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Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith
"The intention of Polity and Economy is to present Adam Smith as author of liberal capitalism, as propounder within an order that converts the natural self-preference of every living thing into an instrument of goodness, prosperity, and freedom - as long as our deployment of natural means does not, in the organization and conduct of society, violate the truths of nature itself." This edition of Polity and Economy revises the original with cross-references from the standard Glasgow editions and adds two further essays not in the "Adam Smith and Political Philosophy" and "The Invisible Moral and Political Considerations."
- GenresEconomicsPhilosophy
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
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May 21, 2023Chapters 1–3 of this 2001 edition of Joseph Cropsey's work on Adam Smith were originally published as Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1957), which I read in 1972. Chapter 4 of this edition is Cropsey's chapter on Adam Smith in the first edition of History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963); this chapter also appears in the third edition (1986) of that work. Chapter 5 of the 2001 edition of Polity and Economy is Cropsey's February 17, 1976 Harry Girvetz Memorial Lecture on the bicentennial of The Wealth of Nations at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Polity and Economy addresses both of Adam Smith's major works (The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments), including the interrelationships between the two writings.
For beginners, I would recommend first reading Chapter 4 (the essay on Adam Smith in History of Political Philosophy), followed by Chapters 1–3 (the 1957 book) and thereafter Chapter 5 (the 1976 Memorial Lecture). Of the three components of the work, the Memorial Lecture is the most difficult to understand. Its theme appears to be a discussion of free will (though the term "free will" is never used): whether human beings are bound as part of a deterministic nature or, alternatively, whether (as Kant and others taught) we have some freedom from the cause-and-effect mechanisms of nature. (Cf. my book Free Will and Human Life.) I have not read the original book (1957) since 1972, and that book (Chapters 1-3 in this edition) may clarify exactly what Cropsey was trying to say in the 1976 lecture (Chapter 5). The lecture appears to be trying to grapple with the question of how Smith used the term "nature" and how that term is, in fact, quite ambiguous in the philosophical literature.
Unlike his mentor, Leo Strauss, Cropsey often wrote in an abstract style, utilizing "big words" that one often has to look up in a dictionary. I have often marveled at this difference in their respective writing styles.
Cropsey's book, following a Straussian approach, is an in-depth analysis of Adam Smith's work in the context of the overall history of political philosophy. For Cropsey, Smith was not merely an economist: Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments reveals that Smith was very much a modern—like his best friend, David Hume—in ethical philosophy. For such modern philosophers, ethics is grounded in the passions, not in reason. As Cropsey explained, the modern approach to ethics is much different from the classical philosophy of, say, Plato and Aristotle. I discuss and evaluate this modern “moral sentiment” school of ethics on pages 13–19 of my book Reason and Human Ethics.
The Straussians are often considered to be political conservatives. However, Cropsey's analysis of Adam Smith is not at all uncritical of Smith's approach and is somewhat explicitly critical of Smith's epigoni during the last few centuries. Cropsey, like Strauss, preferred the ethical orientation of classical philosophy to the modern rejection of that ethics, including the displacement of classical political philosophy by modern economics. It must also be recalled that the entirety of Polity and Economy was written during the Cold War, when the Communist Soviet Union appeared to present the greatest threat to liberal democracy and, thus, freedom of thought (including the freedom to philosophize). Strauss and Cropsey were unalterably opposed to totalitarianism in any form, whether Communist or fascist. That did not, however, prevent them from criticizing the moral deficiencies of "capitalism pure and simple" (as my childhood Lutheran pastor called it in a sermon many decades ago).
It should also be noted that these collected writings were written when the word “man” was considered to be synonymous with the word "human being." Accordingly, the language is not gender neutral. I now find this grating, but it was the customary way of writing during those decades.
Disclosure: I took several undergraduate and graduate courses in political philosophy from Professor Cropsey from 1966 to 1970 at the University of Chicago. I also took one course from Leo Strauss in 1966, before he left Chicago due to mandatory retirement policies then in effect at that institution.
Alan E. Johnson
(revised October 14, 2022)
5/21/2023 ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
I have recently reread (on Kindle) the 1957 edition of Polity and Economy, as well as Cropsey’s essay on Adam Smith in History of Political Philosophy and his February 17, 1976 Harry Girvetz Memorial Lecture, all of which are included in the present volume.
Among other things, what struck me in rereading Polity and Economy (more than fifty years after I last read it) was Cropsey’s interpretation (chapter 3) of Smith’s intention. Cropsey argues, quite effectively, that Smith and other modern philosophers promoted the commercialization of society in order to weaken the stranglehold of absolute religious and political authority over the populace. By unleashing the acquisitive instincts, while ignoring or depreciating traditional ethical philosophy and exhortation, Smith and his fellow moderns hoped to liberate people from the tyrannical power of the Church and the State. However, we are all too familiar at the present time of militant religious and authoritarian movements that combine lip service to laissez-faire economics with a desire to reestablish theocratic and authoritarian rule. (See, for example, QAnon and Christian Reconstructionism.) Cropsey observes that Smith hoped to diminish the effectiveness of religion by promoting a multiplicity of religious sects. But the experience of our time suggests that the multiplicity of sects often involves an increase in religious extremism.
Cropsey’s 1976 lecture addresses the issue of whether human beings are simply part and parcel of the cause-and-effect character of physical nature. Without using the term “free will,” it becomes clear that this is the issue to which Cropsey was referring. He observes that Adam Smith collapsed humanity into nature without explicitly addressing the question of free will. Cropsey does point to a way out of the dilemma (page 166 of this edition): “Smith’s project for liberal commercial society is part of his wider project for accommodating man’s sociality and morality to the environment of mechanistic nature, although the traditional setting for that conception of man in nature is the older and teleological vision of nature.” I develop the latter thought in my books Free Will and Human Life and Reason and Human Ethics. Among other things, I argue that free will exists as a scientific fact, based on evolutionary and emergent developments in living beings. Unlike inorganic things, biological life is not subject to blind mechanism but is, to the contrary, teleological (end-seeking) in a nonreligious sense. What is true of biological life generally, is, a fortiori, true of human life.
Alan E. Johnson
Polity and Economy addresses both of Adam Smith's major works (The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments), including the interrelationships between the two writings.
For beginners, I would recommend first reading Chapter 4 (the essay on Adam Smith in History of Political Philosophy), followed by Chapters 1–3 (the 1957 book) and thereafter Chapter 5 (the 1976 Memorial Lecture). Of the three components of the work, the Memorial Lecture is the most difficult to understand. Its theme appears to be a discussion of free will (though the term "free will" is never used): whether human beings are bound as part of a deterministic nature or, alternatively, whether (as Kant and others taught) we have some freedom from the cause-and-effect mechanisms of nature. (Cf. my book Free Will and Human Life.) I have not read the original book (1957) since 1972, and that book (Chapters 1-3 in this edition) may clarify exactly what Cropsey was trying to say in the 1976 lecture (Chapter 5). The lecture appears to be trying to grapple with the question of how Smith used the term "nature" and how that term is, in fact, quite ambiguous in the philosophical literature.
Unlike his mentor, Leo Strauss, Cropsey often wrote in an abstract style, utilizing "big words" that one often has to look up in a dictionary. I have often marveled at this difference in their respective writing styles.
Cropsey's book, following a Straussian approach, is an in-depth analysis of Adam Smith's work in the context of the overall history of political philosophy. For Cropsey, Smith was not merely an economist: Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments reveals that Smith was very much a modern—like his best friend, David Hume—in ethical philosophy. For such modern philosophers, ethics is grounded in the passions, not in reason. As Cropsey explained, the modern approach to ethics is much different from the classical philosophy of, say, Plato and Aristotle. I discuss and evaluate this modern “moral sentiment” school of ethics on pages 13–19 of my book Reason and Human Ethics.
The Straussians are often considered to be political conservatives. However, Cropsey's analysis of Adam Smith is not at all uncritical of Smith's approach and is somewhat explicitly critical of Smith's epigoni during the last few centuries. Cropsey, like Strauss, preferred the ethical orientation of classical philosophy to the modern rejection of that ethics, including the displacement of classical political philosophy by modern economics. It must also be recalled that the entirety of Polity and Economy was written during the Cold War, when the Communist Soviet Union appeared to present the greatest threat to liberal democracy and, thus, freedom of thought (including the freedom to philosophize). Strauss and Cropsey were unalterably opposed to totalitarianism in any form, whether Communist or fascist. That did not, however, prevent them from criticizing the moral deficiencies of "capitalism pure and simple" (as my childhood Lutheran pastor called it in a sermon many decades ago).
It should also be noted that these collected writings were written when the word “man” was considered to be synonymous with the word "human being." Accordingly, the language is not gender neutral. I now find this grating, but it was the customary way of writing during those decades.
Disclosure: I took several undergraduate and graduate courses in political philosophy from Professor Cropsey from 1966 to 1970 at the University of Chicago. I also took one course from Leo Strauss in 1966, before he left Chicago due to mandatory retirement policies then in effect at that institution.
Alan E. Johnson
(revised October 14, 2022)
5/21/2023 ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
I have recently reread (on Kindle) the 1957 edition of Polity and Economy, as well as Cropsey’s essay on Adam Smith in History of Political Philosophy and his February 17, 1976 Harry Girvetz Memorial Lecture, all of which are included in the present volume.
Among other things, what struck me in rereading Polity and Economy (more than fifty years after I last read it) was Cropsey’s interpretation (chapter 3) of Smith’s intention. Cropsey argues, quite effectively, that Smith and other modern philosophers promoted the commercialization of society in order to weaken the stranglehold of absolute religious and political authority over the populace. By unleashing the acquisitive instincts, while ignoring or depreciating traditional ethical philosophy and exhortation, Smith and his fellow moderns hoped to liberate people from the tyrannical power of the Church and the State. However, we are all too familiar at the present time of militant religious and authoritarian movements that combine lip service to laissez-faire economics with a desire to reestablish theocratic and authoritarian rule. (See, for example, QAnon and Christian Reconstructionism.) Cropsey observes that Smith hoped to diminish the effectiveness of religion by promoting a multiplicity of religious sects. But the experience of our time suggests that the multiplicity of sects often involves an increase in religious extremism.
Cropsey’s 1976 lecture addresses the issue of whether human beings are simply part and parcel of the cause-and-effect character of physical nature. Without using the term “free will,” it becomes clear that this is the issue to which Cropsey was referring. He observes that Adam Smith collapsed humanity into nature without explicitly addressing the question of free will. Cropsey does point to a way out of the dilemma (page 166 of this edition): “Smith’s project for liberal commercial society is part of his wider project for accommodating man’s sociality and morality to the environment of mechanistic nature, although the traditional setting for that conception of man in nature is the older and teleological vision of nature.” I develop the latter thought in my books Free Will and Human Life and Reason and Human Ethics. Among other things, I argue that free will exists as a scientific fact, based on evolutionary and emergent developments in living beings. Unlike inorganic things, biological life is not subject to blind mechanism but is, to the contrary, teleological (end-seeking) in a nonreligious sense. What is true of biological life generally, is, a fortiori, true of human life.
Alan E. Johnson
April 4, 2016
This is a must-read book for all Economics student.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews