Smith on Virtues: vir virtutis Discourse and Civic Humanism

Adam Smith added a new section entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’ to the sixth and last edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this late addition, he mainly discusses what I will call the four Smithian virtues: self-command, prudence, beneficence and justice. Scholars have long recognised the centrality of these virtues in the articulation of Smith’s moral theory. What has gone relatively uncommented, however, is the fact that these four virtues constitute a fundamental aspect of his ethics, and that they are a theory in and of themselves. As part of this larger project, the present chapter provides a broader context for Smith’s TMS by analysing and outlining its possible reliance on the classical tradition of the ‘cardinal virtues’. It will make the case that the ‘civic humanist’ paradigm represented a central feature for Smith’s recasting of these virtues, and that, accordingly, the ideology of civic humanism remained a powerful influence during the Scottish Enlightenment. I argue that Smith has too readily been assimilated to the natural jurisprudential tradition, neglecting the prominence of self-command, as a virtue with civic humanist overtones, within his four principal virtues. A proper understanding of this crucial virtue, and of Smith’s narrative, reveals that his account was motivated by a far more humanist tradition of thought.