The Rules of the Game

Hume asserted that sympathy does not allow judgements to be made on what is just or unjust, because it is partial. In response Smith highlighted a practical procedure by which sympathy (a relation which mobilise one actor and one spectator, by definition) could free itself from the limits of partiality. The result of this procedure was the construction of the impartial spectator. The design of the sympathy requires the actor to make an effort which is not self-evident. It requires self-control which can only be acquired from experience. Morever, the Theory of Moral Sentiments provides an explanation for greed. For Smith, the love of systems, essentially an aesthetic principle, explains the accumulation of riches, independently of their utility. Smith stressed it is an illusion, in as far as the person experiencing such a love of systems is ignorant of it. In particular, the love of systems concerns not only limitless enrichment. Its field of application is vast, as it also covers political practices and scientific activity. In Chapter 4 of this book, I show how this love of systems is used, according to Smith, by the proponents of the mercantile system to seduce its victims.