prior probability

Note: TMS refers to Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, while WN = The Wealth of Nations

I mentioned in a previous post (see here or below) that typing “another Adam Smith problem” into Google Scholar’s search engine generates nine results: one book, two book chapters, and six research articles. At the time, however, I was only able to comment on seven of those nine works because two were gated: a 2006 paper by Catherine Labio (“The solution is in the text: a survey of the recent literary turn in Adam Smith studies”) and a 2001 book chapter by Amos Witztum (“Division of labour, wealth, and behaviour in Adam Smith”). I have since obtained copies of both works and will share my thoughts below:

Catherine Labio’s Adam Smith Problem

For Labio (2006, p. 153), “The question is no longer: how does one reconcile the potentially mutually exclusive ethical frameworks of two separate works by the same author [i.e. the notorious Adam Smith Problem of old], but how does one account for the internal contradictions at the heart of these respective works [TMS and WN] and of Smith’s oeuvre as a whole?” So, what are these potential “internal contradictions” in Smith’s works? Labio lists five of them:

1. Smith’s “reservations on the socio-political impact of the generalized application of the division of labour” (citing West 1996);
2. “his historicization of the natural price” (citing Leonard 1995);
3. “his praise of early versus late production” (citing Heinzelman 1995, Labio 1997, and Sutherland 1998 [1993]);
4. “his inclusion of envy in his conjectures on sympathy and the constitution of the subject” (citing Dupuy 1987 and Morillo 2001, ch. 5); and
5. “his qualms, articulated in both The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and WN, regarding the desirability of laissez-faire capitalism, the morality of commerce, and the fate of morality in a commercial society” (citing Pack 1991, Michie 2000, and G. Skinner 1999).

Amos Witztum’s Adam Smith Problem

For his part, Witztum’s work drills down on the first of Labio’s Smithian internal contradictions:

In what seems to be yet another Adam Smith problem, [Smith scholar E. G. West] argues that there is an apparent contradiction between Book 1 and Book 5 of the Wealth of Nations … with regard to the effects of the division of labour on the productivity of workers and the life of the working classes. While in Book 1 the division of labour appears as one of the major causes for the “improvement in the productive powers of labour”, in Book 5 it is this very same division of labour which gives rise to “stupidity and ignorance”, not at all conducive to dexterity and ingenuity.

Witztum 2001, p. 137, citing West 1964, 1996

Others, however, “dispute the existence of any such problem” (Witztum 2001, p. 137, citing Rosenberg 1965, 1990). So, is there a contradiction between Books 1 and 5 of WN, and if so, is the division of labor ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on balance? Suffice it to say that both Labio and Witztum give us a lot to think about and plenty to read, for in addition to the two scholarly works by E. G. West, Witztum’s bibliography includes five scholarly papers (counting two self-citations), two books, as well as four references to Smith (see Witztum 2001, p. 152), while Labio’s list of possible Smithian “internal contraditions” refers to nine more works (aside from West’s), including one self-citation (see Labio 2006, p. 153).

Happy Leap Day! In my previous post, I shouted out my colleague and friend, Salim Rashid, for formulating a new Adam Smith problem — or what I now like to call “Salim Rashid’s Adam Smith Problem” — in his work-in-progress “Young Adam Smith”. In a word: how does Smith deserve to be remembered, and how would Smith himself have answered this question? Moral philosopher, law professor, political economist, advisor to statesmen, author of The Wealth of Nations, and customs house official all come to mind, though these sundry pigeonholes only tell a partial story, like the radically divergent re-tellings of the same crime in Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon.

For his part, Professor Rashid not only explains why Smith himself might have thought of himself, first and foremost, as a literary figure; his beautiful paper also identifies several additional “unanswered questions” about our beloved Scottish man of letters. Some of these questions, for example, involve the young Adam Smith’s “Snell Exhibition” — a coveted scholarship allowing a small number of Glasgow University students to study at Oxford — and his six-year stint at Balliol College, Oxford, i.e. July 1740 to August 1746:

• Is there any evidence of the young Smith using the Balliol College library or the primary Oxford library, the Bodleian, during his six years at Oxford? (See Rashid 2023, p. 8.)
• Why did Smith continue to hold his Snell Exhibition until 1749 (see here, for example), when his residency at Oxford ended in 1746; that is, did Smith continue to receive Snell scholarship monies for an additional three years? (Ibid.)
• To this list, I would add a third open question: what was the young Smith actually doing during his “lost years”, i.e. from the summer of 1746, when he ditched Oxford, to the fall of 1748, when he began to deliver a series of lectures in the town of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames?

Next, another set of open questions involves Smith’s so-called “Edinburgh period” (cf. pp. 39-42 of Lord Keynes’s review of W. R. Scott’s Adam Smith as Student and Professor, published in Economic History, Vol. 4, No. 13 (1938), pp. 33-46), i.e. 1748 to 1751, when he delivered a series of freelance lectures before becoming a full-time professor at the University of Glasgow. Among these questions are the following: where were these lectures given; what was their subject-matter; who was Smith’s audience; and what fees, if any, did Smith charge? (See Rashid 2023, p. 19.) Also, according to Rashid (ibid.), “[a]t a time when many of the Edinburgh University professors advertised their lectures each term in the Edinburgh Evening Courant and the Caledonian Mercury, as also did visiting speakers, musicians, gymnastic performers, anditinerant quacks, only the name of Adam Smith is missing.” Why?

Yet another set of open questions involves Smith’s stint as a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, i.e. January 1752 to November 1763:

• Why did Smith begin writing up the so-called “Early Draft” of The Wealth of Nations in 1755, which is devoted to political economy, but then publish an entirely different book on a completely different subject-matter in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments? (See Rashid 2023, p. 8.)
• Why did Smith then wait another 20 years to develop his approach to political economy [i.e. the Early Draft] into a book? (Ibid.) Did his three-year sojourn in France (1764-1766) have any thing to do with this timing?
• Why did Professor Smith accept “so many administrative duties” during his tenure at the University of Glasgow? (Ibid.) By way of example, Smith was officially Quaestor (Treasurer) from 1758 to 1760 (see here), responsible for buying books for the University Library.
• In addition to his regular teaching and administrative duties at Glasgow, why did the young professor also agree to take into his home and personally tutor Lord Shelburne’s second son (Thomas Petty Fitzmaurice) from 1759 to 1761? How many other students at the University of Glasgow did Smith tutor at his home, and how much time and effort did this take?

Beyond these Smithian enigmas, I would add several others. How did Smith grade his students, were his exams in writing or oral, did he have any teaching assistants, and what was his teaching load like? To conclude (for now), however we remember Smith’s legacy, it suffices to say that Professor Rashid and I will be adding these additional open questions and discussing them at greater length when we revise our new work-in-progress Die Adam Smith Probleme.

“Was Adam Smith, secretly, a poet …? [T]here is another Smith, perhaps a more interesting Smith, … one we should like to know more about.” (Rashid 2023, p. 13.)

Who was Adam Smith, really? Moral philosopher, law professor, political economist, advisor to statesmen (e.g. Lord Shelburne and Minister Townshend), tourist (1764-1766), author of The Wealth of Nations (1776), and customs house official (1778-1790), Doctor Smith was and did many things. But are these various pigeonholes off the mark? Have we been getting it wrong all along? As it happens, “Young Adam Smith” by Salim Rashid (available here via SSRN) explains why Smith was, above all, a literary figure:

That Smith, in his own eyes, was not primarily an economist, or even a moral philosopher, is suggested by the fact that his first love seems always to have been literature and poetry. This alone should give us pause, because poets are typically more worldly than philosophers. This preference is clear from Smith’s library, which has more volumes on literature than any other topic….

Rashid 2023, p. 10

In other words, how did Smith see himself, especially during his formative years as student and professor? Was it not, first and foremost, as a man of letters? Professor Rashid’s beautiful paper, though still an early draft, is worth reading because it brings to our attention an often overlooked Adam Smith problem: how does Smith deserve to be remembered, and how would Smith himself have answered this question? Moreover, Rashid makes a strong case for why Smith’s love of language and les belles lettres is the golden thread that unifies the many-sidedness of Smith’s many works.

In addition to this deep Smithian self-identity problem — what I shall now call “Professor Rashid’s Adam Smith problem” — my colleague and friend — and now co-author, read on! — identifies many other poignant and “unanswered questions” about our Scottish man of letters, especially about Smith’s early life, which is why I asked Prof Rashid to co-author Die Adam Smith Probleme with me. I will survey these many additional “unanswered questions” in my next post.

Was the young Adam Smith really the absent-minded professor he is often caricatured as by many of his biographers? Check out Professor Salim Rashid’s work-in-progress Young Adam Smith (SSRN), which explains why the conventional biographical picture of Adam Smith as a distracted or absent-minded academic is most likely totally wrong. Instead, Dr Rashid (Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; pictured below, top row) paints a much more sophisticated portrait of the Scottish thinker as a budding man of letters who was “worldly, worldly wise, and street smart”, which also happens to be the subtitle of his paper. Moreover, in making his case (a case that I find highly persuasive, by the way), Professor Rashid also identifies a plethora of “open questions” about many different aspects of Adam Smith’s biography, which is why, as I mentioned in two of my previous posts (see here and here), Rashid and I have agreed to join forces on a related project, tentatively titled “Die Adam Smith Probleme“. So, what are these additional open questions? Stay tuned: I will review Professor Rashid’s Young Adam Smith in my next two posts.