The Spirituality of Adam Smith
TL;DR: Adam Smith’s first book, Theory of Moral Sentiments, is rich in spiritual content and includes teachings which align fully with our sacred texts. He would later set much of it aside, when he turned his attention to economics.
Monument to Adam Smith in front of Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. Photo by: fotokon.
The Common Narrative About Adam Smith
The common narrative among economic historians about Adam Smith is that he was the most prominent forefather of modern economic thought; that his 1776 classic, Wealth of Nations, is the discipline’s foundational treatise; that in the book, he lucidly strung together strands of thought from many sources, and where many of his time saw only disconnected transactions, Adam Smith saw something grander: an entire system that came to be called the “free market.”
The critical components of this free market, as Adam Smith first envisioned it, will be quite familiar to 21st century readers: individuals busily pursuing their own self-interest; a “division of labor” leading to worker specialization and productivity gains; and vigorous competition serving as the arbiter of behavior among people and firms.
Adam Smith was also among the early proponents of laissez-faire; the idea that governments should step away from the “circular flow system” of economic consumption and production, and allow it to evolve on its own, guided only by the “invisible hand” of the market.
An Alternative Narrative About Adam Smith
I propose a different narrative about Adam Smith: that he set in motion a tradition, doubtless without intention but inexorably nonetheless, of stripping we humans of our highest emotional and spiritual faculties, where theories of production and exchange are concerned; that in so doing, he weakened the potential for economic relationships to be guided by our most cherished human values, such as empathy, compassion, generosity, and temperance; that not only was he the most prominent forefather of modern economic thought, but he was also the first economist to set aside or diminish human values he himself cherished, in approaching the subject of material wealth; as a result, he laid the basis, at the very fountainhead of the field, for the distorted view of us human beings that continues to prevail in influential economic theories to this very day.
How Adam Smith the Philosopher Advocated for Empathy, Compassion, and Human Connection
The field of “economics” as we know it today did not yet properly exist in Adam Smith’s time in the late 18th century. Instead, it was known as “political economy,” and was taught mainly as an appendage to other disciplines, such as politics and law.
In Smith’s case, philosophy was his eventual springboard to economics. In 1752, he was elected to the chair of Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. While he is lauded today as the visionary author of the Wealth of Nations, during those years in Glasgow he labored just as thoroughly, though not as famously, on an earlier book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759.
It is reported that Smith always considered his Theory of Moral Sentiments a much superior work to his later Wealth of Nations. It is easy to see why; for there is a deep nobility running throughout, and while conceived and remembered as a work of philosophy, it is clearly also rich in spiritual content.
In it, Smith elaborates on those values, or “sentiments,” which allow we human beings to get along well with one other, and to receive each other’s “approbation.” It is therefore a book about human interconnectedness and a reflection on those universal values necessary for the smooth, peaceful functioning of society.
Interconnectedness
“Interconnectedness,” of course, is a modern description. Smith’s 18th century terms for the same thing was “sympathy,” or “fellow-feeling.” (Similarly, where Smith and other philosophers of his time spoke of “passions,” today we would speak of “emotion” or “feelings”). So important is this idea of “sympathy” (i.e. interconnectedness) to his Theory of Moral Sentiment, that he opens his book with a long meditation on the subject; we quickly learn that it is closely intertwined with compassion. (Please see my note at the end of this post on the masculine pronoun in this quote and others1).
“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. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others….. The source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others… is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer…”
Compassion
Sympathy, for example, is the ability to empathize and identify with another person’s emotional reality; or “change place in fancy with the sufferer,” in Smith’s 18th century words; it is another word for “compassion.”
Throughout his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith repeatedly stresses the transcendence of “sympathy.”
“Our own good-will is circumscribed by no boundary,” he writes, “but may embrace the immensity of the universe. We cannot form the idea of any innocent and sensible being, whose happiness we should not desire, or to whose misery….we should not have some degree of aversion.”
In so doing, he aligns his philosophical teachings with similar lessons from other sacred texts:
“…mercy and self-control, and truth and universal sympathy, and everything wonderful in this world, are to be found in thee.” Hindusim, Mahabratha, Udyoga Parva “…have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart..” Christianity, Peter 1:8.
“Sympathy” and “fellow feeling” as Smith conceives them also allow us to distinguish between that which is morally “right” from that which is morally “wrong”; or in Smith’s language, to differentiate an “agreeable passion” from a “disagreeable passion.”
Positive and Negative Emotions
Recall that what Smith in the late 18th century referred to as a “passion,” we in the 21st century would call an “emotion.”
Smith writes that the “disagreeable passions” (or what we might call a “negative emotion”) include: “lust, hunger, avarice, envy, revenge;” “the furious behavior of an angry man;” “the insolence and brutality of anger;” the “hard and obdurate heart” that “feels for himself only;” “hatred and resentment” which in turn “lead us to fear;” for “hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”
In contrast, the “agreeable” passions (or positive emotions), include love, generosity and compassion. Smith writes:
“There is in love a strong mixture of humanity, generosity, kindness, friendship, esteem; passions with which…. we have the greatest propensity to sympathize…Generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem, all the social and benevolent affections, when expressed in the countenance or behavior, even towards those who are not peculiarly connected with ourselves, please the indifferent spectator upon almost every occasion.”
Temperance
Elsewhere in his book, Adam Smith makes a case for “temperance” and sensual restraint in language one could easily imagine overhearing in a Buddhist monastery. For example, compare this quote from Smith:
“In the command of those appetites of the body consists that virtue which is properly called temperance. To restrain them within those bounds, which regard to health and fortune prescribes, is the part of prudence. But to confine them within those limits, which grace, which propriety, which delicacy, and modesty require, is the office of temperance.”
To this quote from the teachings of the Buddha in the Dhammapada, which touch on the similar subject of “craving”:
“The craving of a person who lives carelessly
grows like a creeping vine…
But whoever overcomes this miserable craving,
In this world so hard to overcome
Sorrow falls away from him,
Like a drop of water from a lotus blossom.”
Buddhism, Dhammapada
Adam Smith and the “Golden Rule.”
Finally, Adam Smith clearly believed in the primacy of human community. Further, that for our human community to function smoothly, one must often place one’s own interests at least alongside those of others, and occasionally subordinate our own interests to the interests of community members.
Here too, Smith aligns himself with the sacred texts, and the exhortation of the “Golden Rule,” to treat your neighbor as you would yourself. A person, Smith writes:
“…ought to regard himself, not as something separated and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature. To the interest of this great community, he ought at all times to be willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed…What befalls ourselves we should regard as what befalls our neighbor, or, what comes to the same thing, as our neighbor regards what befalls us.”
A close reading of the Theory of Moral Sentiments makes clear that Smith believed in the criticality of the “golden rule” to the smooth functioning of society; by integrating this view into his philosophy, he aligned himself with similar lessons from the sacred texts, for example:
“Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others.” Christianity, Philippians 2:4
“And hence it is,” Adam Smith wrote, “that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law… so it is the precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbor, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbor is capable of loving us.”
Additional Reading
Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments long ago passed into the public domain. There are many editions available free on line. You can browse a sampling of them at the Internet Archive here: Theory of Moral Sentiments
For further, accessibly written understanding on Adam Smith, I suggest Robert L. Heilbroner’s 1953 classic The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, as well as the sections on Adam Smith in Joseph Schumpeter’s magisterial, 1954 History of Economic Analysis. Finally, a more recent (2010) biography which I thoroughly enjoyed was Nicholas Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life.
* I will always do my best to use inclusive language throughout this newsletter. The masculine pronoun in this quote from Theory of Moral Sentiments is, of course, from Adam Smith’s 18th century original, when we were in a positively primitive time, where gender equality was concerned; feel free to swap in any pronoun you’d like to replace the masculine, if that will help make the text resonate more for you.