The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [273]
92 Hutcheson is not entirely silent on these (see, e.g., Short Introduction 1.3.3, 1.6.3, 1.7.2, 3.8.2-3), but Smith is right to suggest that Hutcheson’s focus is on their utility or effects.
93 Smith here repeats his claim concerning Hume’s four sources of virtue from 4.2 above. For Hume’s “definition of virtue,” see esp. Enquiry Concerning Morals 8n and 9.12; for the specific claim that moderation renders affections useful, see Enquiry Concerning Morals 6.2.
94 On the Epicurean view of the utility of virtue, see, e.g., Cicero, De finibus 1.42-54.
95 Earlier editions also mentioned La Rochefoucauld as another example of a “licentious system,” but Smith withdrew his references after an objection from a descendent of La Rochefoucauld.
96 Smith’s treatment here is anticipated in his 1756 letter to the Edinburgh Review, which described “the principles and ideas of the profligate Mandeville” as agents of “corruption and licentiousness” that were in turn “softened, improved, and embellished” by Rousseau.
97 For representative statements of Mandeville’s views on the naturalness of self-preference, see “An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue,” in Kaye’s edition of the Fable, vol. 1, p. 41; and Enquiry into the Origin of Honour (London, 1732), 39. On vanity and the love of praise as motives of human action, see “Enquiry,” 54-55; Fable, Remarks C, M, and R; and Enquiry into the Origin of Honor, 5-7.
98 A paraphrase of Mandeville’s claim at “Enquiry,” p. 51.
99 In emphasizing here against Mandeville “the honourable and noble,” Smith likely has in mind not only the classical conceptions of to kalon and the honestum as described by Aristotle and Cicero (see note to 3.3 above), but also eighteenth-century attempts to recover these categories against champions of psychological egoism; see, e.g., Shaftesbury, Characteristicks Miscellany 3, Chapter 2, note; Berkeley, Alciphron 3; Hutcheson, Short Introduction 1.1.10 and his inaugural oration at the University of Glasgow, “On the Natural Sociability of Mankind”; cf. Mandeville “A Search into the Nature of Society,” in Fable, vol. 1, pp. 323-326.
100 Smith’s differentiation here of three distinct orientations to praise—“vanity” (the indiscriminate love of praise), “the love of true glory” (the desire to deserve and to claim praises), and “the love of virtue” (the desire of becoming what is honorable and noble, whether recognized and praised or not) is a crucial element of his argument in the sixth edition; see, e.g., Smith’s restatement of these three levels in his discussion of praiseworthiness in 3.2 (p. 136).
101 For Mandeville’s rigorist views on luxury, see the opening of Remark L of the Fable; on lust, see Fable, Remark N.
102 For representative statements of Mandeville’s rigorist association of virtue with self-denial, see, e.g., Fable, Remark O; and “Search into the Nature of Society,” p. 331; for his claim that “the generous Notions concerning the natural Goodness of Man are hurtful as they tend to mis-lead, and are merely Chimerical,” see, e.g., “Search into the Nature of Society,” pp. 343, 365, 369; and Fable, Remarks V, X, and Y.
103 See Descartes, Principia philosophiae 3. Smith elaborates on the theory of vortices in Astronomy 4.61-66.
PART VII, CHAPTER III
1 Smith’s account of the sources of approbation speaks to a key controversy in contemporary British moral philosophy; both Hutcheson (see Essay with Illustrations 2. Preface) and Hume (see Treatise 3.1.1 and Enquiry Concerning Morals 1.3-10, App. 1) take the grounds of approbation as their point of departure. Yet while this remains the primary question for Hume, Smith calls it, in the paragraph above, “the next question of importance in Moral Philosophy.” Hutcheson and Hume had an interchange over whether the primary purpose of moral philosophy was the practical teaching