, and thus provides supernatural support for a natural sense of moral duty.  A philosopher like Smith might then conclude that moral rules are "justly regarded" as divine laws.  Even if he thinks this is only a noble lie, he thinks that it is good for us if most of us believe it to be true.

In some previous posts (here and here), I have shown how Darwin and modern evolutionary psychologists have confirmed this insight of Smith and Hume that  believing in God is a natural, almost inevitable, consequence of the innate propensities of the human mind as shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. 

For Smith, religious belief is both supportive and subversive of our moral sentiments.  The religious belief that God shares our natural moral sentiments can strengthen our morality, but religious fanaticism can promote violence and intolerance that corrupt our morality.  What we need, then, Smith argues in the Wealth of Nations, is "that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established" (793).  This could be achieved if government dealt equally and impartially with all religious sects, and everyone was free to choose his own religion.  There might then be a free marketplace of religions, with hundreds or thousands of different religious sects; and if no sect was allowed to use violent coercion against any others, the competition for believers would induce "philosophical good temper and moderation," such as one sees in Pennsylvania, where the Quakers have established religious liberty, and the law does not favor one sect over others.  Thus does Smith embrace John Locke's policy of religious toleration, but unlike Locke, Smith does not deny toleration for atheists.

Smith worries that the morals of some of the small religious sects might become "disagreeably rigorous and unsocial."  To avoid this, the government has two remedies.  It can secure the liberty of people to provide popular diversions through the arts--painting, poetry, music, dancing, and the theater--which had been restricted by the Calvinist churches.  The government can also promote the study of science and philosophy, at least among the middle and upper classes, because "science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition" (WN, 796).  Smith foresees that in a modern commercial society, natural science would replace religious superstition in explaining the natural world (WN, 767-68).

On the Question of Religion and Ethics, Adam Smith Was the Last Esoteric Writer

Daniel Klein has written an essay on "Adam and God" published at the website for the American Institute for Economic Research.  He notes that the scholarly interpreters of Adam Smith have disagreed about whether God, or a being like God, is crucial for Smith's ethics.  He argues that "yes, a God-like being plays a central role in Smith's ethics."  In making that argument, he believes that he is in agreement with a long list of Smith scholars, and I am on that list.

Whether I agree with Klein depends on resolving the ambiguity in his claim that "a God-like being plays a central role in Smith's ethics."  This is ambiguous in two ways.  First, does the "God-like being" exist independently of the human mind, or does it exist only as an anthropomorphic projection of the human mind?  Second, must this religious belief "play a central role" in the ethics of all human beings, or is this religious belief necessary for the ethics of some human beings, but not all?

If Klein means to say that God as an anthropomorphic projection of the human mind plays a central role for some but not all human beings in Smith's ethics, then I agree.  If some Smith scholars do not see this as Smith's teaching, it's because they fail to recognize that Smith was the last esoteric writer, and so they fail to distinguish Smith's surface teaching from his secret teaching.

Like David Hume in his Natural History of Religion, Smith explains religious belief as a natural psychological propensity for anthropomorphic projection of human mental experience onto the universe, so that human beings imagine that there are invisible spirits with minds like their own (see, for example, TMS, 163-64).  And since human beings have moral sentiments and passions, they imagine that these divine beings have the same moral sentiments and passions.  In this way, religion sanctions morality as divine law, and thus provides supernatural support for a natural sense of moral duty.  A philosopher like Smith might then conclude that moral rules are "justly regarded" as divine laws.  Even if he thinks this is only a noble lie, he thinks that it is good for us if most of us believe it to be true.

Klein rightly points to a passage in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (p. 215) where Smith speaks of the "man within the breast" as the "representative of the impartial spectator," and the impartial spectator is understood to be a single universal being, which, according to Klein but be a superhuman or God-like being.

But the thought in this passage is elaborated in another passage, where Smith says that human beings must consult "this inmate of the breast, this abstract man, the representative of mankind, and substitute of the Deity, whom nature has constituted the supreme judge of all their actions" (130).  Notice here the equivalence between "the representative of mankind" and the "substitute of the Deity," and the suggestion that it is natural for human beings to imagine the Deity as the anthropomorphic projection of mankind.

In some previous posts, I have shown how Darwin and modern evolutionary psychologists have confirmed this insight of Smith and Hume that believing in God is a natural, almost inevitable, consequence of the innate propensities of the human mind as shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. 

Smith is also like his friend Hume in thinking that some human beings can be good without God--they can recognize moral law as enforced by natural human sanctions without having to believe this is a divine law enforced by supernatural divine sanctions.  This supports Smith's liberal moral anthropology that does not depend on a transcendent moral theology.

The best evidence for this is in Smith's letter on the life and death of Hume--the Letter to William Strahan of November 9, 1776--in which he publicly and explicitly endorsed Hume's skepticism by praising him as a wise and virtuous man, indicating that religious belief was not indispensable for morality, and suggesting that he no longer saw the necessity for esoteric writing, because he lived in a society that was liberal enough to tolerate freedom of thought and speech for philosophers like Hume and himself.  He thus became the last esoteric writer and signaled the success of the liberal Enlightenment in making esoteric writing unnecessary and undesirable. 

Prior to this letter in 1776, Smith was an esoteric writer.  But after this letter, he became more open in his writings, saying things publicly that shocked religious believers, but without suffering violent persecution.

All of these points have been elaborated in previous posts.

Aristotelian Liberalism (2): The Virtue of Prudence

In making their case for Aristotelian liberalism, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl revive Aristotle's claim that prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis) is the supreme virtue. Prudence is the intellectual faculty for judging conduct, for judging the best course of action for particular individuals in particular circumstances. From what we know about human nature, we can see that human beings generally pursue certain generic goods--for example, health, wealth, beauty, friendship, honor, and knowledge. But this general knowledge of the generic goods of human life cannot tell us how best to organize and integrate the pursuit of these goods in a manner that is appropriate for particular individuals. To do that, individuals must exercise prudence in deciding for themselves what form of life is best for them as most conducive to their happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia). The primary purpose of a liberal regime as favored by Rasumussen and Den Uyl is to protect the liberty of individuals to exercise the intellectual virtue of prudence in their pursuit of moral virtue understood as their flourishing or self-perfection.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl take their account of prudence from Den Uyl's book The Virtue of Prudence (1991). This book has not received the attention it deserves. I don't know of any other book that covers so well the logic of prudence and the history of how prudence fell from being the preeminent virtue (for Aristotle) to being hardly a virtue at all (for Kant and many contemporary moral philosophers).

In the first part of his book, Den Uyl summarizes the logic of prudence. In the second part, he surveys the history of prudence in moral philosophy, concentrating on Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Kant. In the final part, he argues for reviving an Aristotelian conception of prudence.

Although I generally agree with him, I disagree on a couple of points. But with some slight modifications, Den Uyl's framing of the argument for prudence would be compatible with my argument for Darwinian natural right.

Den Uyl summarizes the main points in his reasoning in five "negative" theses on the positions that deny the importance of prudence and five "positive" theses on the positions that favor prudence (pp. 50-51).

Here are the five "negative" theses:

"Thesis I: The Polarity Thesis: When ethics is considered to be fundamentally concerned with the conflict between duty and self-interest, prudence will be unlikely to surface as a significant virtue.

"Thesis II: The Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory which takes desire alone to be either motivationally or axiologically foundational will thereby fail to accord prudence the status of a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Impersonalist Thesis: A moral theory which understands duty in essentially impersonalist or agent-neutral terms will be inimical to the development of prudence as a virtue.

"Thesis IV: The Non-teleological Thesis: Prudence does not thrive in non-teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Communitarian Thesis: If our relations with others are given foundational importance in ethics, the virtue of prudence will, to the extent that the individual self is given secondary or derivative status, diminish in importance as a virtue."

Here are Den Uyl's five "positive" theses:

"Thesis I: The Self-Perfective Thesis: When the first concern of ethics is conceived to be the individual agent's own well-being or perfection, then prudence will flourish as a virtue.

"Thesis II: The Non-Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory open to the possibility that desires alone are not motivationally or axiologically foundational will, ceteris paribus, also be open to the possibility of prudence being a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Personalist Thesis: A moral theory which takes agent-centeredness to be essential and foundational to moral obligation and moral propriety will, to the extent of its focus upon individual flourishing and well- being, encourage the virtue of prudence.

"Thesis IV: The Teleological Thesis: Prudence thrives in teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Individualist Thesis: Prudence maintains significance as a virtue when relations with others are grounded in principles that are either directly derived from, or shown to be compatible with, those principles or conditions that contribute to the agent's own well-being or self-perfection."

While I agree with these theses, I think some of them are stated in misleading ways that lead to some mistakes in Den Uyl's line of argument.

First, the "Hedonic" and "Non-Hedonic" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy as to whether "desires alone" motivate moral conduct. While "desire alone" is not sufficient, we need to see how conduct combines desire and reason, and so "reason alone" is not sufficient either.

Second, the "Communitarian" and "Individualist" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy between community and individuality. As Den Uyl indicates, human individuals are naturally social animals, and therefore one's individual good includes the social good.

Third, I agree with Den Uyl's "Impersonalist" and "Personalist" theses, but I don't agree with how he applies them to the case of Adam Smith. I don't agree with his criticism of Smith's appeal to the "impartial spectator" as "impersonalism."

REASON AND DESIRE
Den Uyl (like Rasmussen) has been influenced by the exaggerated rationalism of Ayn Rand, and consequently he is inclined to play down the importance of desire or emotion in moral life. Den Uyl comes close to making Kant's mistake of insisting on an absolute separation of reason and desire (147-57, 246).

No serious thinker (not even Hume) believes that "desire alone" is "motivationally or axiologically foundational" for moral conduct. Surely, "reason alone" is not a sensible position either, despite Kant's insistence that morality is a matter of pure reason. Rather, what we need is a combination of reason and desire.

This is Aristotle's position. Oddly, Den Uyl is almost completely silent about this. But in two passages, he does very briefly acknowledge this. So, for Aristotle, the good life was "equally affective and rational" (155). Moreover, "Kant always found it 'risky' to allow emotions to creep into motivations, whereas Aristotle did not" (298).

As I argued in Darwinian Natural Right (chap. 2), Aristotle thought that in the striving for a good human life, reason and desire were mutually dependent. "Thought by itself moves nothing," Aristotle insisted, because any human action that is deliberately chosen requires a union of reason and desire. A deliberate choice manifests either "desiring reason" or "reasoning desire" (NE, 1139a36-b6).

I use the word "desire" to translate the Greek word orexis. Aristotle coined the Greek noun orexis from the Greek verb orego, which means "to reach out." Orexis is the soul's "reaching out" for something in the world. For Aristotle, it is a general term for all kinds of longing or striving, including physical appetites, social emotions, and intellectual yearnings (DA, 433a9-b31). I use the word "desire" in the same way as a general term for all kinds of psychic impulse or inclination. With that sense in mind, I defend an ethics of desire: the good is the desirable, and reason judges how best to satisfy the desires in a manner that is coherent and harmonious over a whole life, which is the work of prudence.

Den Uyl obscures this point by sometimes suggesting that prudential reason somehow works without desire, but then at other times he says that reason "expresses itself through desire" or "directs" desire (64-65).

Den Uyl rightly argues that the primary purpose of prudential reasoning is to integrate the generic goods of human life in a way that is appropriate to an individual life. Den Uyl takes his list of generic goods from Aristotle's Rhetoric. This list corresponds closely to my list of twenty natural desires, which supports my idea that the good is the desirable. But Den Uyl is reluctant to identify these goods as desires. He says that while prudence manages the mixture of the goods, the goods themselves are "essentially givens" (81). "Aristotle says that practical wisdom deliberates about means and not about ends, for the ends are given" (284). Given by what? I would say they are "given" by desire.

Den Uyl speaks of the generic human goods as "basic attractions" or "natural inclinations," as objects of human "aspiration" or "longing" that exert "teleological pull" (168-70, 188). As far as I can tell, such language is circumlocution for desires.

In Norms of Liberty, Den Uyl and Rasmussen are more open in acknowledging the generic goods as desires. They write: "Human flourishing is an object of desire. Yet, in terms similar to Socrates' question to Euthyphro, flourishing is an object of desire because it is desirable and choice-worthy, not simply because it is desired or chosen. In other words, it is desired because of what it is" (127). The desirable is an objective fact of human existence because it is rooted in human nature. But the right mix of these generic goods for an individual human being requires prudential judgment. "The desirable and choice-worthy elements of flourishing need to be achieved, maintained, and enjoyed in a coherent manner, and this involves a consideration of generic, individuative, and circumstantial factors" (147).

This moves towards my position. The good is the desirable. The generic goods of human life correspond to the natural desires of human biological nature. But prudence is required to judge how best to manage those desires in the life of any individual human being (Darwinian Natural Right, 17-49).

COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
Because of the influence of Ayn Rand, Den Uyl (as well as Rasmussen) tends to play up "the virtue of selfishness"--that is, understanding ethics as self-perfection. So the good is always good for someone. Although we can by abstraction see the generic goods of human nature, we should see that the actualization of the human good is always the individualized good of particular human beings.

As a consequence, Den Uyl is suspicious of modern moral philosophers who define ethics as other-regarding conduct, and who therefore dismiss self-regarding conduct as non-moral. I agree with Den Uyl about this. But I don't agree with him that Adam Smith is guilty of this mistake.

Den Uyl rightly sees that if we understand the human good as self-perfection or self-regarding conduct, we can then recognize that insofar as we are naturally social animals, we extend ourselves into others. We love our families, our friends, and our fellow citizens. We can even see a friend as "another self."

I think this is Smith's position. Den Uyl criticizes Smith for appealing too much to social sentiments as a foundation for morality, because he thinks Smith thus denigrates the self-regarding character of morality. I disagree, because it seems clear to me that Smith's moral sentiments are simply expressions of the social nature of human beings by which their self-regarding concerns extend to a concern for others who are attached to them. As individuals who are social animals, we can extend our sympathy outward from ourselves to embrace an ever wider circle of people. But our attachments will tend to be stronger to those near the center of the circle than those farther out.

Den Uyl seems to acknowledge this when he writes that "the moral virtues are largely social in character," and therefore "a type of theory of moral sentiments, which Adam Smith analyzed perhaps better than anyone else, comes into play. For the particular manner in which one's liberality or magnificence is demonstrated will largely be a function of the social sentiments present in one's society" (205-206).

It would be good if Den Uyl noted that much of what Smith and Hume said about the moral sentiments or emotions comes out of the rhetorical tradition begun by Aristotle, particularly in Book 2 of the Rhetoric.

Moreover, as I have often argued on this blog, the importance of the moral emotions for moral experience has been confirmed by research in biological moral psychology, particularly in neuroscience.

THE PARTIALITY OF THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR
Den Uyl criticizes Smith for his idea of the "impartial spectator"--the idea that we adjust our moral sentiments to conform to what we imagine would be felt by an impartial observer. This can look like the sort of "impersonalism" evident in the moral philosophy of Kant and others in this tradition, in which the universal rules of morality require a "view from nowhere."

But in fact, as I have already suggested, Smith's "impartial spectator" is not absolutely impartial, if that means a total denial of any individual self-regarding perspective. What Smith has in mind, I think, is close to what Den Uyl suggests when he speaks of the "detached perspective" as a "necessary tool of prudence" by which we see ourselves as others see us, or as some fully informed spectator might see us (222-23). This does not deny the primacy of the individual. Rather, it's a way by which an individual satisfies his social desires for interpersonal life.

The discovery of "mirror neurons"--a subject of some posts on this blog--indicates how the evolution of the brains of social mammals has shaped cognitive abilities for entering into the thoughts and feelings of others in order to better satisfy natural desires for social engagement.

Ultimately, then, I see Den Uyl's account of prudence as fully compatible with my account of how a naturalistic view of morality can be rooted in human biological nature.

A couple of my posts on Ayn Rand can be found here and here.

The Natural Desire for In-Group Loyalty Denies Animal Rights: Frans de Waal on the Biological Ethics of Animal Emotions

I have defended an evolutionary theory of morality as rooted in the moral emotions of evolved human nature.  In stressing the importance of the moral sentiments for moral psychology, this evolutionary theory belongs to the philosophic tradition of sentimentalist ethics that includes David Hume, Adam Smith, Edward Westermarck, Edward Wilson, and Frans de Waal--a tradition that is set against the Platonic and Kantian tradition of rationalist ethics.

I have written previously about how de Waal's version of this evolutionary theory recognizes both the continuity and discontinuity in the moral psychology of animals (de Waal 2006).  According to de Waal, the moral sentiments constitute the first level of morality--the emotional building blocks of morality that include empathy, reciprocity, retribution, a sense of fairness, and reconciliation to resolve conflicts and restore harmonious relationships.  These moral sentiments can be seen in some form in many species of nonhuman animals.

De Waal identifies social pressure as the second level of morality.  Through social praise and blame, individuals are habituated to conform to the social rules of their group that maintain the good order of the community.  These rules are enforced through reward, punishment, and reputation.  In these ways, morality serves as a social contract for a cooperative society.  Some of this can be seen in some nonhuman animals.  For example, high-ranking males in chimpanzee groups engage in "policing behavior"--these males break up fights among others, and their intervention seems to be remarkably evenhanded.  Nevertheless, the human morality of social pressure goes beyond the morality of other animals in that human beings can formulate social rules that are more abstract and systematic than is the case for other animals.  Much of this abstract rulemaking depends on the human capacity for language.

Finally, judgment and reasoning constitute a third level of morality, and this is uniquely human.  De Waal observes: "I know of no parallels in animals for moral reasoning" (2006, 174). We are like other social animals in that we care about our reputations--how we appear in the eyes of others--so that we want to be praised and not blamed by others.  But we can also use our distinctly human capacity for abstraction and imagination to see ourselves mirrored in the eyes of an imagined "impartial spectator" (as Adam Smith called it), so that we want to do what is praiseworthy, regardless of whether we are actually praised by anyone.  We care not only about our real reputation but also about our imaginary reputation.  From this we develop an internal sense of self-esteem or conscience, so that even when other people do not punish us for our bad conduct, we punish ourselves by feeling guilt or shame.  Those few human beings who never feel guilt or shame are psychopaths who have no conscience because they do not feel the moral emotions.  (I have written about psychopaths as "moral strangers.")  There is no evidence for anything like conscience or the impartial spectator in nonhuman animals.  (I have written about Smith's concept of the "impartial spectator.")

And yet even if nonhuman animals do not show the full range of human morality, these animals do show some of the moral emotions; and therefore, de Waal argues, these nonhuman animals do deserve to be treated with some moral respect.  But then we might wonder whether these animals have equal rights.  Are we morally obligated to give equal consideration to the interests of all sentient beings, as Peter Singer has argued?  Must we see the immorality not only in racism and sexism but also speciesism?

Recently, de Waal and Kristin Andrews have surveyed the evidence from affective neuroscience suggesting that many animals, even invertebrates, experience emotions of pleasure and pain that should give them some moral standing (de Waal and Andrews 2022).  Through emotions and felt experience (sentience), organisms judge experiences as attractive or aversive, and these physical and mental states of attraction or aversion prepare the organism for adaptive action.

So, for example, since there is increasing evidence that lobsters are sentient and experience emotions of pleasure and pain, de Waal claims, it is wrong for human beings to kill them by boiling them.  Either we shouldn't kill them at all, or there should find some ethical way to kill them.

But then de Waal recognizes that Singer's argument for equal animal rights fails because it's morally impossible for human beings to give equal consideration to the interests of all sentient beings.  This is impossible because there is an evolved natural desire for in-group loyalty.  This belongs to my list of the twenty natural desires.  

There is an expanding circle of human moral concern that begins with each individual being concerned for himself and then extends first to the individual's family and friends and beyond that to the community, tribe, or nation, and beyond that to some humanitarian feeling for distant strangers who might be brought to one's attention, and then finally to all life forms.  But typically, the moral emotions of sympathy become weaker as they are extended farther out on the expanding circle (de Waal 2006, 163-66).

Loyalty is a moral duty in that we expect people to care more for those close to them than to distant strangers or to nonhuman animals.  Inevitably, there are conflicts of interest within and between species.  So that moral systems are inherently biased towards the in-group.  For that reason, the moral sentimentalists like Adam Smith, Edward Westermarck, and de Waal, who speak of the impartiality required for moral sentiments recognize that this cannot be an absolute impartiality but only an apparent impartiality.  After all, if human beings were absolutely impartial, they would not care for themselves, for other human beings, or for other animals, because nothing would really matter.

That we should feel some sympathy for other animals, particularly for those animals that are close to us or that elicit our parental care, is an expression of our morality.  We know that one sign that a child might grow up to be a psychopath is that he is unusually cruel in his treatment of animals.  And it is mostly a he, because most psychopaths are male.

But still most of us agree that it is right to kill animals for food and other products, and that it is right to use animals for painful medical experiments necessary for developing drugs and therapies for human beings and for the scientific understanding of mammalian physiology and neurology.  We should feel some concern for minimizing animal suffering.  But we feel much more concern for minimizing human suffering.

As Westermarck observed, "absolute impartiality . . . would concede to all sentient creatures equal rights," but "impartiality . . . is not absolute, only relative, that is, impartiality within certain limits" (1900, 185).  Our sympathy for nonhuman animals is limited by our partiality for human beings.  "Humanity to animals" does require "that we ought to pay some regard to their feelings," Westermarck suggested, but this does not mean "that they should be regarded equally with the feelings of men" (1932, 213).

Even our sympathy for other human beings is limited by our in-group loyalty.  In war, fighting for one's country against the enemy is a moral duty.  Betraying one's country is treason.  But still, it can be a moral duty to refuse to fight in an unjust war.

REFERENCES

de Waal, Frans. 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

de Waal, Frans, and Kristin Andrews. 2022. "The Question of Animal Emotions." Science 375: 1351-52.

Westermarck, Edward. 1900. "Remarks on the Predicates of Moral Judgment." Mind 9: 184-204.

Westermarck, Edward. 1932. Ethical Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company.

Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, and the Evolution of Religion and Morality in Bogota

 

                                           The Church on Monserrate Peak Overlooking Bogota

The Statue of Jesus Christ on Monserrate Overlooking Bogota

                                                               Universidad de los Andes

                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Recently I returned from Bogota, Colombia, where I participated in a conference at the Universidad de los Andes organized by the International Adam Smith Society (IASS).  The University of the Andes is located near the old colonial center of Bogota at the foot of Monserrate Mountain.  The University was founded in 1948 as the first private nonsectarian (that is, not affiliated with the Catholic Church) and politically neutral university, which was designed to emulate an American liberal arts university.  It is now regarded as the best university in Colombia and one of the best in all of Latin America.

Bogota is a huge city of almost 10 million people.  At an elevation of 8,400 feet, it is the largest city in the world above 8,000 feet elevation.  Overlooking the Bogota savannah, Monserrate peak rises to 10,300 feet.

IASS has posted online the program for the conference, which has links to the papers.

I was a commentator on Ivan Sternick's paper: "Society as a Moral Order: Adam Smith's Theory of Sociability as a Response to Mandeville and Rousseau."  I also presented my own paper: "The Three Waves of Adam Smith's Darwinian Liberal Moral Theory."  I have previously posted some portions of my comments on Sternick's paper, in which I suggested that Smith was an esoteric writer who agreed with Mandeville's satiric criticism of Christian ethics.

The responses to my paper were more favorable than I had expected.  There was almost no criticism of my argument that Smith's theory of the moral sentiments has been confirmed and deepened by Darwinian evolutionary moral psychology.  The commentator on my paper--Dirk Schuck--agreed with my argument, although he admitted that he knew little about the evolutionary science to which I was appealing.

I did detect, however, that some people were reluctant to accept my claim about Smith as an esoteric writer who hid his irreligious skepticism from his religious readers, but who momentarily dropped the cloak of esotericism when he praised David Hume as a "wise and virtuous man," which revealed his secret teaching that religious belief was not necessary for the morality of philosophers like Hume and Smith.

Smith does often appeal to God as the moral lawgiver and divine judge of the world, particularly in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  But the Adam Smith scholars have long debated the question of whether Smith was sincere in his religious teaching or whether he taught this only to satisfy his religious readers, while he himself was a skeptic like his friend Hume.

Shinji Nohara surveyed this debate in his paper--"Adam Smith as a Moralist"--and then he took the side of those who claim that Smith was a sincere religious believer.  "For Smith," Nohara concluded, "the Deity provided human beings with the moral distinction between right and wrong," and thus "only the Deity could be the implicit foundation of morality" (22-23).

But people questioned Nohara as to why he relied so heavily on Smith's "atonement passage" for explaining "Smith's theodicy" (14-22).  The problem is that Smith removed this passage from the 6th and final edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was published in 1790, a few weeks before Smith's death.

This passage, which had appeared in the first five editions of TMS, was the only place in all of Smith's writing where he spoke of how man facing the judgment of God in the afterlife must appeal not to God's justice, because no man can be justified by his past conduct, but to God's mercy; and to win that mercy, man needs "the most powerful intercession," so that "the most dreadful atonement has been paid for our manifold transgressions and iniquities" (TMS, 92).  Without explicitly mentioning Jesus Christ, this sounds like a statement of the core doctrine of orthodox Christianity that the original sin of all mankind makes it impossible for men to earn salvation without the intercession of Jesus who was crucified to provide atonement for the sins of mankind.  Moreover, it was only here and in one other passage that Smith has used the word "revelation," which was the one word commonly understood to mean the communication of knowledge by divine or supernatural means (TMS, 92, 128).  But Smith eliminated both of these passages in the 6th edition of TMS.

Many of Smith's Christian readers quoted the "atonement passage" as evidence that Smith was a devout Christian who accepted the New Testament teaching about how the sacrifice of Christ on the cross had redeemed mankind from original sin.  So when some of these Christian readers noticed that Smith had dropped this passage from the 6th edition, they were disturbed.  For example, William Magee, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, published a book of Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice, in which he quoted from Smith's atonement passage as showing that a distinguished philosopher had endorsed the Christian doctrine of Atonement; but then he expressed his surprise that Smith had spoken of Hume the infidel as "a perfectly wise and virtuous man," in the 1776 letter on Hume's life and death.

After someone pointed out to Magee that Smith had withdrawn this atonement passage from the last edition of TMS, Magee added a footnote to his book attributing Smith's withdrawal to "the infection of David Hume's society . . . one proof more . . . of the danger, even to the most enlightened, from a familiar contact with infidelity," and then Magee again quoted Smith's offensive praise of Hume in his obituary letter.  D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie have told this story in an Appendix to their Oxford/Liberty Fund edition of TMS (383-401).

These two actions of Smith that his Christian readers found offensive--his praise of Hume as wise and virtuous and his withdrawal of the atonement passage--are the two moments when Smith revealed his secret teaching--that while religious belief is necessary to reinforce the morality of the religious man, it is not necessary for the morality of irreligious skeptical philosophers like Hume and Smith.

Although I call this Smith's "secret teaching," there are a few passages in TMS where Smith comes close to stating this openly.  Consider, for example, this passage:

"When the general rules which determine the merit and demerit of actions, come thus to be regarded as the laws of an All-powerful Being, who watches over our conduct, and who, in a life to come, will reward the observance, and punish the breach of them; they necessarily acquire a new sacredness from this consideration.  That our regard to the will of the Deity ought to be the supreme rule of our conduct, can be doubted of by nobody who believes his existence. . . ."

"It is in this manner that religion enforces the natural sense of duty; and hence it is, that mankind are generally disposed to place great confidence in the probity of those who seem deeply impressed with religious sentiments.  Such persons, they imagine, act under an additional tie, besides those which regulate the conduct of other men.  The regard to the propriety of action, as well as to reputation, the regard to the applause of his own breast, as well as to that of others, are motives which they suppose have the same influence over the religious man, as over the man of the world.  But the former lies under another restraint, and never acts deliberately but as in the presence of that Great Superior who is finally to recompense him according to his deeds.  A greater trust is reposed, upon this account, in the regularity and exactness of his conduct.  And wherever the natural principles of religion are not corrupted by the factious and party zeal of some worthless cabal; wherever the first duty which it requires, is to fulfil all the obligations of morality, wherever men are not taught to regard frivolous observances, as more immediate duties of religion, than acts of justice and beneficence; and to imagine, that by sacrifices, and ceremonies, and van supplications, they can bargain with the Deity for fraud, and perfidy, and violence, the world undoubtedly judges right in this respect, and justly places a double confidence in the rectitude of the religious man's behaviour" (TMS, 170).

Notice how the "religious man" who believes in the existence of God is set apart from "other men" or "the man of the world."  While some men are motivated to be moral purely by "the natural sense of duty," the religious men are motivated by this but also by "an additional tie"--their belief that moral laws are the sacred laws of the "Great Superior."  But this works only as long as the religious men follow the "natural principles of religion," which are concerned with the obligations of morality, rather than "frivolous observances," "sacrifices," or "ceremonies," that have nothing to do with morality.  And notice the implication that "the man of the world" can be naturally motivated to be moral even though he is not a religious believer.  Notice also that the "natural principles of religion" enforce the same "natural sense of duty"--the same natural morality--that is recognized by the irreligious "man of the world."

We should also see here two more important features of Smith's account of religion and morality.  First, this natural religious morality does not depend on any supernatural revelation.  Second, the enforcement of this natural religious morality does not depend on any political enforcement of a religious establishment that would deny religious liberty and toleration.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "revelation" denotes "the communication of knowledge by divine or supernatural means."  As I have already indicated, the two passages in TMS that used the word "revelation" were withdrawn by Smith in the 6th edition.  Thus, Smith is silent about the reason/revelation debate between those who seek truth by purely natural reason and those who seek truth from supernatural revelation, but Smith is clearly on the side of reason rather than revelation.  That is why he withdrew the passage on atonement, because the doctrine on atonement depends on faith in the revelation of the supernatural miracle of Christ's Resurrection.  In the original passage on atonement, Smith had said that "the doctrines of revelation coincide, in every respect, with those original anticipations of nature" (TMS, 92).  But that cannot be true, because the doctrine of Atonement depends on faith in the revelation of a supernatural truth.

The publication in 1779 of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, three years after his death, turned the secret debate over reason and revelation into a public debate, which indicated the success of the Liberal Enlightenment in making esoteric writing unnecessary.   Previously, I have written about how this allowed Darwin and Leo Strauss to openly debate reason and revelation here, here, here, here, and here.

Smith refused to consider the possibility that religious faith could be based on the supernatural truth of revelation.  Instead, like Hume in his Natural History of Religion, Smith explained religious belief as a natural psychological propensity for anthropomorphic projection of human mental experience, so that human beings imagine that there are invisible spirits with minds like their own.  And since human beings have moral sentiments and passions, they imagine that these divine beings have the same moral sentiments and passions.  In this way, religion sanctions morality as sacred law, and thus provides religious support for a natural sense of moral duty (TMS, 163-64).  (I have written previously about this Humean and Darwinian explanation of religious belief as rooted in evolved human nature here and here.)

Smith's refusal to take seriously any claim of faith in the supernatural truth of revelation explains why in his account of the religious supports for morality, he is silent about the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love).  As Thomas Aquinas explained it, the natural virtues (such as justice, temperance, courage, and prudence) are directed to man's natural happiness, and they can be known by his natural principles.  But the supernatural or theological virtues (as identified by Paul in the New Testament) are directed to man's supernatural happiness--his eternal salvation and knowledge of God--and this surpasses human nature, because it requires divine revelation: these theological virtues "are not made known to us, save by Divine revelation, contained in Holy Scripture" (Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 62, a. 1).

Since Smith has no interest in the possibility of supernatural happiness, he is only concerned about how religious belief might support those natural virtues that promote natural human happiness in our earthly life.  For Smith, religious belief seems to be both supportive and subversive of our moral sentiments.  The religious belief that God shares our natural moral sentiments can strengthen our morality.  But religious fanaticism can promote violence and intolerance taht corrupt our morality.  What we need, then, Smith argues in The Wealth of Nations, is "that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established" (793).  This could be achieved if government dealt equally and impartially with all religious sects, and everyone was free to choose his own religion.  There might be a free marketplace of religions, with hundreds or thousands of different religious sects competing for believers; and if no sect was allowed to use violent coercion against any others, the competition for believers could induce "philosophical good temper and moderation," such as one could see in Pennsylvania, where the Quakers had established religious liberty, and the law does not favor one sect over others.  Thus did Smith embrace John Locke's policy of religious toleration, but unlike Locke, Smith did not deny toleration for atheists.

As I toured Bogota and read about the history of Colombia, I wondered about whether the evolution of religion in Bogota might illustrate Smith's natural history of religious morality.  My wife and I travelled to Zipaquira, a city about 30 miles outside of Bogota, to see the Salt Cathedral, an underground cathedral carved out of salt in an old salt mine.  I later learned that one of the oldest archaeological sites in Latin America--El Abra--is located on the eastern edge of Zipaquira.  This is a rock shelter and cave system for hunter-gatherers that is dated at around 12,400 years BP (Gomez Mejia 2012).  They lived by hunting mammals such as deer, fishing, and gathering plants.  There is also evidence within this occupation zone that beginning about 5,000 to 3,000 years BP, the people here began cultivating and domesticating plants.

There is some evidence of religiosity in their funeral burials, which include artifacts associated with offerings.  As I have indicated in some previous posts, the evolutionary history of religious belief and morality beginning with hunter-gatherers is complicated.  The anthropological evidence--as surveyed by John Lubbock and others--suggested to Darwin that our earliest human ancestors in foraging societies had no belief in any omnipotent, moral God who was "a Creator and Ruler of the universe."  In that sense, they had no moralistic religion.  But they did show the nascent religiosity of animism--the belief that all of nature is animated by unseen spiritual agencies--although these unseen spirits did not actively intervene in the lives of foragers to enforce morality.  At the earliest stage of religiosity, Darwin observed, "anything which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed with some form of life, and with mental faculties analogous to our own" (Darwin 2004, 116-117).  This anthropomorphic animism as the original source of religiosity was also suggested by Smith: "Those unknown intelligences which they imagine but see not, must necessarily be formed with some sort of resemblance to those intelligences of which they have experience" (TMS, 164).

Recent surveys of the studies of hunter-gatherer societies have shown that some form of animism is universal.  Belief in an afterlife and shamanism are almost universal--in about 80% of these foraging bands (Peoples, Duda, and Marlowe 2016; Sanderson 2018).  Of course, the hunter-gatherers that have been studied by anthropologists over the past 200 years are not necessarily direct analogues or direct descendants of our Pleistocene ancestors, but they do at least provide a window onto those earliest human ancestors (Marlowe 2005).  Belief in an afterlife is the belief in the survival of the individual personality after death (Bering 2006).  Shamanism is the belief that a shaman has access to an unseen world of spirits, that he can enter into a trance state in a ritual to practice divination and healing, and thus mediate between the earthly and spirit worlds (Eliade 1964; Singh 2018).

Notice that this animistic and shamanistic religiosity of our original hunter-gatherer ancestors does not provide any religious enforcement of morality, because the beings in the unseen spirit world are not omnipotent and moral deities actively concerned with monitoring human life.  Only very recently in human evolutionary history, Darwin observed, have human beings come to believe in an all-seeing and moral God, and this has contributed to the advance of morality.  This cultural evolution was driven by group warfare in which groups that were cohesive because of their shared religious belief in moralistic Gods would tend to prevail over groups that lacked such religious beliefs.  And now this belief in morality as rooted in reverence or fear of God is "most important, although not necessary."  Now it is possible for people to live by their own moral judgment.  "Man prompted by his conscience, will through long habit acquire such perfect self-command, that his desires and passions will at last yield instantly and without a struggle to his social sympathies and instincts, including his feeling for the judgment of his fellows" (Darwin 2004, 138-40, 682; Darwin 1959, 94-95).

In this way, according to Darwin, the evolutionary history of morality and religion has passed through three stages.  First, in the earliest and longest stage, human hunter-gatherers organized their lives in small bands through social instincts such as kinship and reciprocity, without any need for a religiously grounded morality.  Then, as human beings formed large, civilized societies, they formulated through cultural evolution religious traditions of believing in an omnipotent and providential God who enforced a moral law for human beings.  Now, it is possible for many human beings to live by the inner monitor of their conscience (or what Smith identified as the "impartial spectator") without the necessity for believing in a God who rewards the good and punishes the bad.  Over the past 40 years, the growing research in the evolutionary psychology of morality and religion has largely confirmed Darwin's account (Norenzayan 2013, 2014; Norenzayan et al. 2016).

One can see these three stages in the history of morality and religion in the history of Bogota and Colombia.  When my wife and I toured the Gold Museum (Museo del Oro) in Bogota, we saw beautiful displays of pre-Columbian gold artifacts from all regions of Colombia.   Many of these artifacts were from the Muisca, the indigenous people of the Bogota savannah before the Spanish conquest.  The Muisca replaced the El Albra Culture sometime between 1,000 years BC and 500 AD.  The Muiscas moved moved from being hunter-gatherers to becoming sedentary farmers.  When the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the Muisca were organized as a tribal confederation with each tribe ruled by a chief.  The tribes united in the face of a common enemy under the command of one ruler.  They fought against the Spanish, but they were completely defeated by 1540.

The moral and political order of Muisca civilization was grounded in their religion.  There is a good animated video about the religious creation story of the Muisca.

They worshipped a variety of deities at sacred sites and in temples, with priests performing sacrifices.  Their gods included a Supreme Being who had created light and Earth, and gods and goddesses of the Moon and the Sun..  Their rituals included consuming psychotropic plants such as coca.

All of this was swept away after the Spanish conquest when the Spanish established the Catholic Church as the state church for their Latin American colonies.  After the struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule, Simon Bolivar captured New Granada in 1819; and he was elected the first president of the Republic of Gran Columbia.  The Catholic Church was still the state church, but there was a continuing debate over whether the Church should remain the established church.  

Colombian politics has been dominated by two political parties--the Conservatives and the Liberals--and while the Conservatives have been in alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, the Liberals have wanted a separation of church and state.  In 1848, Ezequiel Rojas, a leading liberal thinker, wrote an influential newspaper article supporting the candidacy of Jose Hilario Lopez as president, which is generally seen as the beginning of the Liberal Party in politics.  In his article, Rojas declared:

". . . the Liberal Party wants a government organized to benefit the governed.  It wants a republic, a truly representative system, an independent congress, an executive branch with powers limited by law and responsible for an independent judiciary, good laws, and an unmistakably national and American executive power with impartial justice for all, which by its actions takes into account nothing but the public benefit.  It wants all this so the obedient will not be slaves to those who govern; so there can be true liberty; so we can liberate ourselves from theocratic government; so those of Granada can truly ensure ownership of themselves and their properties" (Rodriquez and Ramirez 2022, 148).

This began a long liberal period dominated by the Liberal Party in government--from 1848 to 1880--during which the liberal effort to "liberate ourselves from theocratic government" led to assaults on the power of the Catholic Church and to constitutional guarantees for religious liberty in the Constitution of 1863.

But then when the Conservatives gained office in 1880 with the presidency of Rafael Nunez, they overturned many of the liberal reforms, including a restoration of the Catholic Church's supremacy.  In 1888, the Conservative Party government signed a concordat with the Vatican that began by declaring:

"The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is the religion of Colombia; the public powers recognize it as an essential element of social order, and they are obliged to protect it and make it respected."

A hundred years later, this was reversed by the Colombian Constitution of 1991, which disestablished the Roman Catholic Church and declared (in Article 19) that "freedom of religion is guaranteed."

In travelling around Bogota today, one can see evidence for a deep Christian, and particularly Catholic Christian, culture.  The Catholic Cathedral and the giant statue of Jesus standing on the peaks of Monserrate overlook the entire city.  In the Cathedral on Monserrate, there is statue of Jesus behind the altar that has been associated with many miracles.  People come from far away to make a pilgrimage to there, where masses are conducted every day.  On Sundays, the Cathedral is full.  Around the city, my wife and I went into some of the beautiful old churches, and there were always some people there praying or attending mass.

Surveys indicate that 90% of Colombians identify themselves as Christians, 70% identify as Catholic.  But less than 30% of the Catholics regularly attend mass.  It seems, therefore, that while Christian religious practice is greater in Colombia, and in most of Latin America, than is the case in North America and Europe, even there the tendency to secularization has been strong.

I am reminded of Smith's letter to Alexander Wedderburn (August 14, 1776), in which he reports on Hume's decline towards death.  Smith said that Hume told him that he was trying to come up with some excuse to give to Charon to delay his being carried into Hades on Charon's boat: "At last I thought I might say, Good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of people; have a little patience only till I have the pleasure of seeing the churches shut up, and the Clergy sent about their business; but Charon would replay, O you loitering rogue; that wont happen these two hundred years; do you fancy I will give you a lease for so long a time?  Get into the boat this instant."

Was this Hume's joking way of suggesting that he foresaw the churches being shut up in maybe 200 years--towards the end of the 20th century?  Can't we see a lot of evidence that that decline in fervent religious belief and practice has been occurring in many parts of the world?

And if so, can we also see that the moral order of society has endured without much support from religion?  Can we see that Smith was right that for some people, perhaps even for many people, the impartial spectator of conscience, as part of our evolved human nature, can take the place of God as moral monitor?  

Can we be good without God?

Or should we take seriously the complaints of the Catholic Integralists and the Christian Nationalists that in fact secularizing liberal societies are showing moral decline and social disorder, and that the only way to restore moral order is to establish theocratic states that will enforce Christian morality?

REFERENCES

Bering, Jesse. 2006.  "The Folk Psychology of Souls."  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (5): 453-498.

Darwin, Charles. 1958.  The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Ed. Nora Barlow. New York: Norton.

Darwin, Charles.  2004. The Descent of Man. New York: Penguin.

Eliade, Mircea. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gomez Mejia, Juliana. 2012. "Analysis of Bone Markers of Stress in Populations of the Middle and Late Holocene of the Savannah of Bogota, Colombia." Colombian Journal of Anthropology 48: 143-68.

Marlow, Frank W. 2005. "Hunter-gatherers and Human Evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology 14: 54-67.

Norenzayan, Ara. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Norenzayan, Ara. 2014. "Does Religion Make People Moral?" Behaviour 151: 365-84.

Norenzayan, Ara, A. F. Shaariff, W. M. Gervais, A. K. Willard, R. A. McNamara, E. Slingerland, and Joseph Henrich. 2016. "The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39: 1-65.

Peoples, Hervey, Pavel Duda, and Frank W. Marlowe. 2016. "Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion." Human Nature 27: 261-82.

Rodriguez, Sebastian, and Gilberto Ramirez. 2022. "Liberalism in Colombia." Econ Journal Watch 19 (1): 142-65.

Sanderson, Stephen K. 2018. Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Singh, Manvir. 2018. "The Cultural Evolution of Shamanism." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41: 1-61.

Evolution and The Virtue of Self-Love: Mandeville and Smith

One of the common assumptions of the modern social sciences, biology, and moral philosophy is the distinction between self-love and altruism and the claim that true morality must be altruistic in its selflessness and thus free from any motivation by self-love.  I doubt this.  Having evolved to be both naturally selfish and naturally social animals, it seems to me, we extend ourselves into others for whom we feel some attachment.  Thus, our concern for ourselves includes a concern for others who have some connection to us.  Our other-regarding dispositions are extensions of our self-love.  This also means that absolutely disinterested and universal love is impossible.

Adam Smith would seem to agree with this.  After all, in the index of The Wealth of Nations, self-love is identified as "the governing principle in the intercourse of human society" (Liberty Fund edition, 1069).  And the reference for this is the famous passage about how we persuade the butcher, the brewer, and the baker to provide us our dinner:

"Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only.  He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.  Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this.  Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.  It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their interest.  We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantage.  Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens" (26-27).

Smith's language here echoes the language in some passages of Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits (Liberty Fund edition, 2:349-50).  Mandeville's book was one of the most scandalous books of the 18th century because of his famous claim conveyed in the subtitle that private vices are public benefits.  If we define virtue as self-denial in acting contrary to all of one's natural passions or desires, and thus denying one's selfish interests in serving the good of others as dictated by pure reason, then human beings are almost never virtuous, because they generally act out of self-love to satisfy their selfish passions and desires.  They are social animals who need the cooperation of others and who crave the praise and recognition of others to satisfy their selfish vanity.  For this reason, they will not deny their passions, but they will conceal them in order to appear to be virtuous.

A civilized society of wealth and refinement would be impossible if most human beings were really virtuous, because in living a life of ascetic self-denial, they would never generate the luxury and grandeur that is achieved in commercial societies where everyone actively pursues the wealth and honor that will gratify their selfish desires.  And thus it is that our private vices are turned into public benefits.

Many readers of Smith's Wealth of Nations have seen it as adopting Mandeville's argument for how a commercial society generates all the economic, social, and intellectual benefits of a free market society where everyone is motivated by self-love.  Much of the modern economic theory of capitalism has been based on the assumption that human beings can be seen as selfish egoists whose selfishness can be channeled through free market exchange to generate gains from trade that benefit everyone.

But in recent decades, many social scientists have challenged this conception of Homo economicus as too narrow to explain the full range of human motivation, which must include truly other-regarding behavior as well as purely self-regarding behavior.  And many of these social scientists have turned to Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments  as presenting the moral psychology of Homo moralis--of human beings as moved by moral concerns for the good of others that go beyond self-interest.

Smith's rejection of Mandeville's argument is announced in the very first sentence of The Theory of Moral Sentiments: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it" (9).

This first sentence seems to begin in the middle of a conversation.  Apparently, some people--such as Hobbes or Mandeville--have argued for the natural selfishness of human beings.  Smith is responding by suggesting that even if we agree with this, we should see that there are other principles in human nature that interest a man in the happiness of others.  He goes on to identify pity or compassion as obvious examples of those "original passions of human nature" by which we enter into the pleasure or pain of others.  "As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation."  We do this through imagination in projecting ourselves into their situations.  This supports our experience of "sympathy," which Smith defines broadly as "our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever" (10).

We have a natural desire for the pleasure of mutual sympathy.  Nothing pleases us more than to see that others sympathize with our emotions, and nothing disturbs us more than the sense that others cannot share our emotions.  Smith anticipates that those like Hobbes and Mandeville will try to explain this as an expression of self-love.

"Those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love, think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain.  Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness, and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured of that assistance; and grieves whenever he observes the contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition.  But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration.  A man is mortified when, after having endeavoured to divert the company, he looks round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself.  On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest applause" (13-14).

Here we see Smith's common method of reasoning, in which he appeals to some ordinary human experience--such as the pain we feel when those around us don't laugh at our jokes--to confirm a general claim about human nature.  He indicates that this shows a concern for how others see us that cannot be explained as self-interested.  But Hobbes and Mandeville would point to the desire for applause as showing the vanity of the comic entertainer.

This desire for the pleasure of mutual sympathy is seen by Smith as the fundamental motivation for morality.  In praising or blaming one another, indicating whether we can or cannot share one another's emotions, we create social norms of good and bad conduct.  We judge our conduct by whether it is approved or disapproved by those around us.  We discover that those spectators are sometimes mistaken in their judgments if they are uninformed, misinformed, or biased.  But then we can imagine how a fully informed and impartial spectator would judge us, and we can then internalize that imaginary impartial spectator as our conscience.  That conscience can then give us the social approbation that we seek--as self-approbation--even when those in our social circle fail to give us the approbation that we deserve.

We must wonder, however, whether this really refutes Mandeville's position.  Some of Smith's readers during his lifetime--such as Thomas Reid--said that his "system of sympathy" was "only a refinement of the selfish system" of Mandeville.

In the last part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith has a chapter on Mandeville entitled "Of licentious Systems" (VII.ii.4.4, pp. 306-314).  He declares that Mandeville's ideas are "wholly pernicious" and "in almost every respect erroneous," although "there are, however, some appearances in human nature, which, when viewed in a certain manner, seem at first sight to favour them" (308).  We might suspect, then, that there is at least some partial truth to what Mandeville says.

Smith responds to Mandeville with two claims.  First, he claims that Mandeville's argument that all appearance of praiseworthy conduct is actually motivated by vanity fails to distinguish two higher levels of passion that go beyond vanity.  Second, he claims that Mandeville deceptively assumes that all virtue requires complete self-denial and ascetic repression of all our natural passions, which obscures the idea that virtue requires not the denial of the passions but their moderation.

Vanity is the passion or desire for praise even when we do not deserve it, Smith explains, and that passion or desire is rightly despised.  But this is different from the passion or desire for acquiring praise by really deserving it.  And this is different from the passion or desire for rendering ourselves praiseworthy without any regard for whether we are in fact praised by others.  The second is the love of true glory.  The third is the love of virtue.  Vanity is rightly blamed.  But the love of true glory and the love of virtue are rightly praised.

The lover of true glory is like the vain man in that both desire to be praised.  But unlike the vain man, the lover of true glory desires to be praised because he really is praiseworthy, and thus he is morally superior to the vain man.

The lover of virtue is like the lover of true glory in that they both deserve to be praised.  But unlike the lover of true glory, the lover of virtue cares not whether he is actually praised by anyone, because he cares only to deserve praise.  "The man who acts solely from a regard to what is right and fit to be done, from a regard to what is the proper object of esteem and approbation, though these sentiments should never be bestowed upon him, acts from the most sublime and godlike motive which human nature is even capable of conceiving" (311).

The lover of virtue has a happiness from his own self-approbation that makes him independent of fortune and of the opinions of those around him.  He cannot be mortified by the foolish opinions of those who do not recognize his virtue.  As a man of real magnanimity he cannot be disturbed by undeserved blame.  And yet Smith admits that this is rarely achieved: "It seldom happens, however, that human nature arrives at this degree of firmness" (311).

Mandeville has a response to this claim that the lover of virtue is morally superior to the vain man.  He recognizes that some people perform good deeds in silence and out of public view, because they love doing what is praiseworthy for its own sake, regardless of whether they are actually praised.  Mandeville observes:

"Such Men, I confess, have acquir'd more refin'd Notions of Virtue than those I have hitherto spoke of; yet even in these (with which the World has yet never swarm'd) we may discover no small Symptoms of Pride, and the humblest Man alive must confess, that the Reward of a Virtuous Action, which is the Satisfaction that ensues upon it, consists in a certain pleasure he procures to himself by Contemplating on his own Worth: Which Pleasure, together with the Occasion of it, are as certain Signs of Pride, as looking Pale and Trembling at any imminent Danger, are the Symptoms of Fear" (1:57).

The lover of virtue, who understands virtue as character that is praiseworthy, is proud in praising himself, and thus satisfying his passion or desire for approbation, even if it's only his own self-approbation.  Such pride expresses self-love, and therefore it cannot be virtue in the traditional Christian sense of self-denial.

Smith objects to Mandeville's appeal to Christian virtue.  In every case, Mandeville pretends that human nature "falls short of that complete self-denial which it pretends to, and, instead of a conquest, is commonly no more that a concealed indulgence of our passions" (312).  "Some popular ascetic doctrines which had been current before his time, and which placed virtue in the entire extirpation and annihilation of all of our passions, were the real foundation of this licentious system" (313).

Some commentators on Mandeville--such as F. B. Kaye, the editor of the edition of The Fable of the Bees published by Liberty Fund--see his book as a satirical reductio ad absurdum that refutes traditional Christian and rationalistic conceptions of virtue that require complete self-denial by showing how contrary they are to our natural moral experience.

In contrast to the ascetic Christian virtues of self-denial, which almost no human beings really follow, Mandeville sees that most human beings in civilized societies follow the "doctrine of good manners," according to which human pride motivates people to conceal their pride in pretending to care more about others than about themselves (2:66, 2:109, 2:145-56).  Most human beings care about appearing to be good in conforming to public standards of good conduct because they are afraid of being shamed by the public exposure of their vices.  Men of honor are even more careful about appearing to conform to the highest standards of conduct by showing the most praiseworthy character and achievements. 

Men of honor will pretend to be religious believers, because disbelief is shameful, but they cannot be "real believers" (1:269, 1:308; 2:97, 2:102).  Moreover, Mandeville suggests, "men of reflection" are prone to infidelity (2:313-317).  Although Smith uses religious language, especially in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his friendship with David Hume brought him under the suspicion of atheism.

Ryan Hanley--in his book Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue--argues that far from rejecting Christian virtue, however, Smith embraces it as the highest human excellence.  Hanley sees the love of praise as governed by the commercial virtue of prudence, the love of true glory as governed by the classical virtue of magnanimity, and the love of virtue expressed in beneficence as the Christian virtue.

For the highest level of virtue, we need religion, Hanley argues, because "religion provides the longing for self-transcendence with an object and is thus an important ally in efforts to overcome self-preference" (143-44).  This claim that Smith is looking for a Christian virtue that provides "self-transcendence" is confusing, however.  Hanley generally presents Smith as showing a "continuum of self-love" (98) moving from the lowest form of self-love (vanity) to the higher form (love of true glory) to the highest form (love of virtue).  Hanley speaks of the "elevated form of self-love" (147), "noble self-love" (151), or "refined self-love" (156).  But this suggests that there has not been any complete transcendence of self-love, because even the most refined form of self-love is still self-love.

This suggests to me that Smith is implicitly drawing on the ancient Aristotelian teaching that the good man loves himself and loves his friends as reflections of himself (Nicomachean Ethics, 1168a29-1170b20).  If so, then Smith is rejecting the Christian teaching of virtue as self-denial and affirming the virtue rooted in self-love that is taught by Mandeville.

Smith sees the peak of human excellence in the "wise and virtuous man," and Smith does use some religious language in describing this man's grasp of "divine perfection."  But this religious language could be explained as a rhetorical gesture by Smith that is necessary to protect himself against the charge of infidelity or atheism.

The only time that Smith identifies anyone in particular as a "wise and virtuous man" is when he identifies Hume as approximating the "perfectly wise and virtuous man" as closely as any human being could.  This remark concluded his letter about Hume's calm facing of his own death, a letter that provoked a storm of bitter condemnation from Christians.  In a letter to Alexander Wedderburn,  Smith described Hume as dying "with great cheerfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any Whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God" (Correspondence, 203).  Hanley notices this identification of Hume as the "wise and virtuous man," but Hanley is silent about Smith's implication in this that the highest wisdom and virtue can be attained by an infamous atheist (192).

To be continued . . .