Mark Garrett Longaker's Classes

In section VI, "of Virtue," Smith discusses the importance of attachments to family and neighbors. These bonds based "in necessitudini," merge expectations of private conduct and fellow feeling [domestic, feminine understanding: "humanity is the virtue of a woman" (190)] with those of public spirit [public, masculine: "generosity (is the virtue of) a man" (190)]. Smith maps the virtues cultivated in the traditional oikos, therefore, onto the larger sphere of social relations:

"This natural disposition to accomodate and assimilate, as much as we can, our own sentiments, principles, and feelings, to those we see fixed and rooted in the persons whom we are obliged to live and converse with, is the cause of contagious effects in good and bad company" (224).

While a natural tendency to sympathize with those raised in the same household structures familial bonds, the man of virtue extends sentiment to others and is recompensed in turn, for "Nature, which formed men for that mutual kindness, so necessary for their happiness, renders every man the peculiar object of kindness, to the persons to whom he himself has been kind" (225). Three things stand out in these quotations: the man of virtue combines masculine and feminine virtue, imagines domestic relationships extended within a public domain tied together by a common humanity, and inspires virtuous (human) behavior in those with whom s/he comes into contact. Smith's notion of the virtue aligns nicely with Martha Nussbaum's notion of proper compassion. The most salient characteristic between the two (as far as I can see) involves the interplay between human dignity and human neediness. The virtuous rhetor, in both texts, is able to alternate between the impartial spectator's notion of human dignity (we, as humans, are bound to a similar propriety) and neighborly disposition (I can sympathize with your needs and failings as a fellow human). It seems that Smith's virtuous rhetor has the ability to accomodate affairs of the state with the cares of the household, thus fostering dissemination of sentiment within the state that resembles filial or familial sympathy.

“The highest eulogy, perhaps, which can be bestowed upon any author, is to say, that he corrupted [taste]” (197-8).

“Fashion too will sometimes give reputation to a certain degree of disorder, and, on the contrary, discountenance qualities which deserve esteem. In the reign of Charles II. A degree of licentiousness was deemed the characteristic of a liberal education. It was connected, according to the notions of those times, with generosity, sincerity, magnanimity, loyalty, and prove that the person who acted in this manner, was a gentleman, and not a puritan. Severity of manners, and regularity of conduct, on the other hand, were altogether unfashionable, and were connected, in the imagination of that age, with cant, cunning, hypocrisy, and low manners” (201).

In these passages, I detect the same problem that Lauren points out. The good rhetor seems to go along to get along at some points and at others, revise his age’s custom through new fashion. To the first point, Smith gives us plenty of examples where taste and custom are variable (see the variability of beauty and species 196-8) and reminds us that an old man should be a little youthful and a young man should possess some aged wisdom (201). However, some essential quality always creeps in to qualify the virtues of change. Beauty must have some singular commonality for Smith: “I cannot, however, be induced to believe that our sense even of external beauty is founded on custom” (199). We should basically act our age too: “Either [young or old], however, may easily have too much of the manners of the other” (202). And in the passage above, Smith quietly smuggles in this requirement with the judgment that these Restoration fashions didn’t do justice to “qualities which deserve esteem”.

I’m tempted to take from this an argument about different ages being more or less suited to ‘good’ qualities of custom. One might speculate that a good rhetor living in a topsy-turvy period like, say the Restoration, would need to guard his/her public and private lines more closely. Publicly, she would endorse the licentiousness and accompanying values in order to have the measure of influence required for a good rhetor. Privately, she might maintain a core of values that supports those unchanging ‘good qualities’. In doing so, the rhetor has the ability to incrementally ‘corrupt’ taste until the order of correct custom returns. This process seems counterintuitive in that Smith sees the circumstances of a corrupted age to be less changeable than the more restrictive periods governed by custom, though this might feed into the common characterization of his optimistic conservatism.

My one other temptation is to attribute this specific example as symptomatic of TMS’s strong nationalist sentiment. The now unfashionable terms like Restoration, Glorious Revolution, and bloodless revolution are of course very Anglocentric. It was anything but bloodless for the Scots who took the brunt of this ‘restoration’ of order. Perhaps Smith’s different conception of the historiography colors his associations of libertine sensibilities with the positive connotations it typically receives. The good rhetor, then, holds to core of unchanging virtues because he knows that change, however slow, will return to recognize the value in custom’s rigidity. A system built on universal benevolence wouldn’t make these distinctions and would presumably be generous to the dominant values of his age.

(citations for Liberty Fund edition)

The good rhetor is, at heart, an optimist, assuming some basic if vague foundation of rightness against which perversions of custom may be judged and opposed. As concerns clothes or furniture, there is no bound to what we might consider fashionable, but behavior is limited to some extent: "There is, perhaps, no form of external objects, how absurd and fantastical soever, to which custom will not reconcile us, or which fashion will not render even agreeable. But the characters and conduct of a Nero, or a Claudius, are what no custom will ever reconcile us to, what no fashion will ever render agreeable; but one will always be the object of dread and hatred; the other of scorn and derision" (200 / V.2.1). [Had Smith the fortune to experience the BBC's wonderful adaptation of Robert Grave's _I, Claudius_, he might have a different view of Claudius, but I digress.] So there is some bound beyond which custom cannot pervert a good rhetor's (or good person's) sense of propriety. Thus the rhetor will appeal to custom as it holds sway with his audience but only to such an extent that does not encourage behavior that is beyond the pale.

I think Smith's attempt to grapple with the power of custom and provide some sort of limit to the humanity's sadism is laudable, but I don't think I'm entirely convinced. As proof for the limit of bad behavior in custom Smith offers the example of exposing infants, which I'm going to quote at length, because I'm not quite sure I understand his argument here:

"When custom can give sanction to so dreadful a violation of humanity, we may well imagine that there is scarce any particular practice so gross which it cannot authorise. Such a thing, we hear men every day saying, is commonly done, and they seem to think this a sufficient apology for what, in itself, is the most unjust and unreasonable conduct. There is an obvious reason why custom should never pervert our sentiments with regard to the general style and character of conduct and behaviour, in the same degree as with regard to the propriety or unlawfulness of particular usages. There never can be any such custom. No society could subsist a moment, in which the usual strain of men’s conduct and behaviour was of a piece with the horrible practice I have just now mentioned."

So Smith thinks that at some point and in some circumstances, people will always recognize behavior that goes too far, suggesting that the good rhetor should often be able to appeal to the sense of Nero's badness, for instance. But this is predicated on the assumption that "no society could subsist a moment" if inhumane customs were to prevail. Many societies have subsisted quite well condoning (even depending) on practices as horrid as tossing babies out into the wilderness to perish. Smith himself describes other circumstances where the good rhetor, anchoring his approach in the perspective of the impartial spectator, is marginalized to the point of uselessness. In times of political or religious faction the person calling for reason is "held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties" (155 / III.3.43). Even in times relatively less factious, there can be practices such as slavery or torture that are authorized by custom.

Summary: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Second Discourse and Essay on the Origin of Languages

In the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men, or the Second Discourse, Rousseau’s goal is to determine whether inequality stems from natural law, or if it is engendered through the development of organized societies. He structures this inquiry as a narrative relating the progress of man from savage to barbarian to civilized man, utilizing a methodology that looks like that of the stadial theorists. However unlike philosophers like Hegel, Rousseau’s developmental trajectory is less a story of progress than it is a narrative of gradual dissolution.
He begins by acknowledging two types of inequality: physical and moral. Physical inequality is determined by nature and has to do with age, strength, health, mental abilities, etc. This type of inequality he is not concerned with. Instead he is interested in moral inequality; his goal is “to mark, in the progress of things, the moment when, Right replacing Violence, Nature was subjected to Law; to explain by what chain of wonders the strong could resolve to serve the weak, and the People to purchase an idea of repose at the price of real felicity” (131).
In order to investigate the problem of moral inequality he first addresses the problem of the Hobbesian state of nature, which is typically fearful and unstable. Rousseau believes that Hobbes got it wrong; rather than nasty, brutish and short, life in the state of nature is ideal and edenic, characterized by abundance. People lead solitary, peaceful lives, unafraid of animals or other humans. Man in the state of nature has no need to worry about self-preservation, because disease, for Rousseau, is a product of civilized life, caused by unhappiness and poor living conditions. In the same way that he imagines that domesticated animals are unhappy, “as [man] becomes sociable and a slave, he becomes weak, timorous, groveling, and his soft and effeminate way of life completes the enervation of both his strength and his courage” (139).
Having considered the physical effects of civilization on mankind as a species, Rousseau moves on to the “metaphysical and moral” effects. For Rousseau, in our natural state we are engaged with our feelings and emotions, and we do not need much to express them. Civilized man, however, makes pretenses to reason, but still relies just as much on emotion as his savage ancestors. Rousseau says, “the human understanding owes much to the Passions…it is by their activity that our reason perfects itself; we seek to know only because we desire to enjoy, and it is not possible to conceive why someone who had neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason” (142). Reason, in other words, does not come naturally to man.
As civilization develops and people become social, they begin to be aware of others, not only of themselves. This Rousseau calls amour-propre, or pride, which is predicated not on self-love or respect but on fear of the way other see us. As people form communities, the need arises to communicate, and language becomes more and more complex. Words become more and more abstract and emotion plays less and less a part in communication. We begin to formulate complex ethical systems, which prevent us from truly sympathizing, on a basic level, with our fellows. To illustrate this, Rousseau describes a compelling scene: “One of [a philosopher’s] kind can with impunity be murdered beneath his window; he has only to put his hands over his ears and to argue with himself a little in order to prevent Nature, which rebels within him, from letting him identify with the man being assassinated” (153).
Because civilized man is in effect estranged from himself, the need for government arises. The development of civil society, however, ushers in even more strife, since private property further separates men from each other, and constitutional government is inevitably corrupted. The desire for reputation and power overcomes our innate goodwill and obfuscates our peaceful inclinations.
For Rousseau it all comes down to language, which mediates our experience and distracts us from our authentic emotions, an idea he continues to meditate on in “An Essay on the Origin of Languages.”
This essay is made up of discrete sections that deal with one aspect of language; his goal is to think about the way “a people’s character, morals and interests influence its language” (299). Rousseau is also interested in the common origins of music and speech, and how and why they split up.
He begins by discussing gesticulation. Because of his methodology, Rousseau thinks very broadly and as a result is prone to making sweeping generalizations about the temperament of entire cultures. For example, people from southern climates, such as people from the south of France and Italians, are more prone to gesticulation because warm climates of these places make them passionate, while Turks, from a more northerly climate, are taciturn and mysterious. What is really interesting about this essay, however, is his contention that language was aesthetic before it was functional: “figurative language arose first, proper (or literal) meaning was found last. Things were called in their true name only once they were seen in their genuine form. At first men spoke only poetry; only much later did it occur to anyone to reason” (253). To illustrate this idea he gives this example: a savage, encountering a stranger, is frightened, not knowing the other’s capabilities. His fear prompts him to give this stranger the name “giant.” When the savage realizes that the stranger does not mean him harm, he then calls him “man,” like himself, and retains the word “giant." Thus the word “giant” enters the lexicon. Rousseau says that the same process is applies to figures of speech—imagination, then reality.
As language develops, it becomes less performative and aesthetically pleasing. It grows abstract, and man’s relationship to language becomes less founded on true expression and more dependent on need and function: “as men’s dealings get more entangled, as enlightenment spreads, language changes in character; it becomes more precise and less passionate; it substitutes ideas for sentiments, it no longer speaks to the heart but to the reason” (256). The result of this development is that language actually sounds worse, and speech becomes more monotone and cold.
Rousseau ends by relating the development of language to the brutish state of life in civil society. Man is enslaved by the development of modern languages, which are difficult, abstract, and divisive: “Any language in which it is not possible to make oneself understood by the people assembled is a servile language; it is impossible for a people to remain free and speak that language” (299). His linking of music and language in the state of nature is telling, since language, or rhetoric, was in former times able to persuade us through an emotional appeal. Nonetheless this is no longer the case, since modern man is alienated from his emotions: “In ancient times when persuasion occupied the place of public force eloquence was necessary. Of what use would it be today, when public force replaces persuasion?” (298). In the end, man is enslaved by that which he believed granted him liberty; as Rousseau says, “it is not for Slaves to reason about freedom” (177).

Works Cited: Rousseau, J.J. "The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings." Ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

According to biographer and historian George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards’ Two Dissertations: Concerning the End for Which God Created the World and The Nature of True Virtue—completed just prior to his death but not published until afterward—is part of a body of work defending Calvinist doctrine against a perceived “theological crisis in New England” (Marsden 459). They were written around the same time as the treatises Original Sin and Freedom of the Will. Marsden calls the first dissertation “a sort of prolegomena to all his work,” for it undermined a foundational argument in modern humanism, which saw man as the ultimate end, by placing God, once more, at the center of the universe (Marsden 460). That universe, for Edwards, was one in which “everything is related because everything is related to God” just as everything is an extension of God’s perfect goodness.

The structure of the first dissertation places Edwards in nearly direct conversation with humanist thinkers like Descartes or Kant, for he allows an epistemological space exclusive to reason, even as he subordinates it to the light of revelation. The work is divided into two sections, one which applies reason to the question of the ultimate end of creation and one which applies the scriptures to the same question. According to the dictates of reason, God’s ultimate, last end for creating the world could not have been some insufficiency in himself, because he expected to gain something he was lacking prior to creation, for God is finally perfect and complete. Furthermore, the only things worthy of being God’s final end is that which he holds in highest regard and must necessarily comprise the entire system of creation rather than individual creatures. Whatever is held in the very highest regard must be the final end of creation, and since nothing is superior to God, then God himself must be that end, “because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of things” (14). By examining the consequences of creation, Edwards determines that it is reasonable to conclude that God intended for his creation to be an extension or reflection of himself, that he might propagate his infinite goodness and fullness from an innate disposition to do so (20). That disposition to communicate his goodness is what Edwards calls God’s love. Therefore, the pleasure that God gains from his creation is a pleasure in the diffusion of himself rather than a receiving of something.

Chapter Two of the first dissertation provides an abundance of examples from the scriptures that demonstrates God himself as the final end of his own creation. Scripture demonstrates God’s ultimate ends through the operations of Providence in the moral world, and these ends, Edwards concludes, must be the last end of the creation of the world (42). The moral world, populated with intelligent beings, is the end of the rest of creation (animals, plants, inanimate objects). Therefore, what God requires of intelligent beings must be the end for which they were made. Thus, the examples that Scripture provides of righteous, saintly men and women (Christ being the chief of these) who obeyed those requirements, teaches us something about his last end for creation. The Scriptures teach that men should desire and seek God’s glory as their highest end, just as Christ did through his work of redemption. Therefore, God’s glory must be the last end of both his workings in the moral world and his final end in creation. This glory is diffused to his intelligent creations in order that they might also benefit from its propagation: “God communicates himself to the understanding of the creature, in giving him the knowledge of his glory; and to the will of the creature, in giving him his holiness, consisting primarily in the love of God; and in giving the creature happiness chiefly consisting in joy in God” (83). Thus, the fact of God’s own end in creation being his own glory and the end of the creature’s good are not separate but one and the same.

Dissertation Two: Nature of True Virtue considers the implications of God’s glory being his own final end for ethics and morals. Interestingly, Edwards arrives at something that looks very much like Kant’s dignity. Human beings ought to respect one another as ends in themselves, what he calls “benevolence to being in general” (94). Much like Kant, Edwards locates true virtue in a genuinely benevolent disposition, one which regards being as an end in itself and which has an affection for other benevolent beings. However, there is a key difference between Edwards notion of true virtue, Kant’s categorical imperative, and even Smith’s fellow feeling. For Edwards, virtue is only true virtue if he that would have virtue esteems God as the ultimate good and “being under the sovereign dominion of love to God, above all things, seeks the glory of God, and makes this his supreme, governing, and ultimate end” (109). Though Edwards allows that aesthetics, the Golden Rule, and moral sentiment or natural conscience, he insists that these are private systems of ethics, that no virtue can be true virtue unless God’s glory is sought as an ultimate end.

Interestingly, Edwards even points to the fact that ethical systems that rely on sentiment are dependent upon linguistic constructions in order to determine what is good or bad, right or wrong. One might say that such systems limit us to rhetoric, which is all well and good if we can keep our terms consistent (what’s good and right is good and right for everyone), but it is still not true virtue. Based on this information, I think it is possible to argue that Edwards is hostile to rhetoric, since in a sentimental system, all we are left with are human-bound definitional arguments, which distract us from considering how we might seek the glory of God in our actions.

Works Cited

Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of President Edwards. New York: Carvill, 1830. Google Books. 14 April 2008.

Marsden, George. Jonathan Edwards. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.