But Adam Smith’s Dismissal of the Transcendent Ultimately Led to the Sociopath Max U

A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 21 “That is, He was No Reductionist, Economistic or Otherwise”

Dr. McCloskey opens this third chapter on Adam Smith, noting that he did not reduce ethics to just one virtue the way the Enlightenment ultimately did,

…narrowing an ethical system down to, for example, one virtue only, the Good, or the categorical imperative, or the greatest utility. The reductive impulse is to choose one of the seven such as prudence or love or justice to stand for all. (p. 195)

Last chapter, McCloskey explained Smith based his ethical view on four and a half of the seven Aquinian virtues, specifically courage, justice, temperance, prudence, and benevolence (the secular half of love).

We saw in that chapter that Kant’s focus on motivations and Bentham’s focus on consequences rule our day today leading us to read Adam Smith on the one note of prudence. Our loss of the understanding of virtue ethics make it difficult for us to realize what he was truly saying.

McCloskey noted Smith was the last of the virtue ethicists when he was writing in the late 1700s as the Enlightenment was dawning, but there has been a revival starting with an essay by Elizabeth Anscombe in 1958, titled “Modern Moral Philosophy.” She observed,

It would be a great betterment…if, instead of ‘morally wrong,’ one always named a genus such as ‘untruthful,’ ‘unchaste,’ ‘unjust.’ (p. 194)

Virtue ethics give us a bigger toolbox to work with when faced with ethical decisions. We do not have to define everything as good based on one dimension like the consequences of the decision or the intentions behind the decision.

We can acknowledge that a person can simultaneously implement prudence (costs and benefits), justice (how are others impacted), temperance (keeping all things in moderation), and courage (strength of character) when making decisions. It is not simple or algorithmic, and it requires much study, thinking, and practice.

But even with this fuller ethical model than our prudence only Max U of today, Smith did not include the Christian ethics of faith, hope, and agape love (the love that comes from God). Smith’s decision to ignore the transcendent virtues opened the door to the reductionist ethics we now live in.

Why Smith Dismissed the Transcendent

As a person alive 200 years after the Enlightenment, it is easy to see the problems that have come from their intentional move away from religiosity. But I think first we have to see why the thinkers of that time, including Smith, were so inclined.

Religion dominated all of society through the medieval era but as it was of course implemented by people, they often did not live up to the biblical values they extolled.

McCloskey said Smith was opposed to the “rigid Calvinism” that was prevalent in Scotland where he lived for things like keeping David Hume out of university chairs since he was an atheist. (p. 196)

Years of fighting between Catholics and Protestants provide many horrific examples the Enlightenment thinkers wanted to end.

Smith wanted, as did Hobbes, Locke, Vico, Hume, Kant, and Bentham, to bring ethics down to earth…(p. 197)

McCloskey assures us that Smith knew what he was doing by dropping the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and agape love.

He shared with Enlightenment figures such as Hume and Voltaire an aversion to any alleged ‘virtue’ that could be seen as conventionally religious. Hope and faith seemed to advanced thinkers in the eighteenth century to be horribly conventionally religious, and anyway dispensable. Let us build a new world free from religious superstition, they cried, free from the wars of sects, free from the meddling of priests and dominies. Let us dispense with the silliness of ‘faith and ‘hope’ and transcendent ‘love,’ and establish a new faith on the hope for transcendentally loveable reason and propriety. (p. 196)

We live now in this world the Enlightenment thinkers built. They did get rid of the “silliness of ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ and transcendent ‘love,’” and we live in a world that values reason above all else.

But it turns out that those silly virtues are what give people a purpose, a reason for being. Reason without purpose describes our world today where so many people are lonely, anxious, and adrift.

More thoughts from McCloskey

McCloskey contributed a chapter to The Ethical Formation of Economists, which, as the title suggests, was a compilation of essays on the role of ethics in the practice of economics.

In her chapter, Raising Up Private Max U, she addresses the virtues saying that economists need to embrace all seven of the virtues, not just one or some subset of the seven.

Characterizing humans as Prudent Only, or even as prudent and just, with love of others tacked on, will not do. People also have identities (faith), and projects (hope), for which they need courage and temperance, those self-disciplining virtues. And they all have some version of transcendent love — the connection with God, the traditional object, though the worship of science or humanity or the revolution or the environment or art or rational-choice models in political science have provided modern substitutes for Christianized agape. (p. 9)

What I liked about this is her application of the transcendent virtues. You do not have to be Christian or any other formal religion to need these virtues developed in your life.

There is a need in us for identity, which she says is faith, and projects that give us purpose, which she says is hope.

I saw an interview with her where she talked about faith as identity — I am Christian; I am a scientist; I am a parent. There is an element of faith to attach these identities to yourself, to define yourself in the roles you choose.

Whereas she spoke of hope as forward-looking, it is the virtue that gives you goals to pursue and a direction to go.

And the comment above shows the various ways agape love could be lived out by a person whatever their belief in a higher power is.

Conclusion

It is easy to see why the Enlightenment thinkers wanted to overthrow the religious dogma that had caused so much pain and perpetrated so much evil for centuries.

But living in the world they created hundreds of years later it is also easy to see that removing the transcendent leaves only Man and his Reasoning to define the world.

Idolatry is the worship of man or man-created things. We have created a narcissistic world where we each get to define what is good or bad. There is no Truth. There is no Right or Wrong. But then there is also no Purpose.

Adam Smith’s error was the error (but also the glory) of the Enlightenment, trying to liberate us from transcendence by sneering at it or, at best, silently setting it aside in favor of procedural maxims such as the impartial spectator or the categorical imperative or the greatest utility. (p. 197)

With hindsight, it would have been better to demand the people running religion live up to the virtues of faith, hope, and love, than to completely throw out the virtues thus leaving us all unmoored.

Reference: McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen, 2016. “That is, He was No Reductionist, Economistic or Otherwise,” Chapter 21 of Bourgeois Equality, The University of Chicago Press.