Going Beyond the Socially Given: Internalizing and Interpreting Rules

The social roots of general rules bear a great advantage. As our judgments are likely to be distorted due to self-love, looking at oneself in the first place may not be a good solution for deducing objective rules. We would only reinforce our judgments and not reach ‘consent’.

Accordingly, an answer to the question of how we ought to behave can be found by looking at others, i.e. at existing rules or standards of conduct. As the above quotation suggests, rules concerning the different virtues are explicitly mentioned by Smith. On the whole Smith identifies six virtues: justice, prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, and friendship (TMS, III.6.9). Unfortunately, only the rules of justice, to be more precise, the rules of commutative justice,²⁶ are “precise, accurate, and indispensable” (TMS, III.6.11). Those concerning all other virtues are “loose, vague, and indeterminate and present us rather with a general idea of what ought to aim at” (TMS, III.6.11). It appears that Smith believed the rules of justice to be shared by all people. Otherwise they could hardly be “precise and accurate” throughout the society, let alone humanity. Thus, no disagreement will occur in judging a conduct which falls into the sphere of commutative justice.

Things are different, however, for those rules of other virtues apart from justice. These have to be interpreted as they are not commonly shared by everybody, with the result that different behaviors will occur in similar circumstances. Consequently, no clear standard of conduct or rule can be detected when observing others. As quoted above, we are then confronted “rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at” (TMS, III.6.11).

This creates further space for interpretation and reflection. With this interpretation comes the

25 In this example I have only relied on the number of people obeying the rule. But interpretation might also be subject to the individual intensity of obedience. See Schlicht (1998) on these aspects of rule formation and interpretation.

26 In TMS (VII.ii.1.10) Smith distinguishes commutative and distributive justice. Accordingly, commutative justice “consists in abstaining from what is another’s, and in doing voluntarily whatever we can with propriety be forced to do”. Distributive justice “consists in proper beneficence, in the becoming use of what is our own, and in the applying it to those purposes either of charity or generosity, to which it is most suitable, in our situation, that it should be applied”.

source for failing to derive the final judgment of the impartial spectator via the application of rules. As the impartial spectator’s judgment is a blurred target, we may fail to hit it in the heart. Due to self-love and the inability to ‘fully’ sympathize, our judgments will be biased towards our own view; we cannot fully take the others’ point of view into consideration.

Thus, we base our judgment on a ‘sample of facts’ we derive by sympathizing with others.

However, this sample is only a subset of the complete set of facts. And even worse, this subset is biased towards our own values and attitudes as it consists of those things we can imagine. Further, as we cannot really know the facts (due to imperfect sympathy), we have to interpret the evidence we have available. Vague rules therefore introduce individual interpretations.

In other words, rules themselves cannot be an ideal standard of conduct.²⁷ Rather, such standards are the basis for a process of ‘deliberation’ by which one can try to approximate the ideal, though one will never reach it.²⁸ One may initially look at the conduct of others and then wait for the reactions of others that occur. “[M]oral evaluation typically begins with established rules and standards” (Griswold 1999: 146). But in order to become an appropriate measure for the worthiness of certain reactions these established rules have to be reflected upon. And this reflection is especially important when it comes to applying such rules that are

“loose, vague, and indeterminate” (TMS, VII.iv.1).

But why is it that we are able to reflect upon such rules? The reason, it appears, lies in the fact that each individual has personal experiences, i.e. experiences not available to others.

These personal experiences make each of us an outsider of the community to a certain degree.

As such we are able to reflect on values and standards of conduct of others ‘from the outside’.

This holds true even if we are outsiders merely by the fact that we are not directly involved in the case we are observing, i.e. we are distinct individuals and cannot fully know what the others are thinking. Because we are distinct, we will always have (slightly) different sentiments from the one’s who are directly involved. “What they [the spectators] feel, will, indeed, always be, in some respects, different from what he [the agent] feels, and compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow; because the secret consciousness that the change of situations, from which the sympathetic sentiment arises, is but imaginary, not only

27 But still rules are a necessary component of the judgement process. “The impartial spectator, reacting to the immediate situation alone, does not know how to draw the distinction between revenge and justice. Only a rule, based on past experience, can enable it to draw that distinction” (Fleischacker 1999: 46).

28 This idea of approximating the ideal without ever reaching it is one of the main components of Evensky’s (2005) interpretation of Smith. For instance, the perfect liberal society does not need any government

intervention, as each individual will respect the others. However, this liberal society is only ideal, rendering the intervention of the government necessary, at least to some degree. Nevertheless the progress underlying society in its development from the hunting stage to the commercial stage aims at approximating this ideal state. Once again, without ever reaching it.

lowers it in degree, but, in some measure, varies it in kind, and gives it a quite different modification” (TMS, I.i.4.8).²⁹ This difference in sentiments might induce us to ‘impartially’

analyze the situation.

We can, therefore, really be impartial spectators to a certain degree. This does not mean that we necessarily are impartial, but it gives us the ability to be so. And, after having been subject to the evaluations of other ‘real’ (more or less impartial) spectators as well, we may have learned that judgment always takes place and to be able to imagine a judge when it comes to evaluate our own conduct.

The process of reflection is important in order to obtain ‘true insight’ or to internalize a norm, as opposed to merely adapting it. The impartial spectator can, therefore, even in the real world be the measure, but only “after a process of reflection on and refinement of what is given” (Griswold 1999: 145). Merely acting in accordance with the rules, without having reflected them, is what probably most people do, though the reflection would be necessary for a ‘truly’ moral judgment. Put differently, ‘acting good’ is not enough. One has to consciously act good. But if it is up to the individuals to put together the puzzle of social standards, each individual may derive a distinct impartial spectator. Though the deviations of these individual impartial spectators may be extremely small, they nevertheless are present. In other words, the impartial spectator is defining the middle, the right proportion of sentiments, relative to us (Griswold 1999: 182). “Each of us must rely on his or her own rules, however, not on rules culled from books or confessors” (Fleischacker 1999: 43, emphasis in original).

Consequently, “I make the relevant judgments independently. […] By tracing our moral judgments to our own individual experience, Smith lets us know that this balance of feelings, and between feelings and thought, must be re-established in the heart of every individual”

(Fleischacker 1999: 44, emphasis in original).

It would however be misleading to call Smith a pure moral relativist, although he bears a relativist notion of the form that the rules for judgment are derived from the underlying society. But, as mentioned before, there seem to be some universal components entering the impartial spectator - universal as understood in the sense of independent of specific societies. These are the general rules of justice to which, as was argued above, all people would apparently adhere to. As they are “precise, accurate, and indispensable” (TMS, III.6.11), no interpretation is necessary, at least not to the same degree as is in the case for

29 This passage is taken from the edition of Pat Moloney (2004), New York: Barnes & Noble Books. It cannot be found in the Glasgow Edition, which relies on the 6^th edition, the last edition that Smith authorized. Thus, the quote probably is taken from the 7^th edition, which was published two years after Smith’s death.

other rules of morality. Since the impartial spectator is the moral judge, he would, even in the real world, have to respect these rules as well, leading to a universalist judgment. It appears as if the reason for this universal component can be found in the fact that we all share a certain experience: being humans.