"[T]he sentiment or affection of the heart, from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations: first, in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce: that upon the suitableness or unsuitableness, upon the proportion or disproportion, which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, depends the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action; n.."--Adam Smith, (The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS) 2.1.Intro.2, 67.)
"Magnanimity: greatness of soul...capacity of heart, the great measuring virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given, and all that may be gained"--John Ruskin, (The Political Economy of Art, 81-2).
"[F]itness or propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of. That precise and distinct measure can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well informed spectator."--Adam Smith, (TMS 7.2.1.49, 294)
One of the least discussed but singularly important aspects of Adam Smith's moral philosophy is that judgments of propriety -- the core Smithian moral judgments --, which from the point of view of a spectator, consists of mentally inspecting, as it were, the proportionality of the two (complex) relata that enter into a cause-effect relation. (Recall here.) One of the relata (the temporally prior cause) is itself a relation between an exciting cause (say, a desire of the person judged), which produces a sentiment of heart (that is, a motive in the person judged), while the other relata (the effect), is (also itself a relation between) the action of the person judged and its contextually or situationally foreseeable effects (that is, consequent to the motive). (See also TMS 1.1.3.6, 18.) According to Smith we paradigmatically judge others and ourselves in particular situations. As Sam Fleischacker first pointed out to me, this brings Smith remarkably close to Samuel Clarke's position (as Smith recognizes--TMS 7.2.1.49, 294 is offered as a correction to Clarke.) Throughout TMS Smith repeatedly insists that judgments of propriety can be "exact."
Ruskin tends to be contrasted with Smith for good reason. But if we only focus on the differences we may miss something important. Ruskin (no friend of free markets) is hearkening back to an older notion of accounting that cannot be captured by rule-following. There is, after all, a sense of "accounting" in terms of holding somebody or some things accountable not by checking figures, but by showing proper judgment exactly as Ruskin's examples suggest, e.g., seeing "how to the do the noblest things in noblest ways." In Smith's vocabulary this is to act on the "the love of virtue," and its companion virtue "the love of true glory" associated with the "greatest magnanimity." But while acting from the love of virtue can entail exact propriety, the epistemic confidence in some of our feelings exhibited in the quoted passages from Smith and Ruskin is not derived from rule-following. For, "there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence: though there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain, in several respects, the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those virtues." (TMS 3.6.11, 176) So, we need to carefully distinguish between the modern, rule-bound technocratic expert, which relies on the exacting language of objectivity, and the expert with carefully callibrated moral judgment, which relies on the exacting language of discernable proportionality.
Now, Smith is clear that "the wise and virtuous" direct "their principal attention" to "the idea of exact propriety and perfection." (TMS 6.3.23-25, 247) And from that vantage point they are always judged wanting. While, perhaps, Smith believes that by nature anybody can become wise and virtuous in actual fact they are "a small party only." (TMS 1.3.3.2, 62) Smith's early English readers thought that Smith was far too concessive to nurture. As Smith's first economic critic, Pownall, wrote: "Nature has so formed us, as that the labour of each must take one special direction, in preference to, and to the exclusion of some other equally necessary line of labour, by which direction of his labour, he will be but partially and imperfectly supplied." (25 Sept, 1776) Ruskin clearly agrees with Pownall's Platonism about human nature. Surprisingly enough, however, Ruskin is considerably optimistic that there are lots of noble natures to be found in England. (In the section he flirts with racism, which is more open elsewhere.)
Yet, Ruskin's economic (and political) paternalism, which relies on expert, cultivated judgment does not devolve in blanket trust of self-selected experts. One crucial insight of Ruskin is that despite the fact that there is no algorithm for good judgment, the expert is not allowed to hide behind secrecy--Ruskin insists on political and social transparency. For all of Ruskin's elitism (and there is a lot of it--not to mention his Imperialism), he is not in favor of an oracular, scientific/priestly class (recall Smith on the origin of casuistry).For Ruskin the man of science has to be open and intelligible about his knowledge.
One last parting thought. When Ruskin writes in the middle of the nineteenth century he thinks that the Classical language of "magnanimity" is already old-fashioned. Swiftian satire had taken its toll. In fact, with Swiftian virtuosity, Ruskin turns magnanimity into a woman by citing from Proverbs 31:25, King Lemuel's mother's prophecy. (Gulliver's first name is Lemuel; this is probably no accident.) And this Swiftian move has an afterlife in the hankering's of some of our most classical, modern novelists, but about that some other time more.
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