The Adam Smith Problem: A Reinterpretation

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Self Interest

As long as the market is said to be based on the motive of self-interest, any argument in favor of expanding the market will have to be seen as an argument in favor of self-interest. Such an argument, however, clearly conflicts with the notion that this motive, when viewed from a practical-political point of view, must be deemed a vice and thus, at best is something to be tolerated. As long as the market is seen as presupposing the motive of self-interest, as the currently dominating interpretation of Adam Smith implies, it therefore appears virtually impossible to see how Smith – or anyone else for that manner – can possibly justify extending the market in practical-political terms.

Smith

2019 ◽  
pp. 158-169
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Human Ethics ◽  
The Spectator

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90). Smith’s theory of sympathy is explained. The notion of the impartial spectator is discussed, in connection with both propriety and utility, and it is shown how the view of the spectator itself incorporates certain aspects of the human point of view. Smith is claimed to be a deontologist, at least concerning human ethics. His version of the dualism of practical reason is outlined, and the difficulties of combining a utilitarian conception of God with the notion of divine retribution are noted.

scholarly journals HOW SHOULD WE RECONCILE SELF-REGARDING AND PRO-SOCIAL MOTIVATIONS? A RENAISSANCE OF “DAS ADAM SMITH PROBLEM”

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
Natalie Gold
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Motivation Crowding ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Selfish Agents

Abstract“Das Adam Smith Problem” is the name given by eighteenth-century German scholars to the question of how to reconcile the role of self-interest in the Wealth of Nations with Smith’s advocacy of sympathy in Theory of Moral Sentiments. As the discipline of economics developed, it focused on the interaction of selfish agents, pursuing their private interests. However, behavioral economists have rediscovered the existence and importance of multiple motivations, and a new Das Adam Smith Problem has arisen, of how to accommodate self-regarding and pro-social motivations in a single system. This question is particularly important because of evidence of motivation crowding, where paying people can backfire, with payments achieving the opposite effects of those intended. Psychologists have proposed a mechanism for the crowding out of “intrinsic motivations” for doing a task, when payment is used to incentivize effort. However, they argue that pro-social motivations are different from these intrinsic motivations, implying that crowding out of pro-social motivations requires a different mechanism. In this essay I present an answer to the new Das Adam Smith problem, proposing a mechanism that can underpin the crowding out of both pro-social and intrinsic motivations, whereby motivations are prompted by frames and motivation crowding is underpinned by the crowding out of frames. I explore some of the implications of this mechanism for research and policy.

scholarly journals Garrett Barden and Tim Murphy. Law and Justice in Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Oxford University Press

Jurisprudence is a lively field of inquiry and law and justice are among its most important subjects. They are not exclusive to jurisprudence but are also inquired into in ethics and political philosophy. The book under review is an extensive inquiry into law and justice from the point of view of jurisprudence but it is jurisprudence that has deep roots in the history of the discipline. The authors use ideas from Aristotle, Gaius, Justinian, Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, Hobbes and from various law books from the Code of Hammurabi onwards. One way of understanding the book is to see the authors as reworking an old tradition that has not been prominent in modern jurisprudence. This approach leads to surprising conclusions from a modern point of view that are both radical and conventional.

scholarly journals Corporate Responsibility: In the Dilemma between Fake and Trust?

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 143-147
Author(s):  
Simon Fietze ◽  
Wenzel Matiaske ◽  
Roland Menges
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Corporate Responsibility ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Social Orientation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Market Organization ◽  
Corporate Social

The accusation of whitewashing accompanied the discussion about corporate social responsibility (CSR) since its inception the 1950s. That's not surprising. Ever since its beginnings in Scottish moral philosophy, economics did not expect the general good to be enhanced by the individual's social orientation, but rather by its self-interest, a concept less liable to disappointment, and the work of the invisible hand (Hirschman, 1977). The latter aims to promote a common goal that individuals have not intended. Following his famous text, Adam Smith (2007 [1786], p. 350) continues: ‘I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.’ The ‘mistrust’ of the ‘goodwill’ of the capitalist lives on in various streams such as Marxism, (neo-)liberalism or sociological system theory, to name but a few schools of thought. Marxists do not expect societal progress any more than (neo-)liberals from benevolent capitalists who, demand more taxable profits, instead of social responsibility, in the framework of the market organization of companies. System theorists find that ethical demands are hardly transferable directly into the economy code of payment/non-payment. Although Adam Smith (2007 [1786], p. 350) shared the view that the claim of public good orientation is ‘indeed, not very common among merchants’, but that ‘very few words need to be employed in dissuading them from it.’

Voluntarism, Naturalism, and Moral Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Vicious Regress ◽  
Divine Commands

Pufendorf criticizes Hobbes from a voluntarist point of view. He argues that if there were no divine commands, Hobbes would be right to derive morality from self-interest. Divine commands introduce the element of morality that goes beyond self-interest. Suarez is wrong, therefore, to believe in objective morality without divine commands. Shaftesbury attacks both egoists and voluntarists as ‘nominal moralists’ who overlook the objective reality of moral rightness and wrongness. Cudworth defends this position, arguing that any attempt to derive genuine morality from commands leads to a vicious regress. Clarke argues, from a position similar to Cudworth’s, that Hobbes cannot consistently maintain his view that nothing is morally right or wrong without enforcement by an organized state.

scholarly journals What’s the problem, Mr. Smith? Shedding more light (than Heat) on Adam Smith’s view of man *

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Emmanoel de Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Abstract Why has the “Adam Smith Problem” recently been discussed in the literature? Although most historians of economic thought regard the problem solved, these discussions cast doubt on this apparent solution. This article suggests that the “Adam Smith Problem” may originate from the concept of the human being developed by Smith in the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”: in this book, human beings can be understood as composed of an empirical and a (quasi) transcendental side, in the form of the impartial spectator. It is argued that it is the tension between these two parts which creates supposed inconsistencies between aspects of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Wealth of Nations” like, for example, the role of sympathy and self-interest in each of these books.

Adam Smith's Philosophy of Riches

Philosophy ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 44 (168) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. West
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Divine Origin ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the name of Adam Smith was popularly associated with the sort of ‘laissez faire’ policy that is expounded with all the fervour of a religious faith. Smith, so the story ran, in his eagerness to combat the excessive mercantilist government intervention of his day, had resorted to supra-natural claims in his general onslaught against central control and planning by governments. Such intervention was ‘unnatural’ and conflicted with Deistic Design. Only through private actions could mankind reach satisfying and ‘natural’ fulfillment. Action through private self-interest was twice blessed; it. blessed him who profited and his fellows who were ‘profited from’. True there was a kind of central planning that was of supreme importance; but it had a divine origin and it worked not through governments but through individual free trade. Private actions in fact were directed by an Invisible Hand which brought society into a grand and spontaneous Natural Harmony.

Bribery, extortion and “morally ambiguous” leadership in organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1046
Author(s):  
Michel Dion
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Potential Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how four styles of “morally ambiguous” leadership could have a philosophical basis, while relatively contributing to efficiently prevent bribery and extortion in the organizational life. Design/methodology/approach The paper identifies four styles of morally ambiguous leadership in taking philosophically based representations of “sociopolitical saviors” into account: “occasionally cruel saviors” (Niccolò Machiavelli); “occasionally compassionate saviors” (Adam Smith),; “socially conformist and compassionate” saviors (David Hume); and “revolutionary and implicitly compassionate” saviors (Hannah Arendt). Morally ambiguous leaders choose paradoxical ways to assume their moral responsibility. They use paradoxical strategies to prevent bribery and extortion in the organizational life. Findings The philosophical basis of those styles of morally ambiguous leadership unveils two basic antagonisms: the antagonism between cruelty and compassion; and the antagonism between social conformism and revolutionary spirit. The axis of power (Machiavelli) does not allow any connection between both antagonisms. The axis of self-interest (Smith) shows an intermediary positioning in both antagonisms (relatively compassionate, implicitly revolutionary). The axis of social conformism/compassion (Hume) and the axis of revolutionary spirit/compassion (Arendt) make leaders deepen their paradoxical positionings about moral issues. Research limitations/implications The four styles of morally ambiguous leadership have not been empirically assessed. Moreover, the analysis of Eastern and Western philosophies could allow decision-makers to identity other philosophically based and morally ambiguous positionings about moral issues. Other philosophies could also unveil further kinds of antagonisms that could be applied to prevention strategies against bribery and extortion schemes. Originality/value The paper presents a philosophically based analysis of morally ambiguous leadership and its potential impact on prevention strategies against bribery and extortion schemes.

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