Last week (see here), we saw how a young Adam Smith singled out and transcribed three lengthy philosophical fragments from Rousseau’s famed Second Discourse in his (Smith’s) 1756 letter to the Edinburgh Review, and we then took a closer look at the first two of these eloquent extracts (here and here). Now, let’s turn to Smith’s translation of the third and last passage. [1] To begin, my most pressing question for Adam Smith is this: what does this third selection, which consists of nine sentences in all, add to the previous two passages?

For starters, the first two sentences of Smith’s translation of Passage #3 paint an idealized or romantic picture of Rousseau’s noble savage:

SENTENCE 1 & 2: “Man in his savage, and man in his civilized state, differ so essentially in their passions and inclinations, that what makes the supreme happiness of the one, would reduce the other to despair. The savage breathes nothing but liberty and repose; he desires only to live and to be at leisure; and the ataraxia of the Stoic does not approach to his profound indifference for every other object.”

The next two sentences of Smith’s translation describes “civilized man” or “the citizen” as trapped in a perpetual and pointless treadmill:

SENTENCES 3 & 4: “The citizen, on the contrary, toils, bestirs and torments himself without end, to obtain employments which are still more laborious; he labours on till his death, he even hastens it, in order to put himself in a condition to live, or renounces life to acquire immortality. He makes his court to the great whom he hates, and to the rich whom he despises; he spares nothing to obtain the honour of serving them; he vainly boasts of his own meanness and their protection, and, proud of his slavery, speaks with disdain of those who have not the honour to share it.”

Moving on, the next two sentences of Smith’s translation of Passage #3 (sentences 5 & 6) compare and contrast a simple Caribbean native with a harried European political figure:

SENTENCES 5 & 6: “What a spectacle to a Caraib would be the painful and envied labours of a European minister of state? How many cruel deaths would not that indolent savage prefer to the horror of such a life, which is often not even sweetened by the pleasure of doing well?”

The next two sentences of Smith’s translation (sentences 7 & 8) pinpoint the source of this difference between savage man and civilized man. For Rousseau, the savage lives within himself; the civilized man lives outside himself. That is, the savage’s sense of self comes from his own experience, while the civilized person depends on the opinions of others to feel like he matters:

SENTENCES 7 & 8: “But to see the end of so many cares, it is necessary that the words, power and reputation, should have an intelligible meaning in his understanding; that he should be made to comprehend that there is a species of men who count for something the looks of the rest of the universe; who can be happy and contented with themselves upon the testimony of another, rather than upon their own. For such in reality is the true cause of all those differences: the savage lives in himself; the man of society, always out of himself; cannot live but in the opinion of others, and it is, if I may say so, from their judgment alone that he derives the sentiment of his own existence.”

And the last sentence of Smith’s translation of this lengthy passage (sentence #9) concludes with this blistering indictment:

LAST SENTENCE: “It belongs not to my subject to show, how from such a disposition arises so much real indifference for good and evil, with so many fine discourses of morality; how every thing being reduced to appearances, every thing becomes factitious and acted; honour, friendship, virtue, and often even vice itself, of which we have at last found out the secret of being vain; how in one word always demanding of others what we are, and never daring to ask ourselves the question, in the midst of so much philosophy, so much humanity, so much politeness, and so many sublime maxims we have nothing but a deceitful and frivolous exterior; honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.”

In other words, this passage is not just a critique of civilized man; it is a scathing indictment of modern morality. For Rousseau, our morality is bullshit, a veil designed to hide our scheming and conniving ways. I therefore read Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as a direct reply to Rousseau’s indictment and a ringing defense of modern man. But let’s forget about Smith for the moment. What is Rousseau’s solution to this conundrum? (To be continued …)

[1] By way of comparison, a different translation of Passage #3 is reprinted in Cohen 2018, pp. 296-297: “… savage man and civilized man differ so greatly in the depths of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme happiness of the one would reduce the other to despair. Savage man breathes only tranquility and liberty; he wants simply to live and to rest easy; and not even the unperturbed tranquility of the Stoic approaches his profound indifference for any other objects. On the other hand, the citizen is always active and in a sweat, always agitated and unceasingly tormenting himself in order to seek still more laborious occupations. He works until he dies; he even runs to his death in order to be in a position to live, or renounces life to in order to acquire immortality. He pays court to the great whom he hates and to the rich whom he scorns. He stops at nothing to obtain the honor of serving them. He proudly crows about his own baseness and their protection; and proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain about those who have not the honor to taking part in it. What a spectacle for the Carib are the difficult and envied labors of the European minister! How many cruel deaths would that indolent savage not prefer to the horror of such a life, which often is not mollified even by the pleasure of doing good. But in order to see the purpose of so many cares, the words power and reputation would have to have a meaning in his mind; he would have to learn that there is a type of men who place some value on the regard the rest of the world has for them, and who knows how to be happy and content with themselves on the testimony of others rather than on their own. Such, in fact, is the true cause of all these differences; the savage lives in himself; the man accustomed to the ways of society is always outside himself and knows how to live only in the opinion of others. And it is, as it were, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence. It is not pertinent to my subject to show how, from such a disposition, so much indifference for good and evil arises, along with such fine discourses of morality; how everything reduced to appearances, everything becomes factitious and bogus; honor, friendship, virtue, and often even our vices, about which we eventually find the secret of boasting; how, in a word, always asking others what we are and never daring to question ourselves on this matter, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, politeness, and sublime maxims, we have merely a deceitful and frivolous exterior: honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.”