ABSTRACT
The present reading of Adam Smith’s work revealed an abundance of different leads, hints, tentative explorations, qualifications and concessions. It is time now to insist once more on its profound coherence. This coherence both transcends, and depends on, the fundamental dichotomy that runs through Smith’s work. This dichotomy once more concerns, of course, the relation between
the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension. The first is defined by the exogenous norms of the impartial spectator allowing the development of a personal ethic. The second is defined by the endogenous moral norms created by the sympathy mechanism. It was shown that the dominance of the horizontal dimension and the sympathy mechanism allowed for the codification of economic values. In its purest form, such codification attains an iconic signification in which sign and meaning confound themselves. The elimination of informational transaction costs that comes with this codification establishes the world of competitive markets of The Wealth of Nations. At a second level, however, this predominance of the horizontal
dimension will allow the realisation of the original promise connected with an observation of the commandments of the impartial spectator. The withdrawal of the impartial spectator thus permits the realisation of his project to guarantee general welfare and the propagation of the species. The totality of Adam Smith’s published work must thus be understood as being profoundly unified by the sustained and realised effort of managing the tensions between the two normative systems that structure it.1 Despite their mutual contribution to the unicity of Smith’s oeuvre, the horizontal and vertical dimensions remain always perfectly distinct. Smith never aims for a compromise that would blur their distinctive features. This holds at the level of the direct determination of human behaviour as well as at the level of the finality of the intentions of the impartial spectator, or, in Smith’s terms, at the level of the efficient as well as of the final causes.
