The philosophy of Adam Smith : imagination and speculation

271 Pages·2017·2.39 MB·English

The philosophy of Adam Smith: imagination and
speculation
Leonardo André Paes Müller
To cite this version:
Leonardo André Paes Müller. The philosophy of Adam Smith: imagination and speculation. Phi-
losophy. Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I; Universidade de São Paulo (Brésil), 2016. English.
￿NNT: 2016PA01H200￿. ￿tel-01398360￿
HAL Id: tel-01398360
https://theses.hal.science/tel-01398360
Submitted on 17 Nov 2016
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de
teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés.
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Thèse pour l'obtention du grade de
docteur de l'université Paris 1
en cotutelle avec l’Université de São Paulo

Présentée et soutenue publiquement par :
Leonardo André Paes Müller

La philosophie d’Adam Smith : imagination et spéculation

Directeurs de thèse :
Laurent Jaffro (Paris 1)
Pedro Paulo Pimenta (USP)

Composition du jury par autres membres :
Catherine Larrère (Paris 1)
Nicholas Phillipson (University of Edinburgh)
Maria das Graças de Souza (USP)
Maria Isabel Limongi (UFPR)

Date de soutenance : 02/02/2016
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Unité de Formation et Recherche de Philosophie (UFR 10)
École Doctorale de Philosophie
Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques (PHARE)
2
In memory of
Ivo André Bay Müller
1957-2014

To my wife,
Ana

3
Nunca desembarcamos de nós. Nunca chegamos a outrem,
senão outrando-nos pela imaginação sensível de nós mesmos.
Fernando Pessoa, Livro do desassossego

But Jeannie, in the strict and severe tone of morality in which she was educated,
had to consider not only the general aspect of a proposed action,
but its justness and fitness in relation to the actor,
before she could be, according to her own phrase, free to enter upon it.
Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian

4
Contents
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 6
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 7
Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. 8
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9
Chapter 1 – Senses and sentiments ............................................................................. 14
1. Hutcheson’s moral sense – 2. The external senses: a. external senses perceptions; b. language of
nature: visual perceptions; c. preconceptions of externality; d. directive function – 3. The internal
senses: a. profusion of senses; b. how far the analogy between external and internal senses goes?; c;
deflated notion of internal sense: faculties at work; d. reflex senses – 4. Organizing the internal senses:
the four kinds of moral judgements – 5. Moral faculties – 6. Moral and nature – 7. Sentiments
Chapter 2 – Sympathy and imagination ..................................................................... 52
1. The term sympathy – 2. Imagination and sympathy – 3. Boundaries of sympathy – 4. Types of
sympathy: a. passion originated in the body; b. love; c. unsocial passions; d. social passions; e. selfish
passions – 5. The perception of fellow-feeling – 6. Sympathy and language – 7. Imagination’s moral
theater
Chapter 3 – Partiality and impartiality ....................................................................... 86
1. The problem of partiality – 2. Habit: Partiality and precision – 3. Moral substance and antinomical
frame – 4. Conscience as a tribunal – 5. The “natural sense of equity” – 6. The role of virtue
Chapter 4 – Merit and fortune .................................................................................... 112
1. Merit sentiments: Gratitude and resentment – 2. The objects of gratitude and resentment I – 3. The
objects of gratitude and resentment II – 4. Fortune and its effects I: Merit and demerit: (a) intensity
decrease; (b) intensity increase – 5. Fortune and its effects II: Propriety and impropriety – 6. Fortune
under the eyes of an impartial spectator – 7. Authority of fortune: People, labor and sentiments – 8.
The empire of fortune – 9. Fortune vs. conscience – 10. Tranquility and liberalism – 11. Idleness and
passions’ extravagance
Chapter 5 – Duty and rules ......................................................................................... 161
1. Self-command vs. self-deceit – 2. Natural does not mean simple: Remorse as the sense of justice
– 3. Duty and its judgement: The morals of reason – 4. The role of utility – 5. Kinds of artifice – 6.
Constitution of a legal grammar – 7. Rules regulatory function: Usury laws – 8. Overturning the
natural course of society: Bounties – 9. The nature of society
Chapter 6 – Beauty and utility .................................................................................... 208
1. The beauty bestowed by the appearance of utility as a peculiar kind of aesthetic judgement – 2.
Utility and utilitarian considerations – 3. Philosophical history of the beauty of utility: a. Epicurus:
Utilitarian individualism; b. Hobbes: Deductivist mechanicism; c. Hume: Utilitarian organicism; d.
Mandeville: Much ado about nothing – 4. How utility persuades: Ambition – 5. How providence
works: The the corn merchant – 6. Species and character – 7. Who thinks abstractly? – 8. Survivance
and speculation
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 252
Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 255

5
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Department of Philosophy of the Universidade de São
Paulo, and the Unité de Formation et Recherche de Philosophie (UFR 10) and the École
Doctorale de Philosophie of Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne as whole, for the time
and support offered. The Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
(FAPESP) for two scholarships, the first in Brazil, from september 2012 on, the second,
to a period of research in Paris (BEPE, from july 2014 to june 2015). I also thank CAPES-
Cofecub (project Ética e estética: sensibilidade e Forma) for a scholarship (between
september and december 2013) to a first period of reasearch in Paris.
I also would like to thank the secretaries of philosophy (especially to Mariê) and
post-graduation (especially to Regina) of FFLCH-USP, and the staff of the Libraries
Florestan Fernandes (FFLCH-USP), of FEA-USP, of the Bibliotéque Nationale de France
(BnF) and of the National Library of Scotland (NLS).
I am very grateful to professor Pedro Pimenta, who took na interest in this Project
even before he was consistently delineated, and professor Laurent Jaffro for the invitation
to transform my PhD in a double degree. To both I owe more than a simple supervision.
I thank professors Fernão Salles Cruz (UFSCAR) and Bruno Simões for the
considerations, criticism and suggestion made in my qualification exam and professors
Maria das Graças de Souza (USP), Catherine Larrère (Paris I), Maria Isabel Limongi
(UFPR) and Nicholas Phillipson (University of Edinburgh) for kindly accepting my
invitation to be a part of the board of the present dissertation.
I thank my colleagues of Latesfip-USP (Laboratório Interunidades de Teoria
Social, Filosofia e Psicanálise), especially the members of the group on Fetishism
(Marília, Márcia, Fátima, Caio), and of PHARE-Paris I (Philosophie, histoire et analyse
des representations économiques).
I’m also grateful to my friends Nathália Marques, Izabel Pereira, Denise Franco,
Julio Silva, Bernardo Soares, Daniel Tanis, Julio Lucchesi, Caio Favareto, Bruno Hofig .
I’m deeply indebdted to my family, especially my grandmother Alzira, my mother
Aridinê and my sister Isabela. And to Ana, above all.

6
Abstract
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith establishes a pluralist scheme to explain
moral approbation, with four kinds of moral judgments: 1) regarding the motives of the
agent, the judgment determines its propriety or impropriety; 2) regarding the immediate
effects of the action, the judgement determines its merit or demerit; 3) analyzing if this
act is a particular case of a general rule, the judgement determines if the agent has acted
according to his duty; and 4) regarding the remote effects of the action, that is, the way
this action is a part of the global operations of society (a judgement that Smith calls the
appearance of utility). These four kinds of moral judgments are grounded in imagination
and form the totality of the principle of approbation that structure the speculative part of
his moral philosophy.
Key-words: imagination, speculation, sympathy, duty, utility

7
Abbreviations
David Hume (1711-1776)
THN A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739-40
Essays Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 1741
EHU An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748
EPM An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751

Adam Smith (1723-1790)
TMS or Theory of Moral Sentiments, six editions between 1759 and 1790
Theory
WN or An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations,
Wealth 1776
EPS Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 1793
LRBL Lectures on Rethoric and Belles Lettres, 1762-3
LJA Lectures on Jurisprudence, 1762-3
LJB Lectures on Jurisprudence, 1766
Corr. Correspondence, from and to Smith

Citations to Smith’s work are to the Glasgow edition (published in hardcover by Oxford
University Press and in paperback by Liberty Fund). Passages are referenced using the
Glasgow edition’s system (e.g., TMS I.ii.3.4, meaning Theory of Morals Sentiments, Part
I, Section II, Chapter 3, Paragraph 4) followed by page number.
8
Introduction

Adam Smith published six editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments between
1759 and 1790.1 In the last part of this work (the sixth part of the five first editions, the
seventh of the last),2 he presents his account of the history of moral philosophy, including
his own moral system. Right away, he offers the two questions that every “system of
moral philosophy” (TMS VII.i.intro.1, p.265) should answer:
In treating of the principles of morals there are two questions to be considered. First, wherein does
virtue consist? Or what is the tone of temper, and tenour of conduct, which constitutes the excellent
and praise-worthy character, the character which is the natural object of esteem, honour, and
approbation? And, secondly, by what power or faculty in the mind is it, that this character, whatever
it be, is recommended to us? Or in other words, how and by what means does it come to pass, that
the mind prefers one tenour of conduct to another, denominates the one right and the other wrong;
considers the one as the object of approbation, honour, and reward, and the other of blame, censure,
and punishment? (TMS VII.i.2, p.266)
He goes on to point out that
the determination of this second question, though of the greatest importance in speculation, is of
none in practice. The question concerning the nature of virtue necessarily has some influence upon
our notions of right and wrong in many particular cases. That concerning the principle of approbation
can possibly have no such effect. To examine from what contrivance or mechanism within, those
different notions or sentiments arise, is a mere matter of philosophical curiosity. (TMS VII.iii.3,
p.315)
On the one hand, there is the practical part of moral philosophy, with questions
about the nature of virtue, and on the other, there are theoretical (or speculative) questions

1 The Theory of Moral Sentiments: first edition, 1759; second, 1761; third, 1767; fourth, 1774; fifth, 1781;
and sixth, 1790. His second major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations,
was published in 1776 (second edition, 1778; third, 1784; fourth, 1786; and fifth, 1789). A few days before
his death, Smith asked two friends to burn all his manuscripts, with the exception of “some detached essays”
(Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, in EPS, p.327), which were later
published (1793) under the title Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Considerations Concerning the First
Formation of Languages followed the second edition of Theory (1761) (LRBL, p.201). These and two other
letters published in The Edinburgh Review (1755-6; in EPS, p.229) were everything Smith allowed to be
published. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries at least three notebooks of Smith’s students at the
University of Glasgow were discovered and published: one on his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
(1762-3) and two on his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762-3 and 1766). If we add his correspondence and
a few more manuscript sheets, we have the complete works of Adam Smith.
2 For more about the modifications Smith made, especially in the second and sixth editions, see the
introduction and the critical apparatus in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam
Smith, edited by by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (TMS Introduction, pp.34-46).
9