(The Muir portrait, circa 1800, unknown author. Wikimedia Commons)
(Above is an audio recording of the blog post)
2026 will see the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776). Adam Smith (1723-1790) is a towering figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period that philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), referred to as ‘the historical Age’ of the ‘historical Nation’. Smith is perhaps most famous for his writings on political economy. His Wealth of Nations (1776) is a classic of early economic thought; his investigation into Homo economicus remains a starting point for investigations into the behaviour of human beings in economic and political contexts. As a moral philosopher, questions of economic and social justice were never far from his mind, and educational considerations would play a key role in his thinking on them. A concern for moral education connects his Wealth of Nations and his earlier The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Smith argues that economics can be assessed in moral terms: ‘economic policy is bad policy if it has morally unacceptable consequences’ (Broadie, 2009, p. 199). One unacceptable consequence of the division of labour is the potential moral and spiritual damage it will do to people in the performance of endlessly repetitive tasks. To ameliorate this, Smith proposed that governments should support a system of schooling that would protect workers moral lives.
Smith believed that universal state education must be available to the working strata of society (at an affordable rate) to counteract the negative effects he predicted, including a degradation of the worker’s mind preventing the imaginative act required to generate the ‘impartial spectator’ – the agent’s ‘more objective alter ego’ (Weinstein, 2013, p. 2). The ‘good’, for Smith, was social cohesion in a peaceful and ordered society. He thought that we are socialized into behaving morally and our shared social learning creates the basis for formal education, so required that we can live moral lives realizing the good. Given this, education is a proper duty of government.
Despite the above, there continues to be a reductive interpretation of Smith in the educational literature, suggesting he advocated a wholly utilitarian schooling for worker’s children. Smith described ‘two tiers of schooling, one for the “inferior ranks” and another for the higher classes’ where each would instantiate ‘different curricula’ (Portelli and Menashy, 2010, p. 425). As such, Smith’s view was that ‘The lower classes … [would only] have “the most essential parts of education”, including only basic skills in mathematics, science and language’ (Portelli and Menashy, 2010, p. 425. Square brackets: my additions). Such readings don’t do Smith’s educational thinking justice. He argued that subjects like geometry and mechanics are inspiring and learning them would ‘improve the common people’ by introducing the ‘most sublime’ as well as ‘most useful sciences’ (Smith, 1976, p. 786). Education should be both civilizing and humanizing for all members of society.
Smith argued that ‘universal opulence’ is brought about in well-governed societies by the division of labour. He advocated social justice for both moral and practical reasons. A society cannot be flourishing and happy when a greater part of its members is poor and miserable. Smith believed in human benevolence, and he thought that we have a duty to our fellow humans. He advocated ‘the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice’ (Smith, 1976, p. 664) that, if followed, would ensure that citizens could ‘pursue [their] own interests in their own way’ (Smith, 1976, p. 664. Square brackets: my additions). He advocated for reform of the Poor Laws, to allow workers to move between parishes to find work so that poor relief would come about through wider liberalization. He held that there is general equity of natural ability: ‘The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education’ (Smith, 1976, p. 28-29). No segment of society is more naturally suited to work in factories than any other. Equity dictates that government should step in and support compulsory education to counteract the negative effects of the division of labour and the resulting ‘torpor’ of workers minds.
Reductive readings of Smith miss the moral dimension of his thinking about education. As Standish has noted, Smith’s acknowledgment of the tension presented by the division of labour (that it at once supports the development of a civilized society while also presenting a danger to that society) can lead to a reading of the role of education in Smith as a palliative. As MacIntyre put it, Smith had only slightly more of an excuse than Hegel for not seeing that ‘rising capitalism did not in fact produce the common good, but rather the misery of many’ (MacIntyre 1953, p. 27). Smith did see this. His support of education was part of a general outlook rooted in a concern for Enlightenment, which included a concern for the moral and spiritual lives of workers, and the smooth functioning of society. Education, combined with public entertainments provided by the market, would create a safe measure of escape and spiritual sustenance for those on the working end of the source of wealth in commercial societies. The division of labour, and reforms to the Poor Laws, would enable the beginnings of social mobility.
Smith’s political economy was part of a broader system of morals developed in his earlier The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). His was a system grounded in a theory of the imagination, of sympathy, and of our ability to understand the situation of the other. Education was essential in its capacity to improve the imaginative situation of all people and is, for Smith, of paramount importance to the ‘health of the body politic’ (Broadie, 2001, p. 105). Since Smith believes that the negative result of the division of labour includes a degradation of the worker’s mind, state education (accessed by modest payment), must be provided for the ‘peace and order of society’. This is because if a worker has not cultivated an imagination by education to generate a perspective of an impartial spectator, capable of forming impartial moral judgments, then societal peace is ultimately precarious.
References
Broadie, A. (2001) The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation. Birlinn.
Broadie, A. (2009) A History of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1953) Marxism: An Interpretation, London: SCM Press.
Portelli, J.P. and Menashy. F. (2010) Individual and Community Aims in Education. In Bailey, R., Barrow, R., Carr, D. and McCarthy, C. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Philosophy of Education (pp. 415-433.) SAGE.
Smith, A. (1976a) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (eds) D.D. Raphael and A.L Macfie. Oxford University Press; Glasgow edition. Reprinted, Liberty Press (1982).
Smith, A. (1976b) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (eds) R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, Oxford University Press; Glasgow edition.
Standish, P. (2003) The Nature and Purposes of Education, in Curren, R. (ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, Oxford: Blackwell.
Weinstein, J.R. (2013) Adam Smith’s Pluralism: rationality, education and the moral sentiments, New Haven: Yale University Press.
