The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy | Date: 15 April 2011, 16:18
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Smith's foundational theory of Moral Sentiment is usually misunderstood--turning the innate human power of sympathy (an imaginative power into what other people are doing, and why) into merely feeling nice about other people's action, when instead it activates our conscience, where we exercise the power of judgment between sympathy and antipathy (for the actions of others). Conscience thus for us is an intuited Impartial Spectator, impartial because not partisan even toward our own actions (since we can imagine how others see how we act and why, and how they'd judge us.)
Conscience is not w/o practical effect, however, we need to realize, even though it has an impartial touchstone; nor is conscience merely a matter of private morality: indeed, it is directly connected to the role of self-interest and comparative advantage in generating the perhaps positive outcome of the market which he calls the Wealth of Nations. We misunderstand Smith's economic analysis, furthermore, if we think that he sees only positive effects of the Invisible Hand of these market forces; the problem he identifies in the latter book is the likely negative outcomes of that private motive and this public market process; so he adds a whole new section to the sixth ed. of the earlier book, detailing the solution in a just political oeconomy, of univerally provided education in virtues (Stoic and Christian) and religious training.
Conscience is a moral factor and therefore a political factor as well: Smith's philosophy of political economy includes more than just capitalism. Smith anticipates Marx's critique of capitalism, and Smith is not to be confused with the purely libertarian or Utilitarian laissez-faire politics. When he authorizes government to provide for moral and religious education 'free if necessary,' he probably doesn't mean just a welfare or educational bureaucracy; it's a matter of political constitution first, and private charity second, the capitalist provision of public needs via the market's Invisible Hand moreover, third, and only a gov't safety net as a last resort (since official charities are relatively ineffective at doing what they are supposed to do, as Smith and our own experience testify.)
So conscience is the key to pragmatic philosophy, and Socrates would agree; too often people leave the conscience out of the ethical equation, when they endorse what they call 'practical' or 'pragmatic' actions, which turn out to be motivated by an uncritical self-interest or ideology, and which specifically lack the imaginative power of sympathy that must inform judgment. William James, Dewey, and more recent, Sophistical neo-pragmatists should take note of this psychological underpinning that must serve to correct our self-interested, self-serving decisions.
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