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The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.
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What can he added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, all accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous; and if he is much elevated upon account of them, it must be the effect of the most frivolous levity. This situation, however, may very well be called the natural and ordinary state of mankind.
Customer Reviews:
4.5 stars-A masterpiece but only after Part VI was added in 1790.......2007-07-24
The other reviewers have covered Smith's theoretical concern of basing our moral judgements on a foundation of sympathy or sentiment when our impartial mental spectator requires us to walk a few miles, hypothetically, in the other person's shoes before rendering judgement.
The most important part of the book is Part VI, added in the year Smith died-1790.It is here that he provides the theoretical foundation for his recommendations in WN that the government is the only institution that can neutralize the severe negative impacts emanating from the Invisible Hand process of self interest and the division of labor.Smith's recommendation is that all working class members receive ,free if necessary,an education combined with religious instruction in order to deal with the dark side of the Invisible Hand process that negatively impacts the moral,political,social,martial,and intellectual development of all members of the working class(See pp.734-741 of the Modern Library(Cannan)edition of the Wealth of Nations).Part VI of the 6th and final edition of TMS establishes the need to promote morality as a necessary public good.The importance of virtue in societal interactions takes center stage.This can only be implemented by the provision,on a massive scale,of education and religious instruction for all members of the working class.Otherwise,society will be unable to prevent the "...entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people".(See Smith,p.734;see also the 5 additional repetitions of this conclusion that appear on pp. 734-741).
I deduct a half star because Smith failed to fully alert the reader of the importance of Part VI.
Contemporary importance of a 250 year old book........2007-06-09
After reading Paul J. Zak's "Values and Value: Moral Economics" (Gruter Institute Projecct on Values and Free Enterprise)in which he refers to Smith's book on morals, I wanted to reread a book that I had read several decades ago when I was studying economic theory. It continues to be most engaging. Zak noted that "of Adam Smith's two great books, the The Theory of Moral Sentiments is typically considered much less important than the Wealth of Nation, though this view is starting to change."
There is much current attention to ethics; much of it is "how to.. ." guidance and generally quite superficial. Rereading Smith's profound observations -- that continue to have relevance -- is refreshing and enlightening. Smith recognized the significance of "virtuous behaviors" . . and understood well that shared moral behaviors are prerequisistes for a successfully-functioning society. Chapters with titles such as "Of the Amiable and Respectable Virtures," "Of the social Passions," Of the Selfish Passions." are illustrative of the introductory sections topics.
A rereading reminds me of words of the founding fathers of the U. S. -- of the early leaders throughout the developing country. Smith wrote in the early decades of the 19th century; there is a quaintness to his language, but his insight is not lost. His writing provides the joy that beautiful antique furniture from the same century delights the eye; his book will delight the mind.
Wow! What a mind........2007-01-03
The language is quaintly old but somehow that eases in. A voice from the past is telling you how our whole social fabric has come to be. It isn't driven by dogma. It is driven by pure reason and an uncanny perception. Strongly grounded in reality, and not just air headed philosophical blather, this is a great source for those who need to assign values to concepts - but not just based on faith or some dogma taken as truth without question.
Adam Smith then turns that perceptual engine of his on speech, itself. It is an extra that, by itself, is worth the price of the book.
My favorite book of all time.......2006-05-23
I must seem like someone in great need of a unifying philosophy, because several people have tried to lend me theirs. Ex-boyfriends seem to think Daoism just the thing, while acquaintances recommend Jesus (that's why they stall out at acquaintances). After reading this book, though, I can now say, "No thanks. I've got Adam Smith."
When I was trying to get over a death in the family, this book provided me by far the greatest solace. Smith summarizes the ancient schools of philosophy (and most interestingly, how some got perverted into serving as the basis of Christianity), and from them distills a manual for life that's both intuitive and useful. What I like best about Adam Smith is that while his genius may not be immediately apparent, his common sense is.
The last chapter of the book deals with the origins of language, and it's about my favorite. Besides making me wonder why there are any linguists still employed, Smith touches on evolution and boolean logic (computer language). Based on this chaper alone, he should be called the father of linguistics; if he had elaborated just a bit more, perhaps he would have been the father of evolution, as well.
Modern, Empirical Ethical Theory.......2005-07-07
The book under review was published by LibertyClassics.
Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" (TMS) is both an excellent work of psychology and an eloquent exposition of philosophy. It was written about the same time as David Hume's and Francis Hutchinson's theories of moral sentiments (theory of benevolence) in the 18th century, departing from the ancient ethical paradigms of a priori ethics and reaching instead toward an empirical, a posteriori ethics for modernity. Rather than deducing first principles from the philosopher's armchair, Smith's account begins with experience, habit, and custom based on nature's disposition of mankind's moral constitution. Therefore, it is a wholly modern theory, and in many ways anticipates Darwinism and evolutionary biology (EB).
Smith's ethical account is grounded entirely in observation. Nature, custom, habit, and experience teach us its principles, which comports with both our internal judgments and our external evaluations. By our imagination, we place ourselves as if we are the other person, conceiving ourselves as if we were that person. Our emotions well up with an "analogous emotion" of the other, vicariously experiencing the other's pleasures and pain, his gratitude and resentment, becoming sympathetic to the other's plight as though it were our own. Love and gratitude are agreeable sensations, while hatred and resentment are disagreeable passions. Our sympathy for the other is measured like that of "an impartial spectator" who we become by viewing another's motives and actions by our own in accordance with our own sense of propriety, moral sense (duty), and benevolence, by "bringing the case home to ourselves."
"Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love" (I.i.3.10). "We approve of another mans judgment, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality" (I,i.4.4). Conscious of another person's situation generates sympathy in ourselves, and the correspondence with one another, is "sufficient for the harmony of society" (I.i.4.6). "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 . . . .as to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity . . . . as our neighbor is capable of loving us" (I.i.5.5).
Based upon these primary motives of gratitude and resentment (foreshadowing Trivers' and Hamilton's reciprocal altruism in EB) leads to an analysis of grief and joy, anger and love, suffering and enjoyments, distress and relief, envy and magnanimity, and all the other binary emotional relations. To each emotion we attach a "proportionable recompense" for merit and demerit, reward and punishment. A sympathetic imagination or indignation naturally boils up in the breast of the impartial spectator.
While beneficence is always a free act, we do have duties given us by nature in order to be just. Justice, writes Smith, is a negative virtue and only hinders us from harming our neighbor through retaliation or punishment "to safeguard of justice and the security of innocence." Even though we are primarily motivated by self-love, we imagine an impartial spectator to humble the arrogance of self-love to avoid hurting one's neighbor.
Smith makes clear that "man, who subsist only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made," and that is to act reciprocally. For ill inflicted unjustly on another, we naturally seek retaliation; for the good afforded from love, we reciprocate the affection. After all, "society cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another" (II.ii.3.3). This occurs "for the purpose of advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species" (II.ii.3.5). When it comes to society, justice is more important than beneficence, because, while society can live without beneficence, it cannot survive without justice. Nature, and society through habit and custom, implant conscience in the human breast, and every injustice, therefore, alarms man. Conversely, Smith observes, "mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent" (II.ii.3.7).
Like Hume before him, Smith locates the causes of pain and pleasure as being behind the primary motivations of the two chief emotions: For Hume they are love and hatred, for Smith they are gratitude and resentment. To measure the propriety and duty of one's own actions, "we must become the impartial spectators of our character and conduct" (III.2.2). Man is naturally endowed to live in society with a desire to please others and avoid offending others, and it is our duty to impartially evaluate ourselves at least as stringently, if not more, than we evaluate others. Nature has made man the immediate Judge of mankind, ever making proper comparisons between our own interests and those of other people. We judge ourselves best when act as if we stand in a place with eyes of a third person. "It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct" (III.3.5). Of course, our own disciplined, self-command, coupled with constancy and firmness, makes our interior and exterior comparisons and resemblances fair and equitable.
Smith's TMS covers much territory also covered by Hume, but from a different angle, and with a different regard for "utility" in a theory of benevolence. Both theories are thoroughly modern, and readers familiar with EB will find that Smith better anticipates many of EB's themes, i.e., reciprocal altruism, kin selection, etc. Smith's perception of man as he will become described by Darwin is uncanny. Although Hume's account begins with first principles of observation, and heuristically builds upon empirical foundations, Smith's observation begins with the more mundane and ordinary and refines toward first principles. Even though they are in agreement on most matters, it's intellectually interesting to take note of their differences (e.g., utility). Regrettably, the ethical theory of moral sentiments gets little attention in ethics courses, despite the ease of reading and relevance to today's modern synthesis. Both deserve a wider audience. This handsome text is well introduced, annotated, and documented.. Recommended.
Book Description
Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of "strong reciprocators" in a social group.
Presenting an overview of research in economics, anthropology, evolutionary and human biology, social psychology, and sociology, the book deals with both the theoretical foundations and the policy implications of this explanation for cooperation. Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing.)
Customer Reviews:
Well written, easy to read, informative.......2007-09-19
Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Economic Learning and Social Evolution) combinds the theory of cultural evolution ala Boyd and Richerson (and Henrich et al) and the behavioral economy by people like Gintis, Bowles and Fehr. The book works further based on the theory - develops e.g. models for a better social policy etc.
Book discusses an issue which is very central for "being a human being" - co-operation. Book is very informative, very well written even if there are many writers with heterogenous background. Also after the book you kind of get more optimistic about the prospects of humananity.
I am without any formal education in antropology, biology and economics but have read "everything" by Boyd and Richerson - my understanding on economics is based on Microeconomics by Samuel Bowles.
The book was to me a good further reading after the Bowles Microeconomics book. But the book can be read even by someone who does not know about economics even that much as me. The book is not too formal - easy to read actually.
An eclectic collection of great essays.......2007-06-08
This book is just really great. The literature on fairness and reciprocity in social science is growing fast, and this book is ideal to give you a flavour of why this is such a good thing. It is diverse, with entries ranging from biological models that attempt to explain the evolution of reciprocity, through the implications of reciprocity for the way legal sanctions work, to the political philosophy of the dark side of clan mentality.
Most readers will probably not want to read everything, and even less people will agree with everything. One needs to remember that a lot of the stuff in this book is still controversial, including the existence of (strong) reciprocity, but this is what makes it so very interesting. And if only half of what's in this book is right, it is still revolutionary.
In 10 years, this book will be terribly outdated. But for now, it is the best thing you can get if you are interested in the interplay between evolution, reciprocity and social order, and the fundamental questions of social science that it entails.
Fairness and Sociability.......2006-05-08
For several years now, a group of social scientists has been studying the human tendency to be socially fair rather than narrowly selfish. The editors of this volume--Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr--are among the stalwarts; others are found among the authors of the book's chapters.
The core of this long-running effort is Fehr's experiments with the ultimatum game, in which two people must share a sum of money (say, $10); Person A gets to propose a split, Person B can only accept or decline. Economists and politicians would expect every game to wind up with a $9.99/$0.01 split (or actually a 9-1 split, since bills are used), but in fact typical splits are more like 5-5 or 6-4, and in one place (Lamalera, Indonesia) people actually split something like 4-6, few A's ever claiming even half the money. This long-running set of experiments around the world adds to a vast, rapidly accumulating set of data showing that people are sociable, not "rational" in the folk-economic sense (i.e., dedicated solely to narrow material self-interest). The present book discusses the implications for economics and politics. If people are naturally concerned with fairness, narrowly economistic policies can be counterproductive; we all know cases of "crowding out," in which a material incentive actually makes people act worse, by crowding out moral incentives. If you reward people for being good, they will think it's all a cynical game, and will act worse. Punitive legislation to make people do what they do anyway (for moral reasons) is also counterproductive. Imagine what these realizations would do to American social policy.
The problem with this book is that it is too optimistic and upbeat. The downside of human sociability is confined to one page, late in the book (p. 388), where racism, honor killing, and the like get a quick mention. Alas, the morning radio brings a stream of accounts not only of such things but also of religious butchery all over the world--Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and even Buddhists (theoretically prohibited from killing but busily genocidal). This brings us back to Adam Smith's suggestion that greed may not be lovable but may be better than the noble, virtuous alternatives. I hope Gintis et al work on how to decouple fairness and interpersonal concern from the desire to exterminate everybody who is not in one's immediate social set. Until this is done, the hope purveyed in this work will remain thin.
The authors note that humans seem genetically programmed to have at least some sense of fairness and of self-sacrifice for the common good, but they wisely refrain from trying to unpack "hereditary" and "environmental" or "cultural" aspects. Heredity makes us do this, and learn it easily, and heredity gives us the ability to learn and develop cultures. No way to unpack. Still, more needs to be done on just how flexible these inborn moralities are. The range from Lamalera to certain parts of South America is pretty great. So is the range of murderousness in religious and ethnic settings. We need to know how to modify human behavior in these regards, and how much we can hope for.
That being said, this book is the best yet in the long list of books that devastate the selfish-individualist model of human behavior. People desperately want to be sociable, and be good members of their society. This may lead them to fairness and generosity, or to body-piercing, or to suicide bombing. This book offers hope for building new societies through use of innate human decency. At this point in time, any book seriously offering such hope is desirable.
Book Description
R. Jay Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility.
Customer Reviews:
It's Original and Stimulating.......2000-10-13
This is an outstanding book. It is not, however, a beginner's book and will be appreciated best by those already familiar with the field. Two of its most interesting claims are as follows. First, that emotions are constitutive of the practice of holding people morally responsible. That is, to say what it is to hold someone morally responsible--to blame someone, for instance--one must make reference to the emotions of the person who is holding the other responsible. To blame someone for something necessarily involves feeling appropriate emotions like resentment or indignation for the other's failure to live up to one's expectations regarding moral behavior. Or, if one does not actually feel resentment (as when one forgives someone whom one regards as morally responsible and blameworthy), one must at least think that feeling such an emotion would be justified. Second, the author contends that in order to be responsible for something, the responsible party need not have had any alternate possibilities to the blameworthy or praiseworthy action. This claim is supported by a detailed examination of the grounds for excuses and exemptions from moral responsibility. We exempt people from moral responsibility because they lack the capacities necessary for it, and we excuse people from moral responsibility because what they did or failed to do lacked moral fault. This sometimes, but not always, coincides with the absence of alternate possibilities for action, but it is lack of capacity or absence of fault, not absence of alternate possibility, that explains the exemption or excuse. This is a careful and stimulating study by a scholar who has mastered the literature in the field. It is likely to have a deep impact on philosophical thinking about freedom and responsibility.
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Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the 21st Century
Iain McLean
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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ASIN: 1403977917
Release Date: 2007-03-06 |
Book Description
In this reexamination of the political legacy of Adam Smith, McLean argues that Smith was a radical egalitarian and that his work supported the ideas behind the French Revolution and his Theory of Moral Sentiments crystallized the radically egalitarian philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Bringing Smith into full view, showing how much of modern economics and political science was influenced by the Scottish thinker, and locating his intellectual heritage firmly within the context of the Enlightenment, McLean addresses the international links between American, French, and Scottish histories of political thought.
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- 4.5 Stars-Excellent but overlooks Smith's major reason for coming out with the 6th edition of TMS
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The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy
D. D. Raphael
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Philosophical Classics)
ASIN: 019921333X |
Book Description
D. D. Raphael provides a critical account of the moral philosophy of Adam Smith, presented in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Whilst it does not have the same prominence in its field as his work on economics, The Wealth of Nations, Smith's writing on ethics is of continuing importance and interest today, especially for its theory of conscience. Smith sees the origin of conscience in the sympathetic and antipathetic feelings of spectators. As spectators of the actions of other people, we can imagine how we would feel in their situation. If we would share their motives, we approve of their action. If not, we disapprove. When we ourselves take an action, we know from experience what spectators would feel, approval or disapproval. That knowledge forms conscience, an imagined impartial spectator who tells us whether an action is right or wrong. In describing the content of moral judgement, Smith is much influenced by Stoic ethics, with an emphasis on self-command, but he voices criticism as well as praise. His own position is a combination of Stoic and Christian values. There is a substantial difference between the first five editions of the Moral Sentiments and the sixth. Failure to take account of this has led some commentators to mistaken views about the supposed youthful idealism of the Moral Sentiments as contrasted with the mature realism of The Wealth of Nations. A further source of error has been the supposition that Smith treats sympathy as the motive of moral action, as contrasted with the supposedly universal motive of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations.
Customer Reviews:
4.5 Stars-Excellent but overlooks Smith's major reason for coming out with the 6th edition of TMS.......2007-07-24
Raphael(R) has done a masterful job in presenting an exposition of Smith's moral philosophy.Smith conceives that all individuals activate their conscience by postulating the existence in each human being of an impartial mental spectator who is able to discern ,independently from the subjective biases of the individual human observor,what is objectively happening in any particular decision context.The emotion of sympathy is triggered.Sympathy is the key emotion that needs to be understood if one truly wishes to understand moral judgement.Sympathy is not a synonym for pity ,compassion,or expressing feelings of sorrow or regret.The proper role for evaluating the role of sympathy occurs in judgement and not motivation.Essentially,we are all able to put ourselves in the shoes of the human decision maker and walk a couple of miles along the particular path of life that he is taking.Our judgement of rightness or wrongness is based on this mental reconstruction of this path and our own assessment about how WE would behave if stuck in his shoes.
R correctly concludes that Smith has integrated many major aspects and concerns of the Stoic philosophers and early Christian fathers concerning the importance of justice as it relates to all aspects of a human beings life.
The only criticism I have of R's treatment is ubiquitous to all extant writings on Smith's moral and economic theories for the last 248 years.There really is no mystery as to why Smith was compelled to put out a 6th edition of TMS in 1790,some 15 years after the last revision in 1775.Smith's entirely new part VI on the character of virtue and the essential neccessity of promoting morality as a necessary social good follows directly from his discussions in the Wealth of Nations(1776;Modern Library[Cannan] edition)concerning major undepletable,negative externalities,and spillover effects which impact the moral,social,political,martial,and intellectual well being and development of practically the entire workforce,that are a direct byproduct of the workings of the powerful wealth creating process of individual self interest,comparative advantage, and the division of labor that Smith characterized as an Invisible Hand(of the market mechanism)on p.423.Smith discusses these negative spillover effects in great detail on pp.734-741 of the WN.Smith's solution is that government is the ONLY institution that can deal with this immemse and massive problem.How will this severe externality ,created by the workings of the Invisible Hand, be dealt with ? Smith states that the entire work force MUST be provided with education and religious instruction,which will be provided free of charge ,if necessary ,to all those who can't afford to pay.Smith's entire discussion on pp.716-768 should be carefully read by all modern day economists since there is not a better discussion of market failure,public goods,and externalities-spillover effects in the current literature.Smith is not merely arguing for public schools.
WE can now see more clearly the connections between the new part VI of the 1790 edition of TMS and the WN.This new part of TMS is the new theoretical construct and foundation that provides the theoretical support for the applied policy analysis advocated by Smith in the WN, in Part V,pp.716-768, that is needed to deal with the dark side of the Invisible Hand Process.What happens if it is NOT dealt with by government action ? What will occur is the "...almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of people "(Smith,p.734;Smith repeats this conclusion 5 times over the next 7 pages).It is now obvious that a major tenet of Marxist analysis is that this severe undepletable externality,first identified by Adam Smith in 1776 and regularly deemphasized by the economics profession for nearly 250 years,will NOT BE DEALT WITH BY GOVERNMENT.This is one of Marx's major premises.This,of course,will result in a very depressing future for the entire working class.Marx's prediction was that, eventually,the working class would rise up to deal with this problem themselves in a revolutionary way.On the other hand,Government actions to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts created by the Invisible Hand process ,leads to a very different outcome-an increased economic well being that is combined with a completely educated and intellectually developed working class applying the principles of Smith's final edition of the TMS,which were virtue and morality.This is ,of course,a 180 degree turn from the wide claims made by economists that Smith was an advocate of free market,laissez faire capitalism that concluded that private greed and avarice would lead to a social optimum if only government would get out of the way.This latter characterization of Smith is simply a bad joke .
An interesting topic for development is WHY no economist,philosopher or political theorist had dealt with this issue since 1759.Perhaps Raphael will write a future book correcting this lacuna.
Book Description
Walter Wagner's book is a philosophical essay/treatise that searches for, and proposes, a moral basis for today's global economy. Wagner, a scholarly expert on the history of economic thought, builds his case from Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments through to current thinking about the virtues and shortcomings of free market economics. He writes in the style and with the broad perspective of Robert Heilbroner, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Lester Thurow.
Unlike many critical authors, he accepts the core function of free market economics but believes that massive scientific and technological impacts dictate a revision of the ideologies that support public policy and private decision making. The book's overall vision embraces and describes a new moral framework, and the means of developing it, suitable for the emerging global economy.
Chapter 1: The Quest
I initiate an inquiry into how economics can contribute to our understanding of the nature and causes of the well-being of humanity, provide guidance to progress, and calculate the costs of change. Mine is a quest to comprehend how economies go right, how they go wrong, and how to figure out what policies to follow.
Chapter 2: Adam Smith's Footprints
The discipline of economics has arisen in the Western world out of both moral philosophizing and natural science as they flourished in the Enlightenment. Adam Smith, as a moral philosopher, focused these leading ideas of the eighteenth century on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In doing so he established the discipline of economics as a moral enterprise.
Chapter 3: Insights, Oversights, Illusions
In seeking to reconstruct a combined theory and philosophy of economics, it is essential to confront the problems of theory construction itself. Traditional economic theory provides insights but also neglects and even overlooks (oversights) imperative conditions upon which human well-being is dependent. This chapter explores these conundrums.
Chapter 4: Free Market Theory, Touchstone of Ideology
In Western market economies, the theory that stands behind the public philosophy and supports the ideology of capitalism is Adam Smith's free-market competitive economic theory. This chapter tells some of the story of the Smithian tradition as it exists today: the central ideas, its strong public appeal, its shortcomings and failures, the illusions it fosters.
Chapter 5: The Essential Economy and A Workable Market
The basic causes of the wealth of nations and well-being of individuals are the functioning elements of the Essential Economy. The managing mechanism is the "workable market." The Essential Economy is the first-order cause of the wealth of nations. It includes the fundamental technology-driven production processes. The private-property market system is the second-order cause of the wealth of nations. Both perform necessary functions.
Chapter 6: The Organizing Animal
Kenneth Boulding's three major modes by which all humans transact with each other in all functioning social systems—Threat mode, Exchange mode, and Integrative mode—can elucidate the relationships among the Essential Economy, workable markets, and moral appraisal.
Chapter 7: Moral Sentiments and Economic Justice
Moral foundations differ among individuals and cultures. How can we find a basis for moral agreement and a sense of justice? It is the task of this chapter to explore further steps to develop a morality by which economic justice may be better perceived and more practically applied.
Chapter 8: The Meaning of Economic Progress
I contend that Western economies are materially, humanistically, and morally better than all others, past or present. This superiority is a product of progress which should be understood and perpetuated for the future well-being of all humanity. However, our understanding of modern complexities of progress is vague and is not well developed as moral guidance in the field of main core economics.
Chapter 9: Thinking About an Unknowable Future
Our major concern now is to develop strategy to cope with an uncertain future arising from progress and change. If we are to manage the prospects of progress and the pace, costs, and dangers of change, it is necessary to invent a vision of how to go about it. What strategies are we to follow about forming policies for an unknowable future?
Chapter 10: An Apollo Project for Humanitarian Economics
The proposed Apollo program's mission seeks to design a Humanitarian Research Institute that can construct a strategy for managing the pace of progress, including coping with the costs and dangers of change. The Institute must become a permanent means by which all nations identify the knowledge needed to provide humanity with practical moral guidance without the costs of change being more painful than its gains.
Book Description
This is the first scholarly work to deal solely with the ‘Adam Smith problem’, namely the apparent contradiction between Adam Smith’s most famous works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Since the 1840s scholars have puzzled over and attempted to explain the fact that these works offer two fundamentally different and contradictory concepts of human nature. In this radical new approach Dogan Göçmen makes a major contribution to the debate. Accepting that Smith does indeed put forward two different and varied ideas, he argues that the ethical position articulated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be, and was intended by Smith to be, applied as a basis for criticising the commercial society analysed in the Wealth of Nations. Göçmen argues that this ethical position points to the character of an ideal future society, Adam Smith’s Utopia, a society in which its social components are completely in sympathy - and therefore harmonious - with each other.
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The Autonomous Male of Adam Smith (Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory)
Stewart Justman
Manufacturer: University of Oklahoma Press
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ASIN: 080612542X |
Book Description
In this book, Russell examines Hume's notion of free will and moral responsibility. It is widely held that Hume presents us with a classic statement of the "compatibilist" position--that freedom and responsibility can be reconciled with causation and, indeed, actually require it. Russell argues that this is a distortion of Hume's view, because it overlooks the crucial role of moral sentiment in Hume's picture of human nature. Hume was concerned to describe the regular mechanisms which generate moral sentiments such as responsibility, and Russell argues that his conception of free will must be interpreted within this naturalistic framework. He goes on to discuss Hume's views about the nature and character of moral sentiment; the extent to which we have control over our moral character; and the justification of punishment. Throughout, Russell argues that the naturalistic avenue of interpretation of Hume's thought, far from draining it of its contemporary interest and significance, reveals it to be of great relevance to the ongoing contemporary debate.
Customer Reviews:
A must read for traditional compatibilists.......1999-02-26
Russell makes a compelling case that the traditional compatiblist interpretation of Hume is mistaken, and that Hume's account of responsibility is part of his greater discussion of moral sentiments. In the end, Russell argues that Hume's position is closer to that of P.F. Strawson in "Freedom and Resentment" than it is to the traditional reading that Ayer, Mill, and Schlick give. Russell also gives an account of what implications Hume's theory has for a contemporary theory of responsibility.
Average customer rating:
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La Teoria De Los Sentimientos Morales / The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (Humanidades / Humanities)
Adam Smith
Manufacturer: Alianza Editorial Sa
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 842065664X |
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