ABSTRACT
Chapters 2 and 3 of this book presented, respectively, the world of sympathy and the world of the impartial spectator. Each of these worlds has its own purpose and practice. Broadly speaking, The Theory of Moral Sentiments deals with the conflict between two normative orientations and The Wealth of Nations develops the vision of a world shaped by auto-organisation, for which the sympathy mechanism provides the essential basis in terms of motivation and process. And yet, neither The Theory of Moral Sentiments nor The Wealth of Nations can be reduced to a one-dimensional system constructed from a single set of first principles. Nor does either book offer the reader a choice between two distinct options. The reader is not even offered a middle road, a compromise. Adam Smith’s final position is elaborated by means of a dialectical movement at different levels between these two frameworks. Far too often, the secondary literature on The Wealth of Nations has
been devoted to the identification of elements that question the dominance of economic criteria by highlighting a number of critical remarks of the author about the reality of market economies. Viner is an early and influential example of this tendency, but so are Diatkine, Young and many others. The implication of this procedure is that Smith was not a radical liberal but a sort of middle-of-the road social democrat. As supporting evidence are usually cited the passages concerning price fixing by people of the same trade meeting socially (Smith 1776 (I.10.2)) and the corrupting effects of the division of labour (Smith 1776 (V.1.3.2)). Despite the intrinsic interest of these passages, it would be wrong to
see them as a sign of a return to an ethical orientation that would
relativise the dominance of economic behaviour shaped by social morality. These passages owe everything to Smith’s realism and nothing to the re-establishment of a vertical principle. In fact, Smith cites the two instances as collateral damage of a market society that is certainly regrettable but does not question the dominance of the horizontal principle. Let us recall that demanding only ‘second-best’ behaviour, which is positive, realistic and attainable, is one of the defining features of the horizontal principle. The ethical element continues to exist, but it exists for Smith at another level – the level of the final outcome of the economic system. Paradoxically, the Smithian individual will satisfy his ethical impetus by adhering to the conventional values codified by the sympathy mechanism, since this is the mechanism created by the impartial spectator to achieve his objectives. This may be small comfort, but the quiet knowledge of having acted in conformity with the plan of the Director of nature is the only satisfaction he may hope to attain in this domain. This structure of argument applies not only to abstract philosophical
considerations but to concrete questions of social and economic behaviour. It is also behind the functioning of the ‘invisible hand’, which has become a notion of general culture, and quite rightly so, since it captures the essence of Adam Smith’s legacy. The standard formula that the ‘pursuit of self-interest promotes the general interest’ reinforces, by way of its openly paradoxical nature, the fascination with the underlying proposition. While Adam Smith never expressed matters in such a set-piece manner, the formula of self-interest ensuring general interest captures his essential point quite well. And yet, the image of the invisible hand remains mysterious.
Even a diligent reading of Adam Smith’s text does not allow resolving the simile with the help of an elegant analogy to dispel the mystery of the paradox. Any real paradox, however, possesses a solution, which is what distinguishes it from a contradictory double proposition. It is not for want of trying that no simple solution to the paradox has been found so far: from the hand of God to that of ‘self-love’, the original image has spawned a large number of secondary metaphors. Frequently, however, these images tell more about the respective critic and his preferences than about the functioning of the Smithian system. See, for instance, Prévost (2002b) or Dupuy (1988). Other critics seek to elucidate the mystery by studying the
possible origins of the image. Nobody has gone through Adam Smith’s library in search of these origins with more diligence than Emma Rothschild. In Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the
Enlightenment (Rothschild 2003), she assembles a number of interesting leads. There exists, for instance, a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that makes reference to the invisible hand of night. When, after the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth commands that his accomplice Banquo also be killed he tells his wife who inquires about his projects in Scene 2 of Act 3:
