Adam Smith, Session 2, Part 2: On the Courage to See Our Self-Deceit
Smith suggested cultivating self-command as a cornerstone for individual virtue and societal well-being.
Our selfish desires can manifest in “extravagant passions.” Adam Smith writes, “The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires.”
As we have previously seen, Smith believed not that we can eliminate selfish feelings, but that we can work to have command over them:
The man of the most perfect virtue, the man whom we naturally love and revere the most, is he who joins, to the most perfect command of his own original and selfish feelings, the most exquisite sensibility both to the original and sympathetic feelings of others. The man who, to all the soft, the amiable, and the gentle virtues, joins all the great, the awful, and the respectable, must surely be the natural and proper object of our highest love and admiration.
Being the person “of the most exquisite humanity” requires being “the most capable of acquiring the highest degree of self-command.”
Smith suggested cultivating self-command as a cornerstone for individual virtue and societal well-being. Yet, we grapple with the challenge of self-command to maintain virtuous conduct in challenging and even mundane situations. Periods of societal hardship, such as economic downturns or conflict, become opportunities for our moral development.
Smith wrote, “Under the boisterous and stormy sky of war and faction, of public tumult and confusion, the sturdy severity of self-command prospers the most, and can be the most successfully cultivated.”
How do we get there? Willingly, we practice: “Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue. But these are all masters to whom nobody willingly puts himself to school.”
I have been warning about the negative social mood that will accompany a severe economic recession or depression. In the years to come, we may be tested. As Smith says, virtues are honed, not in easy times but through life's inherent challenges.