>
> Reading the passages from the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of
> Nations, I'm not convinced that Smith intended the figure of speech to mean
> the same thing in both places. In TMS, the pursuit of power and riches is
> irrational for the individual at least. In WN, the preference for investing
> in the home market is rational for the individual. What's the advantage of
> conflating the two (or more) hands?
In both the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, Smith attributes instrumental rationality - the rationality involved in the preference for investing in the home market - to the pursuer of "power and riches". It is the end as opposed to the means adopted in its pursuit that he treats as irrational.
Moral Sentiments has people "naturally confound" this instrumental rationality, "the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or oeconomy by means of which it ['power and riches'] is produced", with "the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording", a satisfaction which, if not confounded in this way, would appear "contemptible and trifling". This "natural confounding" is ascribed to "the invisible hand", here explicitly identified with God's providence. As in the Wealth of Nations, the sign of this is the effect of the confounding on "the wealth of nations".
"Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and oeconomy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or oeconomy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
"And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned the rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains, and made the trackless and barren ocean a new fund of subsistence, and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth. The earth by these labours of mankind has been obliged to redouble her natural fertility, and to maintain a greater multitude of inhabitants. It is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, never was more fully verified than with regard to him. The capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets, which are employed in the oeconomy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining. The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for."
>
> Second, the texts do not, in my view, authorize the interpretation of an
> unequivocally providential outcome. "They keep off the summer shower, not
> the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed
> than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and
> to death." Hey, if this is the best the grace of God can do, maybe it
> wouldn't be a such bad idea to see what His competition, the malicious
> spirit, has on offer.
>
Smith''s view of the providential outcome is found in the passage I've just quoted - the "passions" provide those who do not themselves acquire power and riches with what is required for "real happiness in human life". However, since he assumes that everyone "naturally confounds" real happiness with power and riches, it's not clear how possessing the means to real happiness will in fact enable even those who do not achieve power and riches to be happy. This problem is also present in Kant and Hegel.
Another inconsistency of the same kind is found in the effect Smith claims the division of labour has on "the intellectual, social and martial virtues" of labourers.
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."
> Third, the context of the invisible hand in the TMS suggests to me a most
> un-Divine contrivance -- intricately connected to something both artificial
> and precarious. I wonder if the TMS hand, at least, refers not to a sentient
> five-fingered appendage but to something more mechanical like a lever or the
> 'hand' of a clock?
Smith's deism is modeled on Newton's. Their God is an obsessive-compulsive "mechanic", a maker of "clocks".
"God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hand, impenetrable, moveable Particles of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them"
"it became who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere laws of Nature; though being once form'd it may continue by those laws for many Ages. For while Comets move in very excentrick Orbs in all manner of Positions, blind Fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in Orbs concentrick some inconsiderable Irregularities excepted, which may have arisen from the mutual Actions of Comets and Planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this System wants a Reformation. Such a wonderful Uniformity in the Planetary System must be allowed the Effect of Choice." (Newton, Opticks ... 4th ed. London, 1730, p. 376, as quoted by John C. Greene in The Death of Adam, p. 12)
Ted