prior probability

(Walter Bagehot and Adam Smith, part 5)

Happy Monday! Thus far, we have reviewed the first few pages of Bagehot’s 1876 essay “Adam Smith as a Person” (pp. 18-26 or paragraphs 1-12, to be more precise); today, we will turn to the next three pages of his excellent essay (pp. 26-29 or paragraphs 13-15).

After joining the faculty of the University of Glasgow in the fall of 1751, Adam Smith began lecturing on a wide variety of topics, including rhetoric, ethics, and law, and it was during this time–his professor years (1751 to 1763) in Glasgow–that the now middle-aged Adam Smith would begin to play a small part on the intellectual stage of Enlightenment Europe. Smith’s lectures not only attracted students from all over the United Kingdom as well as the Continent; Smith also made his first major contribution to the world of letters: The Theory of Moral Sentiments. (The first edition of this great tome was first published in 1759, the year Smith celebrated his 36th birthday.)

Adam Smith’s philosophical treatise not only catapulted its author on the world stage in a literal sense, for as I shall further explain in my next post, it was the publication of “this celebrated book” that would lead to Adam Smith’s three-year “Grand Tour” of Paris, Geneva, and the South of France with the Duke of Buccleugh starting in January of 1764; Moral Sentiments was also the main source of Adam Smith’s scholarly and literary reputation while he was still alive. (As Bagehot correctly notes, except for a little essay on the origins of language, which Smith added to the third edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1767, Smith did not publish any other new work until the first edition of The Wealth of Nations was published in April of 1776.)

Although Smith’s Moral Sentiments was by all accounts “much praised and much read” (p. 26, paragraph 13) at the time of its initial publication in 1759, Bagehot, writing a century later, wastes no time in showing what a weak and flimsy a work of moral philosophy it really was. To the point, Bagehot launches a devastating two-pronged pincer movement, so to speak, against Smith’s work, simultaneously attacking both intellectual flanks of Smith’s ethical theory: the sentiment of sympathy and the device of the impartial spectator.

First off, Adam Smith tried to build a comprehensive and sophisticated theory of ethics on the foundation of human sympathy. In brief, according to Smith the moral philosopher, man is not just a selfish creature but an other-regarding one too, or in Smith’s own “pompous” words: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it“. (This famous passage appears in the very first sentence of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.)

Bagehot, however, spots an “obvious objection” to Smith’s pro-sympathy premise: “We often sympathize where we cannot approve, and approve where we cannot sympathize.” (p. 27, para. 14). In other words, unlike the Pope, Smith’s lofty sentiment of sympathy is not infallible! Moreover, even if Smith’s theory is really based on what we now call “empathy” (I always get the two confused!), Bagehot’s “obvious objection” still stands. Either way, people often sympathize (i.e. feel pity for) or empathize (i.e. understand how others feel) with the wrong people, an observation that is especially true in a real-world domain like politics, where “[e]ven the wisest party men more or less sympathize with the errors of their own side ….” (ibid.).

To his credit, Bagehot acknowledges that Adam Smith anticipated this “obvious objection” to his theory and that Smith tried to remedy it by introducing the imaginary device of the impartial spectator, perhaps the most original aspect of all of Smith’s moral philosophy. Alas, Bagehot’s take-down of the impartial spectator is so deadly and devastating that it is worth quoting in full:

Adam Smith could not help being aware of this obvious objection …. But the way in which he tries to meet the objection only shows that the objection is invincible. He [Smith] sets up a supplementary theory–a little epicycle–that the sympathy which is to test good morals [i.e. properly distinguish right from wrong] must be the sympathy of an “impartial spectator.” But, then, who is to watch the watchman? Who is to say when the spectator is impartial, and when it is not?

As it happens, Bagehot is not the only public intellectual to “diss” Smith’s great work of moral philosophy. My colleague and friend Daniel Klein, for example, has identified no less than 26 different authors who have found one fault or another in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. (See here: Dan Klien, “Dissing The Theory of Moral Sentiments: Twenty-Six Critics, from 1765 to 1949,” in Volume 15 of Econ Journal Watch.) But Bagehot’s critique, to my mind, is the most fatal one. (If Bagehot were a modern-day hip hop artist, his two-track Adam Smith diss songs might be called “Too Much Sympathy, Yo'” and “Who’s Watchin’ My Watcher?”)

Aside from the question of its intellectual merit, The Theory of Moral Sentiments led to Adam Smith’s tour of Europe, a voyage of discovery that most likely shaped Adam Smith’s intellectual destiny more than other episode in Smith’s life. I shall turn to Smith’s appointment as a travelling tutor to the Duke of Buccleugh and their short-lived “Grand Tour” in my next post.

Below is a recap of my first five posts in this series:

1. Adam Smith as a Person (March 25, 2023), where I introduce an essay with the same title by English essayist Walter Bagehot.
2. Walter Bagehot and Adam Smith, part 1 (March 27), where I identify several themes in Bagehot’s Adam Smith essay.
3. Adam Smith’s dream (March 28), where I describe the ambitious nature of Smith’s massive scholarly project: to identify the universal and law-like rules of behavior that men, merchants, and law-makers should live by.
4. Balliol College and the road to Adam Smith’s Damascus (morning of March 30), where I survey the last stage Smith’s formal education–his seven years of study at Oxford–and take notice of his momentous decision in 1746 to abandon his religious vocation.
5. Adam Smith’s patrons and possible father figures (afternoon of March 30), where I identify two prominent men who took Smith under their protective wings: the jurist Lord Kames and the mechant/slave trader Provost Cochrane.

Stay tuned; I will pick up where I left off (with the publication of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759) and resume my Bagehot/Smith series on Monday, April 3 …

Following the lead of many U.S. cities and such world-class capitals as Berlin, Ghent, and Paris, the University of Central Florida (UCF) will soon become the largest car-free campus in the world!!!! In a press release, UCF President Alexander N. Cartwright pledged to fight climate change by making the main campus a “car-free zone” starting in 2025! More details are posted below the fold:

I have just posted a revised version of my Truth Markets paper on SSRN. The premise of my revised paper is still the same (the idea that truth is probabilistic, not absolute), but I address the concerns raised by the reviewers of my original first draft, such as the need for an arbiter and the possibility of market manipulation. Enjoy!

We will never forget you!

(Walter Bagehot and Adam Smith, part 4)

I concluded my previous post by asking, How did an obscure bookworm like Adam Smith become a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment? According to Walter Bagehot (see especially paragraphs 9 through 12 of his beautiful essay “Adam Smith as a Person”), it was a combination of powerful patrons and raw oratorical talent, along with a small dose of good luck, that would alter the course of the future economist’s fortunes–from college dropout to university professor, and all within the span of five pivotal years: 1746 to 1751!

Specifically, Bagehot singles out two prominent men (and possible father figures) who took Smith under their proverbial protective wings: a Lord Kames and a Provost Cochrane. Kames was Henry Home, Lord Kames (c.1696–1782), a great Scottish judge, philosopher, and man of letters who was a founding member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. For his part, Cochrane was Andrew Cochrane of Brighouse (1693–1777), an 18th-century Glaswegian tobacco merchant and slave trader who led a private clique called the Political Economy Club and served three terms as Lord Provost of Glasgow. (Learn more about Provost Cochrane and the “tobacco lords” of Glasgow here.)

As it happens, the young Adam Smith must have not only befriended the founders of these social and scientific circles; Smith must have also somehow made a lasting impression on them. As early as 1748, for example, two years after Smith had left Oxford, Lord Kames arranged for the young college dropout cum scholar to deliver some guest lectures to the members of his learned society in Edinburgh. Against all odds, Smith somehow turned out to be a captivating and spellbinding speaker, perhaps the greatest of his generation! His Edinburgh lectures were so successful that he was offered a prestigious professorship at the University of Glasgow soon thereafter (around 1751).

And it was in Glasgow–where “Doctor Smith” spent the next 13 years of his quiet life–where the young philosopher would cross paths with the wealthy, powerful, and respected Provost Cochrane. By all accounts, they began to meet regularly at Cochrane’s Political Economy Club, which Bagehot describes as “this borderland between theory and practice” (p. 26; para. 12), and it was here, Bagehot conjectures, where this odd couple, a scholar and a slave trader, must have discussed a wide variety of economic topics. It was also here where Smith was most likely first exposed to the “heresy” of free trade, or in the immortal words of Bagehot: “From this club Adam Smith … learned much which he would he never have found in any book ….” (ibid.).

But Smith would not finish writing The Wealth of Nations until three decades later. In the meantime, Smith was still an up-and-coming professor of moral philosophy, and Smith the moral philosopher was teaching and writing a book on ethics–specifically, on the pivotal role that our emotions or “moral sentiments” play in helping us distinguish right from wrong. For his part, Bagehot will not only devote the next few pages of his essay to Smith’s first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (pp. 26-29; paragraphs 13-15); Bagehot will subject Smith’s philosophical ideas to withering criticism. I will describe and further discuss Bagehot’s epic take-down of Smith’s moral philosophy next week, starting on Monday, April 3.

(Walter Bagehot and Adam Smith, part 3)

Thus far, I have reviewed the first five paragraphs of Walter Bagehot’s “Adam Smith as a Person” (see here and here). The next few paragraphs of Bagehot’s beautiful essay describe the circumstances surrounding Smith’s birth in Kirkcaldy and provide a brief sketch of Smith’s formal education at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford.

Although Bagehot incorrectly tells us in the sixth paragraph of his essay that the great Adam Smith was born in 1713 (Smith, in fact, was most likely born ten years later), Bagehot is right about two things: (1) the future economist was born to a widow, so Smith never met his father, and (2) we know next to nothing about Smith’s childhood and early years, except that Smith attended the University of Glasgow and that he must have been a good student, for he was awarded a special scholarship to attend Oxford. (Smith won a Snell Exhibition from the University of Glasgow to Balliol College, Oxford, to be more precise.) Bagehot then devotes the next two paragraphs (7 & 8) of his essay to Smith’s studies at Balliol College (pictured below), making the following points:

1. If Oxford had allowed students to evaluate their courses (a common practice today), Smith would have written scathing reviews of his instructors, who (as Smith himself tells us in The Wealth of Nations) “have for these many years given up altogether even the pretence of teaching”;
2. In spite of this, Smith spent “as many as seven years” at Balliol College, Oxford, where Smith was exposed to a new country, culture, and way of life (historically, Scotland and England were separate kingdoms until the Act of Union of 1707);
3. Among other things, Smith studied modern and ancient philosophy during his Oxford years, including ancient Greek as well as a contraband copy of David Hume’s early philosophical writings.

The student scholarship that Smith was awarded to attend Oxford was reserved for future Anglican priests, i.e. for students who were destined to become clergymen, but as Bagehot correctly notes in the ninth paragraph of his essay, “for some reason or another, Adam Smith … gave up all idea of entering the Church of England, and returned to Scotland without fixed outlook or employment.” After abruptly leaving Oxford and abandoning the clergy, Smith lived with his mother for two years, “studying no doubt, but earning nothing, and visibly employed in nothing,” to quote Bagehot.

In other words, something dramatic must have occurred in the young Adam Smith’s intellectual life at this time–momentous enough to cause him to decamp from Oxford, give up his religious vocation, and beat a hasty retreat to his mother’s house. What happened on the road to Smith’s Damascus? And whatever it was, how did a washout with no prospects become a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment, the man who would change the world by bringing down mercantilism and championing free trade?

Bagehot never answers the first question: what was the dramatic event that led Smith to abandon Oxford and jettison his prospects? (For my part, I suspect it was a broken heart caused by a love affair; see my 2021 paper “Adam Smith in Love“.) But in the next few paragraphs of his Adam Smith essay, Bagehot does describe the young scholar’s transformation from a proverbial loser living with his mom to an esteemed professor at the University of Glasgow, where Smith would spend the next 12 or 13 years of his life and where he would write his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I will turn to Smith’s Glasgow years as well as his philosophical treatise in my next few posts.