Sergio Cremaschi´s main area of research is the history of British liberalism and the links between ethics, politics and economics. He is an Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Eastern Piedmont at Vercelli. He also teaches bioethics at the Faculty of Medicine.

Sergio Cremaschi is a Visiting Professor at the Research Unit on Political, Ethical and Religious Formation, Department of Education, Aarhus University, in the spring 2012.

Abstract

Starting with a reading of Adam Smith's oeuvre that I have sketched in previous papers, I discuss first the reasons why the 19th century mythology of homo oeconomicus involved Adam Smith and Bentham in an a constellation named ‘utilitarianism’ made of individualism, harmony of interests, hedonism, rationalism.

Secondly, I try to reconstruct the main lines of Adam Smith’s philosophy of action, stressing the role of imagination, deception, and limited rationality. I argue that the limits-to-knowledge thesis plays an essential role not only in Smith's epistemology, ethics, and natural theology, but also in his philosophy of action. In more detail, I argue that action is prompted for Smith by limited knowledge of future events while the full knowledge of a (fully) ideal spectator would make choice and action impossible. Thus, Adam Smith's agent, even when he is not irrational, is steered by passions, sentiments, a degree of sympathy, and self-interest (with limited knowledge of the real character of one's own interests) blindness to remote consequences.

Thirdly, I discuss in this light the figures of the prudent man, the wise man. Fourthly, I try to shed light, on the basis of Adam Smith’s philosophy of action, on his characterisation of landlords, labourers, and merchants and manufacturers in The Wealth of Nations. I stress the asymmetries between the above figures as well as the kind of symmetry subsisting between their variously biased views of social affairs.

My main claim is that Adam Smith, albeit within the framework of a traditional Whig and ancient-regime view of the public life, was a radical critic of his time establishment, strongly committed to a pro-Poor attitude, a sharp critic of merchants and master-manufacturers, and the proponent of a project of a quasi-equalitarian society, one where liberty, justice, and equality were the normative standards and the public sphere the counter-balance to the constant monopolistic tendencies of privileged social groups.

Contact

Sergio Cremaschi, Università Amedeo Avogadro (Alessandria, Novara, Vercelli),
sergio.cremaschi@lett.unipmn.it

Asger Sørensen, Department of Education, Aarhus University, aso@dpu.dk