A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith

351 Pages·1999·1.075 MB·English

by  Fleischacker, S.

A THIRD CONCEPT OF LIBERTY

A THIRD CONCEPT
OF LIBERTY
JUDGMENT AND FREEDOM IN
KANT AND ADAM SMITH
SAMUEL FLEISCHACKER
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright q 1999 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fleischacker, Samuel.
A third concept of liberty : judgment and freedom in Kant and Adam
Smith / Samuel Fleischacker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN 1-4008-0234-2
1.Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Contributions in political science.
2.Smith, Adam, 1723–1790.3.Liberty.4.Judgment (Ethics)
I.Title.
JC181.K4F581999323.44—dc2198-30484
This book has been composed in Galliard
http://pup.princeton.edu
For Noa and Benjamin
W H O H AV E TA U G H T M E M O S T
O F W H AT I K N O W A B O U T
“ S M A L L P L E A S U R E S ”

CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ABBREVIATIONS xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction3
PART I: THE NATURE OF JUDGMENT21
CHAPTER 2
Aesthetic Judgment23
CHAPTER 3
Moral Judgment32
CHAPTER 4
Judgment and Freedom64
PART II: THE POLITICS OF JUDGMENT89
CHAPTER 5
Proper Pleasures91
CHAPTER 6
The Wealth of Nations (I): Judgment120
CHAPTER 7
The Wealth of Nations (II): Virtue and Independence140
CHAPTER 8
The Wealth of Nations (III): Helping the Poor161
CHAPTER 9
Kant’s Politics, Rawls’s Politics (I): The Public Use of Judgment184
CHAPTER 10
Kant’s Politics, Rawls’s Politics (II): Talent, Industry, and Luck215
PART III: THE FREEDOM OF JUDGMENT241
CHAPTER 11
A Third Concept of Liberty243
NOTES 279
INDEX 329

PREFACE
I
N THE FALL OF 1988 I taught a course on eighteenth-century
moral sentiment theory that ended with a brief consideration of
Adam Smith’s Theory of the Moral Sentiments. I was struck by the
way much of it seemed to look forward to Kant and, after teaching
Kant’s moral philosophy in the spring of 1989, pursued the possibility of
a link between these two thinkers over the summer. To my delight, I
discovered both that Kant had in fact read Smith and that this connec-
tion had never been made the subject of thorough scholarly study. I de-
veloped the connection in an article published by Kant-Studien in 1991.
Even before the article was completed, however, I became interested in
pursuing the connection between these two thinkers in the opposite
direction: what might Kant have had to say about Smith’s economic
theories?
1989 was of course an auspicious year to take an interest in the philos-
ophy of economics. As the summer moved into fall, I found myself, like
many others, riveted less by scholarly work than by the almost daily polit-
ical revolutions in Eastern Europe. But scholarly work on Adam Smith
seemed about as timely as any such work could be. I agree with those
who take the 1989 revolutions to sound the death knell not only of
Soviet-style totalitarian politics but of Marxism as a plausible ideology.
That need not mean, however, that Marxism’s “antithesis,” dogmatic lib-
ertarianism, has won the day. The events of 1989 make clear the need for
an alternative to Marxism as a critique of the untrammeled free market.
Very important and difficult issues remain about what the state can and
should do to alleviate poverty, prevent oppression in the workplace, and
guarantee everyone the education and information by which they can
make judicious choices. And the debate over such issues needs to be
informed, at least in part, by an adequate political philosophy. Contem-
porary advocates of the welfare state tend to share an unfortunate com-
mitment to utilitarianism—an excessive emphasis on what people want
and how to get it to them, as opposed to what they do and how they can
carry out their projects with maximum freedom and hope of success. Lib-
ertarianism, on the other hand, while claiming to take up precisely the
latter attitude, places too much emphasis on the sacredness of property,
misconstruing freedom as a matter solely of having rights to act however
one likes within one’s “private” realm. There seems consequently to be a
need for an approach to political economy that is neither Marxist, nor
libertarian, nor excessively utilitarian, and a reconsideration of Adam
Smith’s philosophical foundations promises just such an approach. Smith