The Theory of Moral Sentiments

1759

Adam Smith (1723–1790)

When did our contemporary sense of a private self with a rich interior psychological life emerge? In addition to the Scientific Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, changes in family life, and a new understanding about the natural world, we must consider the emergence of “commercial society” as a catalyst. This term refers to a society in which people and their relationships are defined by their interactions in the marketplace: what they produced, bought, or sold.

How did commercial society help create a private self where people felt their interior lives to be unique? The Edinburgh philosopher Adam Smith suggested how this might happen in two of his books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith argued that commercial society creates obligations among people in the exchange of goods, which can include labor that could be bartered for goods produced by the labor of others. Commercial society thus consists of individuals who are motivated to look after their own material interests. But why does this not always produce chaos?

In commercial, capitalist societies, an individual has to consider the consequences of his or her actions; that is, once a promise is made about an exchange of merchandise and the price, failure to deliver or receive the goods might put future relations in jeopardy. Conscience, Smith argued, plays a necessary role in equal human commercial interactions. Conscience is psychological; it requires an inward sense of self, and therefore its presence increases subjectivity and self-regulation—Smith’s famous “invisible hand.” For Smith, we do act out of our own interests, but we also have to think of others, what Smith called “moral sentiment.” It is moral sentiment that makes society possible. Leaving aside questions about the negative aspects of capitalist society, we can see that the emergence of the market contributed to a sense of a private self.

SEE ALSO The Protestant Self (1517)

Detail of a very old cash register, a nineteenth-century invention, with keys that display pre-decimal values. With the emergence of a commercial society, such devices became commonplace, as did the notion of the private self.