Adam Smith's View of Man

Abstract

ADAM Smith was a great economist, perhaps the greatest that there has ever been. Today I am going to discuss his views on the nature of man. My reason for doing this is not because I think that Adam Smith possessed an understanding of man's nature superior to that of his contemporaries. I would judge that his attitudes were quite widely shared in the eighteenth century, at any rate, in Scotland, but no doubt elsewhere in eighteenth century Europe. Adam Smith was not the father of psychology. But I believe his views on human nature are important to us because to know them is to deepen our understanding of his economics. It is sometimes said that Adam Smith assumes that human beings are motivated solely by self-interest. Selfinterest is certainly, in Adam Smith's view, a powerful motive in human behaviour, but it is by no means the only motive. I think it is important to recognise this since the inclusion of other motives in his analysis does not weaken but rather strengthens Adam Smith's argument for the use of the market and the limitation of government action in economic affairs. Adam Smith does not set down in one place his views on the nature of man. They have to be inferred from remarks in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith deals more extensively with human psychology in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the ostensible purpose of which was to uncover the bases for what may be termed our feelings and acts of benevolence. "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. . . . The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."' Adam Smith makes sympathy the basis for our concern for others. We form our idea of how others feel by considering how we would feel in like circumstances. The realisation that something makes our fellows miserable makes us miserable, and when something makes them happy, we are happy. This comes about because, by an act of imagination we put ourselves in their place, and, in effect, in our own minds become those other persons. Our feelings may not have the same intensity as theirs, but they are of the same kind.