Smith v. Kant: On Morality + An alternative approach

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The concept of morality has been around for thousands of years and while we have a grasp on what morality is, it is hard to agree on what morality should be based upon. Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant offer up their different views on morality in their respective works: “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”. Each perspective offers different strengths and weaknesses but ultimately they are both necessary components of what is needed in a sense of morality.

Smith’s views on morality can be summed up in a single word: individualistic. Smith believes that all humans are born with an innate capacity to feel empathy for others which he believes is the basis of moral judgements. This sense of empathy is not based on a direct caring about the well-being of others but rather it is up to the individual to use their selfishness to be selfless for a brief moment. For example, by Smith’s accounts, if you were to be walking down the street and saw someone getting robbed, you would immediately imagine yourself being robbed and use how you feel about the given situation to decide how to act. In this particular case, the average person would feel saddened and angry about the prospect of getting robbed and as a result you would offer some help to the affected individual and deem the robber immoral for the immoral act of robbery. It is important to make the distinction between morality based on emotion and based on situation, for Smith morality is a situational concept meaning that your emotions shouldn’t dictate morality, in such a moral system the moral fabric of society would rely on the emotional regulation of the collective body of individuals which is a slippery slope at best due to humanity’s capacity to gather and overreact in times of distress. Making morality situational also holds the benefit of allowing morality to exist even when there are no direct emotions attached to an event. Ultimately, this is still individually based which means that morality is only present in individuals to render the individual some sort of pleasure by being moral in the first place. Smith says the following: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it" (Smith, "Theory of Moral Sentiments"). An interpretation of this could be that there is no sense in being moral when there is no benefit to it. This is where I see a weakness with Smith’s account of morality as to only be moral when there is a benefit to you is not to be moral but manipulative.

Kant stays more in line with other enlightenment thinkers as he offers a more rational and universal definition of morality. He offers up the categorical imperative as opposed to the hypothetical imperative as a means for morality. In short, the categorical imperative represents acts that should be done on their own without any consideration for potential consequences. Kant goes further to state the following: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time that it should become a universal law” (Kant, "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals"). What this statement establishes is a test for actions that would indicate whether an action passes the categorical imperative and therefore would be moral. A prime example used is lying. If everyone opted to lie when it benefited them then trust would become nonexistent and as a result lying would be rendered useless as no one would take anyone’s word at face value anymore. This would indicate that lying fails the categorical imperative and is immoral as a result. The immediate problem with this test of the categorical imperative is that there is no possible way to determine if anything is truly universal as there are billions of humans in the world and it is impossible to know what they would all do in a given situation. Another core concept of Kant’s morality is the concept of good will and duty. Kant believes that the only thing in the world that is good without limit is the good will and from the good will, we derive the concept of duty. Duty meaning that we perform actions that attempt to exhibit good will, i.e. are moral choices without hesitation. This requirement to always make the moral choice fails in two ways, the first of which was described above when we discussed morality and the idea of universality. The second comes when you consider short term and long term results of an action. In the short term, it may be easy to always make the moral choice, but the future may suffer as a result of it. A prime example of this would be that during World War I a British soldier had the opportunity to kill a wounded Hitler but opted instead to let him live. That was the right decision, morally at least, in the short term but in the long term that was more likely than not the wrong decision to make (note I say more likely than not rather than dealing in strict absolutes due to the possibility of someone worse than Hitler rising to power in his place). So while Kantian ethics have its limits, I do appreciate the attempt to provide a universal moral standard based on reason and rationality rather than empiricism.

Both Smith and Kant offer up forms of morality that have their benefits, with Smith putting emphasis on human empathy and Kant putting emphasis on rationality. The ideal form of morality, at least in my view, comes from combining these aspects. A rational empathy is what is needed to properly establish morality. From this I mean that our innate sense of empathy should be a deciding factor in what we determine is moral and since empathy evolves over time through experience it would indicate that empiricism is an important component of morality. The rational part comes from the potential scenarios in which we possess too much empathy (sometimes referred to as someone with a bleeding heart) or when we possess too little empathy (associated with sociological and psychological disorders). In essence, when we sense that our emotions are failing, we back them up with some rationality. For example, going back to the example with the robber, someone with too much empathy may find themselves chasing after the robber or trying to compensate the lost value to the person who was robbed. This ultimately leads to the person exhibiting morality being potentially hurt in one way or another. The person with too little empathy would simply just carry on with their day like nothing happened and leave the situation potentially without any resolution. Rationality helps in both of these cases as for the person with little empathy they would rationally think “okay someone should see if that person needs help” and proceed to survey the area and then if they see others reacting they carry on and otherwise they will feel more inclined to offer help themselves. For the person with too much empathy they would attempt to rationalize their potential actions and then when they realize that they cannot do this they will show restraint and end up doing as described by Smith.

You cannot live in a world with no sense of rationalism and you cannot live in a world with no sense of empiricism. Both are necessary parts of everyday so they must both be present if any sense of morality is to be agreed upon, Smith and Kant both focus, directly or indirectly, on opposite sides of this branch and it is where they fall short.