This is part 1 of my review of Adam Smith Reconsidered. To begin, two things about the Introduction to Paul Sagar’s beautiful book caught my attention: (1) Professor Sagar’s striking but simple solution to something called “Das Adam Smith Problem” and (2) his formulation of what he considers to be the “real” Adam Smith problem. So, let’s start off with the so-called Das Adam Smith Problem, a longstanding academic controversy originating in the 19th century. What is it? Why does this obscure scholarly conundrum matter? And how does Sagar solve it?

In brief, the original “Adam Smith Problem” refers to a possible internal contradiction between Smith the political economist and Smith the moral philosopher — a deep paradox that arises when his two great works are read as a whole — namely, the possible contradiction between the invisible hand of self-interest in Smith’s Wealth of Nations, where the Scottish philosopher develops a testable theory of political economy based on “self-regarding” or wealth-maximizing behavior on the one hand, and the impartial spectator of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he develops a more complex and convoluted pro-social theory of ethics based on mutual “fellow feeling” and “other-regarding” behavior on the other. Or in the eloquent words of Paul Sagar himself, “How could the same man have written both books?” (Sagar 2022, p. 1, footnote omitted).

For his part, Professor Sagar waves away this scholarly Smithian dilemma as a faux problem. Simply put, for Sagar there is no “Adam Smith Problem” because both of Smith’s great works are operating at “differing levels of analysis” (p. 2). Specifically, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is about “individual-level morality”, while The Wealth of Nations is about “societal level systemic analysis” (ibid.). As an aside, Sagar’s simple solution to this centuries-old Smithian conundrum is so potent and compelling that I wish I had thought of it first!

But as they say on late-night TV infomercials: wait, there’s more! Much, much more. In addition to solving the so-called Das Adam Smith Problem, Sagar’s Introduction makes another significant contribution to the literature. In a word, he identifies what he consider to be the “Real Das Adam Smith Problem” (p. 3). For Sagar, the true or “real” Adam Smith problem is the inherent tension between markets and morality, or in Sagar’s own words: “How could a first-rate moral philosopher like Smith think that morality was not fatally compromised by the existence of the kind of market-reliant society that he set out not only to understand and explain, but in various ways to suggest could be improved?” (ibid.).

Although this particular query might appear to be of interest only to a handful of historians and a few other esoteric academics, it turns out that it concerns each and every one of us, especially in our times, i.e. “consumer-driven postindustrial capitalism” (ibid.). After all, how can one reconcile self love and love of others, capitalism and Christianity, the urge to accumulate material goods and the desire be a good person at the same time? Like the catchy Nicki Minaj rap battle song “No Frauds” (featuring hip hop legends Drake and Lil Wayne), do we have to pick a side? Or can the pursuit of material wealth (e.g. “get yours”) be compatible with higher moral standards such as those embodied in the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule (“love thy neighbor as thyself”)?

It suffices to say (for now) that the rest of Sagar’s book, to which I shall turn in my next few posts, is devoted to the painstaking task of reconstructing Adam Smith’s responses to these larger economic/ethical questions.