A look at Russ Robert’s new book “How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life”
Quick, catchy guides on “how to be happy” seem ubiquitous these days, perhaps reflecting widespread unhappiness, misunderstanding what it means to be happy and feeding the desire for easy answers to life’s challenges. Perhaps there’s some plain old selfishness at work as well.
Much of today’s “happiness industry” feeds off an unspoken selfishness. The individual’s inward, emotional feelings of happiness rank as the central reason for existence. One exists to be happy, which in part is why in 2012 the United Nations declared an International Happiness Day (there’s a Facebook page too). Whatever makes me happy, that’s the important thing. This idea of happiness has very little to do with anybody else, except to the extent that others serve as a means to one’s own happiness.
Human nature does not stop at the church door so such notions of happiness naturally have found their way into some religious circles. The ever-smiling prosperity gospel preacher Joel Osteen falls into this camp. His proclamations seem far more focused on "me and my needs" than on anyone else’s—including Jesus Christ. For instance, in his Everyday a Friday (by which he does not mean Good Friday), Osteen wrote, “Don’t waste your time with anyone who drags you down instead of making you better.” Try as I might, I don’t recall that from scripture.
There is an author, however, who proposes to offer substantive thoughts on happiness in the twenty-first century in the 256 year-old writings of an economist. Russ Roberts’s book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, introduces contemporary readers to the central ideas Smith first explored in 1759.
Adam Smith, an eighteenth-century Scotsman and author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, earned the reputation as the “father of economics.” With his Wealth of Nations, Smith not only wrote the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of the economy, but provided foundational, timeless insights on the workings of free markets, and the benefits of economic growth that befall to everyone. The Wealth of Nations arguably holds just as much relevance today as it did when published in 1776.
But what could Smith tells us about happiness? Isn’t his Wealth of Nations all about capitalism and happy selfishness? No; not quite, and not anywhere near that.
The “father of economics” was not an economist. Economics in his day came under the broader realm of philosophy; Smith was a professor of moral philosophy. His first great work in fact was not the Wealth of Nations; it was his 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It remains unknown, or at least an untouched work, even for Smith’s economist descendants. This was the case for Roberts. In his Moral Sentiments, Smith grappled with the meaning of life and examined how people behave. Staying true to Smith, Roberts refreshingly explores rather old-fashioned notions of virtue, prudence, justice, honor, propriety, wisdom and beneficence in a way that few books on happiness do today.
Given man’s penchant for doing the wrong thing, Smith created the “impartial spectator” to explain acts of selflessness, sacrifice, and compassion, and tried to answer generally why people want to do the right thing. Roberts explains Smith’s impartial spectator as “a figure we imagine whom we converse with in some virtual sense, an impartial, objective figure who sees the morality of our actions clearly. It is this figure we answer to when we consider what is moral or right.” Roberts later calls this “stepping outside yourself” in an act of mindfulness, that is, “the art of paying attention instead of drifting through life oblivious to your flaws and habits.”
This is very different from today’s me-centered happy talk.
Of course, none of this is easy, but Smith and Roberts would say the impartial spectator is there to guide us. Roberts’ interpretation of how the impartial spectator is informed, however, seems to wander from Smith’s: Roberts emphasizes behavior judged by others around us. He acknowledges that Smith argued that “God has delegated to all of us the job of keeping each other in line.” But Roberts then adds, “You don’t have to believe it comes from God. You can believe it’s merely the result of evolution. Either way, your individual actions play a role in creating civilization.” That leaves us on some relativistic ground, however, where I’m not convinced Adam Smith would be comfortable.
Roberts also touches on what some see as a conflict between Smith’s Wealth of Nations, a book about trade and self-interest, and his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Roberts’ explanation is somewhat unsatisfactory. He asserts that Moral Sentiments is about “personal space,” family and friends, while Wealth of Nations is about “impersonal exchange,” “a world of strangers,” and “the commercial and the material.” For Roberts, Smith is just exploring “two very different spheres of life.”
But how separate are these spheres? In Moral Sentiments, Smith explored moral principles, and Wealth of Nations was about principles and decision-making in economic life. These are not necessarily in conflict, and they were not in Smith’s works.
Could it be that Smith first explored moral principles in his Theory of Moral Sentiments given that these would be foundational for the market interactions he would write about in The Wealth of Nations? Smith, after all, did not advocate selfishness in Wealth of Nations, but instead he argued that in market transactions each individual must appeal to the other’s self-interest. That means one must attempt to fulfill the needs of another in order to satisfy one’s own. That’s more “impartial spectator” than brazen selfishness.
While obviously different in emphasis, these two books are not in conflict, but are instead complementary.
As it turns out, Adam Smith had a great deal to say about happiness—both in the personal and economic spheres of life, and his ruminations were far more substantive and interesting than the airy, self-centered happy thoughts generated today. Roberts’ book offers some interesting, albeit incomplete, thoughts on happiness courtesy of the father of economics.
Ray Keating is a novelist, economist, newspaper columnist, adjunct college professor and an occasional book reviewer for Aleteia.org. The latest thriller in his Pastor Stephen Grant series is titled The River.
