8 comments

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  Grant Gould

  11 months ago

  I was recently rereading Epictetus and found myself wishing he was incoherent in basically exactly this way. He totally nails the "happiness as indifference to love and praise" thing (indeed that happiness relies on indifference to _happiness_). But he has no story then about why we ought to strive for anything other than indifference.
  
  Perhaps I need to reread Smith too.
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  winton_bates

  11 months ago

  I particularly like the way Smith deals with the Stoic view that we should eneavour to see all things in the same light as "the great Superintendant of the universe". Smith suggests that the plan that "Nature" has "sketched out for our conduct" is that "the events which interest us most, and which chiefly excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows" are those "which immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our country".
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  bjk

  11 months ago

  The central chapter treats the imagination, and it's a particularly mechanical imagination, in which happiness is conceived as a life ordered like a well-functioning machine, or like a precision watch. This same preference for order is seen in trinkets of frivilous utility, like watches, but also in the universe, as it must be conceived by the great superintendant. The title Theory of Moral Sentiments is a deliberate paradox because "theory" at that time applied to things like "a theory of the heavens." Smith's book is really the Theory of (the System) of Moral Sentiments, just as The Wealth of Nations treats the system of natural liberty, or capitalism, and Newton's theories explain the "system of the world." The paradox of a "theory of moral sentiments" is central to Smith's approach because the paradoxes can only be explained at the level of the system, where greed turns into charity and the dream of mechanical ease is the motive force of lives of permanent exertion.
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  DMonteith

  11 months ago

  A Theory of Moral Sentiments may in fact be a load of hooey, and I have no intention of finding out for myself whether or not it is, but there is a large body of empirical evidence that points to the fact external rewards (i.e. praise, money) can reduce both the quality and quantity of creative output. I'm not sure that this fact has anything to do with moral sentiments, but it's certainly not obvious that indifference to praise would result in universal poverty.
  
  But good rants are almost never closely wedded to facts on the ground, so carry on!
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  chris

  11 months ago

  Smith is talking about what makes men happy, not happiest.
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  Venu

  11 months ago

  I loved this post.
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  lex

  11 months ago

  Absolute fave line from the book:
  
  How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniencies. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number.
  
  So tell me, Sir, why are you carrying two cell phones, and pager, a PDA and a camera? And really, what's up with that fanny pack?
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  Robert Light

  11 months ago

  TMS is a book that's always intrigued me, but never got around to reading it. Your post has provoked me to dig into it - soon.
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