Moral e economia em Adam Smith: entre a virtude e o valor

Abstract

The relation between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of the Nations, known as the “das Adam Smith Problem”, brings up the problem of the conection between science and moral within the Classical Empiricism. From the empiricist and atomist principles, David Hume criticized the notions of substance, subject and causality, which resulted in the denial of the naturalistic fallacy, in other words, of the derivation of moral conclusions from nonmoral premises. The Practical Philosophy, not being able to rely on final causes, and without a rational grounding, found in Adam Smith an articulated formulation based on the sentiments, in which the sympathy functions as the moral sense and allows men to establish the present values in the moral community trough the mediation of the figure of impartial spectator, whose approval is sought and found when the men exercise the virtue of convenience. However, the new configuration of the Practical Philosophy needs to resolve the relationship between moral and chrematistics, and to obtain this goal Smith writes his economic discourse. If the human actions related to the production of the material living must remain subordinated to moral endings in ancient and medieval doctrines, in Smith’s formulation this is not so clear. On one hand, The Wealth of the Nations seems to have been untied from the moral thematization and to have found in the productive actions new problems, regularities and laws, and by these means managed to found a new science: the Economics. On the other hand, the motivations that lead men to the productive actions seem to remain claiming conection with a moral discourse which apparently diverges with the results of his previous moral discourse. Although Smith hadn’t tried to explicitly make this conciliation, and hadn’t rejected none of his works, editing them until almost his death – which may point that in his understanding they were not in conflict –, the question about the conection between his works remains arousing numerous efforts to try and decide if the Smith’s economic discourse is in contradiction with his previous moral discourse, or if could have be a way to demonstrate the possibility of harmonizing the two discourses by the same and unique description of man. In this direction, some commentators propose that the economic man is selfish, in contrast with the benevolent man found in his moral theory; others would see prudence as the motivation of economic actions; or the assertion of autonomy and the importance of liberty within a thought which proposes the natural harmony occuring when the government let individuals free to auto-conduct themselves in a market that starts to have functions assigned before to Politics. But if it’s difficult to transpose the man of convenience of The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the ambience of The Wealth of the Nations, to make a prudent or selfish man suitable as the grounding of his moral theory results unsustainable. Instead of trying to produce an image of the economic man tributary to a moral approach, maybe the better should be to avoid this discussion, builded up following an inspiration strange to Smith’s thought, trying to give answers which he saw no reasons to give. After all, to an empiricist like Smith, it matters less to be in agreement with an abstract and rationally deducted model, than to be in conformity with the regularity of what we can apprehend directly.