Economic Liberty: Reviews and Comparisons of Six Papers
Whitney Li
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Abstract
In Part IV, Chapter I of this book, Adam Smith mainly talks about the motivation of people chasing power and money, and how this personal pursuit, though driven by selfishness, can contribute to public welfare.
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“Approbation and the Desire to Better One’s Condition in Adam Smith: When the Desire to Better One’s Conditions does not Better One’s Condition and Society’s Condition…” Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 2009. 31.1: 79-92.
Adam Smith is often associated with the idea that the desire to better one’s condition makes an individual better off and also, unintentionally, makes society better off. This paper asks whether for Smith there are circumstances under which the same desire to better one’s condition ultimately betters neither one’s condition nor society’s condition. The answer proposed here is that in Smith’s works, the presence of significant wealth may generate perverse incentives misaligning the betterment of the individual and of society, either because the individual may be worse off while society is better off, or because the individual is better off while society is worst off. This result is achieved by analyzing the role of approbation. For Smith, approbation is gained through proper moral conduct as well as through bettering one’s material condition. But wealth can trump moral conduct as a means to achieve approbation. In a world with “police, revenue, and arms” the more prosperous society is, the more powerful the incentives to rely upon wealth to gain approbation, rather than upon virtuous conduct. In the presence of wealth generated by commerce and the government power of granting monopolies, the desire to better one’s condition can curb moral behaviors and bring ruin to either individuals or society.
Zhaohe (Serena) Zhang PHIL 362 001/ECON 318 001 Professor Margaret Schabas 1 From Adam Smith's Methodology to His System of Natural Liberty
In my analysis, I wish to introduce readers to Smith's systematic approach to understanding human conditions, the forming of humans’ individual identities and societal associations, as well as his notions of justice reflected in different social and commercial aspects. This essay shows that Smith’s theorization of individual virtues is connected with other parts of his political-economic thinking, and his ideal system of political economy is one of “natural liberty” as a higher priority than “justice” or “equality”. Even though moral benevolence still plays an important role in Smith’s thinking, it falls into the realm of private virtue and charity.
From Vanity to the Love of Systems, from Luxury to the Accumulation of Capital, from the Gaze of Others to the Endless Process
The Individual and the Other in Economic Thought, 2018
CL Ten, ed., Mill's On Liberty: A Critical Guide. Reviewed by
Philosophy in Review, 2011
John Stuart Mill regarded On Liberty as likely to last longer in its effects than any of his other writings, save perhaps his System of Logic, and it continues to engage students and researchers over 150 years after its initial publication. This book brings together ten very different contributions, each of which illuminates the essay's continuing interest. A caution, however: this is no introductory anthology and, while several essays would be accessible and useful to undergraduate students, the collection as a whole is aimed primarily at researchers, or at least more advanced students. Contributors feel no need to make every aspect of Mill's thought accessible to the philosophical novice, and where appropriate they assume general familiarity with the ideas and terminology of moral and political philosophy. Still, for those with an adequate background, this collection forms a fine introduction to some central interpretive debates around On Liberty.
John Stuart Mill on the Relation between Society and Individual Regarding Personal Liberty
Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, 2018
The work of John Stuart Mill "On Liberty" is almost unanimously hailed as one of the most important expressions of the modern concept of liberty. However, both the internal coherence of the essay and its complex relationship with the rest of Mill's work have often been debated. Mill's essay offers a radical defense of liberty of thought, expression and action, making it one of the strongest expositions ever advanced in defense of individual freedom. But along with this aspect of the work there is also another less obvious one with which it is difficult to integrate: it is the need, defended by Mill in different parts of his essay, to establish political and social mechanisms of control and restraint, thus giving rise to a certain paternalism that has been strongly criticised by some sectors of liberal thought. This essay aims to show that this is a question not of the inconsistency in Mill's political theory, but of approaches whose relationship arises from the global conception of the human and morality that underlies the essay.
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Wealth and sensibility. The historical outcome of better living conditions for all according to Adam Smith
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2018
In this paper, I argue that Smith's commercial society is characterised more by restraint of self-command than by restraint of emotions through self-command, as usually stated. According to Smith, the appropriate degree of self-command varies with historical circumstances: better living conditions for all favour relaxation of self-command and lead people to express their sentiments more freely. I thus highlight a crucial link in Smith's thought between variations in general economic conditions and variations in moral judgement on the expression of emotions, or, in other words, between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith and the Wealth-Worshipping Spectator
Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023
What explains the ambition to get rich? Adam Smith is clear that commercial ambition, the passionate desire for great wealth, is not simply a desire to satisfy one's material needs. His argument on what underlies it, however, is not obvious. I review three possibilities suggested by Smith's work and the scholarly literature-vanity, the love of system, and the desire for tranquility-and conclude that none of them captures the underlying motive of commercial ambition. Instead, I argue that Smith understands commercial ambition as a misguided desire for excellence. Ambitious pursuers of wealth are driven by the desire to deserve and to enjoy recognition for their excellence, but their judgment of what is truly excellent is corrupted by the standards of a wealth-worshipping society.
ADAM SMITH AND STUART MILL ON THE VANITY OF HOMO OECONOMICUS
Perspectiva Filosófica, 2023
A vaidade está subjacente ao comportamento humano e pode ser expressa de várias formas nos campos social, moral, estético e econômico. É um complexo emocional que engloba o narcisismo e o histrionismo como traços de caráter, assim como outras funções, tais como memória, imaginação, cognição e impulso instintivo. Este estudo se concentra no homo oeconomicus utilizando uma abordagem econômico-filosófica para descrever a vaidade em uma situação de interação social entre um agente que se exibe e um espectador que observa quando o tema é uma comparação mútua em face a sinais exteriores de riqueza. Para esse fim, são utilizados os pensamentos de Adam Smith sobre vaidade na obra Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais e os estudos de Stuart Mill sobre distúrbios nos modelos econômicos. Como conclusão, pretende-se demonstrar que o pensamento desses dois economistasfilósofos permanece relevante para determinar a vaidade do homo oeconomicus contemporâneo. Vanity underlies human behavior and can be expressed in various forms in the social, moral, aesthetic, and economic fields. It is an emotional complex that encompasses narcissism and histrionics as character traits, as well as other functions, such as memory, imagination, cognition, and instinctive drive. This study focuses on homo oeconomicus using an economic-philosophical approach to detail vanity in a situation of social interaction between an agent who shows off and a spectator who observes when the topic is a mutual comparison in the face of external signs of wealth. To that end, Adam Smith’s thoughts on vanity in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Stuart Mill's studies on disturbances in economic models is used. In conclusion, we intend to demonstrate that the thoughts of these two economist-philosophers remain relevant in determining the vanity of the contemporary homo oeconomicus. Keywords: vanity; wealth; Adam Smith; Stuart Mill; homo oeconomicus
Wealth and Virtue
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 1983
Press 12 TMS I.i.2.1. Hume was uneasy about Smith's treatment of this central point and regretted that he had not ' more particularly and fully prov'd that all kinds of Sympathy are necessarily Agreeable [my italics]. This is the Hinge of your system, & yet you only Mention the Matter cursorily on p. 20.' That was indeed Smith's contention and it is interesting that he regarded his collection of homely Addisonian illustrations as a strong enough foundation on which to raise this central argument.
Mill, Liberty and the Facts of Life
Political Studies, 2001
This paper examines John Stuart Mill's discussion of economic liberty and individual liberty, and his view of the relationship between the two. It explores how, and how effectively, Mill developed his arguments about the two liberties; reveals the lineages of thought from which they derived; and considers how his arguments were altered by political economists not long after his death. It is argued that the distinction Mill drew between the two liberties provided him with a framework of concepts which legitimised significant government intervention in economic matters without restricting individual liberty.
Is the Adulation of the Rich-and-Powerful Derived from Benevolence? Adam Smith and the Distinction Between Aspiration and Interests
Critical Horizons, 2019
What is the source of the adulation of the rich-and-powerful? It cannot be benevolence. But then what is the criterion that delineates adulation from benevolence? This paper argues that the criterion resides in the set of inputs of the utility function: Does the set includes only interests, i.e. bundles of goods and resources? If so, the product is benevolence. But if the set includes aspiration, i.e. the desire to attain some imagined higher station, the product is adulation. Relying on Smith's theory, aspiration first amounts to the immersion of the self with the desired higher station. Second, aspiration becomes supplanted with adulation, the basking under the achievements of the more successful rich-and-powerful as second best, i.e. when the decision maker fails to attain the aspired station. The proposed interests-aspiration distinction, as the ground of the benevolence-adulation distinction, has one important payoff. The origin of the adulation of higher rank, and the consequent stability of the political order, should be traced to aspiration-derived inputs, not exclusively to interests.
Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment
The Social Science Journal, 2004
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