Eric Schliesser — On The Moral Sciences

The eighteenth century term “moral science” (or “moral philosophy”—‘philosophy’ and ‘science’ are often treated as synonyms at the time) does not quite mean what we might think it means. And so when people urge on us to remember that economics was once a moral science and should be reformed back into some such science, they often reveal their ignorance about the past of economics (recall).

In writing about science morale, Condorcet, for example, understood "by this term all those sciences that have as their object either the human mind itself, or the relations of men to another.”[1] Moral sciences were opposed to physical sciences, and distinguished by the kinds of causes to be discussed. Moral sciences dealt with moral causes; and ‘moral’ meant something like ‘social.’ For example, institutions, norms, education, language, emotions, and property-relations (etc.) were all often thought of as moralcauses. (By contrast, geography, climate, mechanics, and matter-theory (etc.) were all physical causes)....

Another point of interest:

Now, Adam Smith has a traditional and demanding understanding of virtue. His most explicit definition is as follows: “virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments 1.1.5.6,).

This is The Greek conception of virtue.

Arete (Greek: ἀρετή), in its basic sense, means "excellence of any kind".[1] The term may also mean "moral virtue".[1] In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential.

It is particularly Platonic.

Like other ancient philosophers, Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, human well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it.

It is also Aristotelian.

Aristotle emphasized the importance of developing excellence (virtue) of character (Greek ethikē aretē), as the way to achieve what is finally more important, excellent activity (Greek energeia). As Aristotle argues in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, the man who possesses character excellence does the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way.

Aristotle's ethics, or study of character, is built around the premise that people should achieve an excellent character (a virtuous character, "ethikē aretē" in Greek) as a pre-condition for attaining happiness or well-being (eudaimonia). It is sometimes referred to in comparison to later ethical theories as a "character based ethics". Like Plato and Socrates he emphasized the importance of reason for human happiness, and that there were logical and natural reasons for humans to behave virtuously, and try to become virtuous.

 Plato and Aristotle connected moral virtue with the good and beautiful. That is to say, the criterion of "right" is both ethical and aesthetic. Smith would call this the "moral sentiment."

Aristotle emphasizes throughout all his analyses of virtues that they aim at what is beautiful (kalos), effectively equating the good, at least for humans, with the beautiful (to kalon).^[9]

Plato and Aristotle held that happiness (Greek: eudaimonia) is the result or by-product of a virtuous life, that is, a life dedicated to excellence understood as unfolding one's full potential as a human being as well as a particle individual. This pursuit is the meaning of philosophy not as a study but as a way of life. In this sense, it has the a similar meaning to the ancient Indian concepts of dharma and yoga.

Quite evidently, even though this ethic is consequentialist, it is based on a notion of happiness or satisfaction far removed from the Utilitarian concept of utility that lies at the foundation of the neoclassical economic assumption of rational utility maximization. It is also different from Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The following quotes are from Wikipedia.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments begins with the following assertion:

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."

Smith departed from the "moral sense" tradition of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, as the principle of sympathy takes the place of that organ. "Sympathy" was the term Smith used for the feeling of these moral sentiments. It was the feeling with the passions of others. It operated through a logic of mirroring, in which a spectator imaginatively reconstructed the experience of the person he watches:

"As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation."

This was extremely prescient in that it anticipates contemporary discoveries of cognitive science regarding the operation of mirror neurons.

However, Smith rejected the idea that Man was capable of forming moral judgements beyond a limited sphere of activity, again centered around his own self-interest:

"The administration of the great system of the universe ... the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country.... But though we are ... endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them."

 But here Smith goes off the mark, arguably in his own day in Britain, and especially with respect to the British colonies. Smith was at heart an apologist for the rising bourgeoisie.

"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."

This is not too different from the ideas of the ancient Greeks however. Slavery constitutes the principal form of capital, and Aristotle argued that slavery was natural since some were better than other.

Digressions&Impressions

On The Moral Sciences

Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Science