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- [00:07]
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You're listening to the Hayek Program Podcast. This podcast includes audio from lectures, interviews and discussions from scholars and visitors of the FA Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus center at George Mason University. To learn more about the Hayek Program, visit Hayek Mercatus. To learn about graduate student fellowship opportunities with the Mercatus center at George Mason University for students at Mason as well as at universities across the Globe, please visit students.mercatus.org all right, today is Tuesday,
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June 2, 2026, and I'm here with my colleague Kristen Collins here at the Hayek Program, and we're going to be talking about Adam Smith. So, Kristen, thank you very much for joining me here.
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A
Thank you so much for having me, Pete. I'm so excited. The Hike Program podcast was the first podcast I was ever on, so it's nice to be back after a lot more practice. So.
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B
Well, now you're a seasoned podcaster and maybe we could actually can bring up some of the I don't know what the sessions or programs that you've done with that as well related to this, but I'm really thrilled to talk to you because we're doing these series of talks on Adam Smith's inquiry into the nature and causes of wealth of nations, but more in general, just Adam Smith. We've all Smith scholars, you and myself and others have had a kind of a very fortunate boom period because we had a 300th birthday and then the 250th anniversary, all within a very short period of time. And I was rereading an article of yours on Smith and self command. And in reading it I was quite jarred about the connection to or your challenge maybe to Martha Nussbaum. I'd like to ask you about two challenges, maybe while we're here, to Martha Nussbaum on the one hand and Judith Skolar on another hand, if we could maybe talk about those things in general. But in this one you have this article on sensibility and self command. And when Martha Nussbaum writes her book Cosmopolitan Tradition, which she argues is a failed ideal, and she has two chapters on Adam Smith. And in some sense she ends up by arguing that no matter how great Adam Smith is, his theory leads us to a kind of stoic machismo, which I see you as directly challenging. So that's why I want to in his moral philosophy, because it normalizes an indifference to misfortune because he has that she thinks he disregards the material conditions required for the vulnerable to develop the necessary capabilities to live a meaningful life. And ultimately, at the end, since Smith elevates self command over justice, he therefore misses or divorces the right to justice from material conditions necessary to achieve it. All right, that's Martha Nussbaum. Now, Kristen Collins is sort of challenging, and it's not directly challenged to her at some sense, it's actually just more in general teasing through Adam Smith's text. So if you could just react to that and pursue that. I'd like to hear that.
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Yeah, no, I'd love to. And I'm so grateful for us to talk about this. And I know we've had many conversations about Smith, including on some of these topics. And so it's nice to hash this out now. Yeah, I mean, it's not a direct challenge to her in the sense, because I love and admire Martha Nussbaum's work. I mean, we both do. Yeah, we both do. And so much of her work on emotions, politics of emotions, I mean, those were formative for me in grad school. And it is very much what I see my research agenda engaging with as well. And why also I turned to Smith because I actually find Smith to be of a lot of the canonical thinkers, especially in the modern period, and also the broader liberal tradition, one of the most uniquely balanced in terms of thinking about this more co productive or relational relationship between a relational dynamic between reason and emotions and passions that actually we don't need to see these as antagonists and antagonistic and oppositional. And in fact, good political and social moral judgment comes from this proper negotiation of one's emotions and doing so not just alone, but in concert with others and being shaped by others, or while also quite sensitive to how often we get all this wrong. So, you know, so to, to what you were talking about specifically this idea of whether or not Smith privileges self command, and especially in a lot of feminist thinkers as well, engaging with Smith will focus on the fact that it seems to have a. He seems to be portraying this masculine ideal. I mean, one thing is to keep in mind with Theory of Moral Sentiments is to think about also the audience that he had in mind specifically and the conditions of that time. And so I wouldn't deny, you know, maybe the focus on men as figures in public life and that and that aspect of the feminist critique. And yet there's also a lot of feminist scholars who will emphasize. And other scholars as well, who will emphasize, look, he was inspired to some degree in engaging with stoic thought, right? Ancient stoics. But then he also was very Much engaged with sentimental novels, with more of the language and ideas around sensibility. And in fact, the way that he cultivates the system in Ethereum Moral Sentiments is that he's not just privileging the virtues of self denial that we associate self command with, but also the virtues of sympathizing with other people, of sensibility, of empathy, and of the notion of humanity. This. This idea of being sensitive to the needs and desires and feelings of other people. And in fact, I think to some degree, self command is. Is not just so. It's not just this idea of suppressing your needs or suppressing your feelings, but being in touch with those such that you can recognize those in others. So when you have your sense of injustice, that you've been wronged, you also extend that to knowing that that's what other people experience and feel, and then negotiating that in terms of both having the self command to prevent yourself from being unjust to other people, from exercising what he talks about in wealth of nations, which is the love for domination that people have. And so, in fact, I think self command also is itself. It's not just about kind of emotional modulation or moderation, which is often what we think of it as, but it's also about the ability to live in concert with others peacefully and to act justly as well. So I don't think that these are necessarily incompatible. And just like I don't think self command, this idea of it's, again, not just suppressing the emotions, but learning from them and expressing in a way that other people can better understand, and, again, taking that into our lives as spectators of each other's lives.
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So I want to ask a little bit more about that, because Hayek, who we read a lot and talk about, he's not really a snarky writer, but he has a snarky line in his Individualism True and False, where he says all the great tomes of social psychology that have evolved in the 20th century pale in comparison basically, to Adam Smith. And while that's snarky, it's also in some sense true in the sense that Smith has this, as you put it, this sort of sense of humanity that when you read him, and I think that's in both books. So I don't think there's a divide.
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There's no divide.
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But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the difference between, say, Smith and Hume and this discussion of the relationship of sympathy being a product of our moral imagination to project ourself into the shoes of another as Opposed to our proximity. Right. So, like, I sit next to, you know, a child who's crying, and I might feel, you know, sympathy for them. And so. But at the same time, my moral projection doesn't require me to have proximity. It imagines me to have a moral imagination. And to a large extent, it's developing that moral imagination. I think that the spectator plays a role.
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That question really brings to mind for me, and somebody who had a huge impact on how I think about these as well now is Michelle Schwarzy and her book Recognizing Sympathy, Injustice and Liberal Political Thought. And so she goes into, I think, much more, you know, detail, then I'll be able to go here, and I would just reference that in terms of the differences between Hume and Smith. But I want to focus more on agreeing with you and that importance of the projection of the act of more imagination. And I'm going to bring this in, if you don't mind. I'm going to try to bring this more to the question of justice that we were just talking about. And I don't know for sure what you're going to be flagging about Sklar, but I know I think about this a lot, a lot, which is that there is, of course, this very famous passage in Smith where he describes justice as a negative virtue, and he just describes it as something that we can accomplish just by sitting and doing nothing. But then I think in context, it's quite clear that he's aware also we live. We are social beings. We live as members of community. So in practice, that isn't quite how justice could always be done. I mean, and in fact, that doesn't. You know, I want to go too far in terms of what he's articulating here. But what I love about Michelle's work is that she really focuses on this other passage where he's talking about the act of sympathizing with a victim of oppression, of domination, of violence. And in that act, we actually get, I think, a lot more of this emotional basis or social, psychological account of the emergence of. Of ideas of justice. And so we form this sense of justice not just by this idea of, oh, just don't bother people, you know, do as, you know, the golden rule, which is valuable. Do as you'd like others to do unto you. But also because we witness injustice in the world, and that gives us a sense of right and wrong and resentment on behalf of the victim. That sympathetic resentment that Michelle talks about is so essential in this passage. And. And that, again, showcases how rich his theory is here. And it has this inherently almost theatrical component to it. And so it's more than just kind of a social contagion of we feel the feelings of somebody else around us. It's also that. And I think this is what's always tricky with Smith is that he's acknowledging the fact that we have these kind of almost immediate and visceral responses of empathy, of empathetic, empathetic emotion. And yet there is often, even if it's quick, a more deliberative component or imaginative component. And so I actually will be talking about this a little bit just later this month in Glasgow at the International Adam Smith Society Conference and the British Academy proceedings there for the celebration of the anniversary of wealth of Nations. And what is striking to me about this passage is that this really is a, you know, imaginative practice, a interpersonal practice of representation, of representing to ourselves the experience of the victim and in sympathizing, gaining a sense of what's right or wrong, even when that victim especially. And this is what he. There's almost this like proto gothic imagery where he's having that, that he's using, where the. We bring back to life the dead victim. So even if they, you know, can no longer feel that resentment we feel on their behalf. And in doing so we gain this sense of understanding of justice. And so we have all these systems of justice, we have all these rules, both social norms, practices, even institutions. But he's arguing that a lot of these things that we now see are useful. We now see they're beneficial. That's not where their origins lie. They are, their origins are in this emergent process that is a part of our emotional lives with each other.
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So related to that, what you were just talking about, I do think there's kind of a huge misconception about economists in general. And then from Adam Smith, the misconception to some extent is economists own fault. I will grant that. But when I go back and I read your piece on Observe Without Sympathy and Adam Smith on Inequality and Spectatorship, which was in the American Journal of Political Science, one of the things that struck out to me was that when Smith sees the vulnerable and the weak, he doesn't say the economistic idea, which is get a job, right? You know, so it's not about blaming the victim in some sense. And a large part of this divide that people try to draw between the theory of Moral Sentiments and the wealth of nations is because they think the wealth of nations is to get a job kind of position and ethereal mortal sentiments is more social politic. Or something, right. Our colleague Erwin Decker, he translated for the first time Carl Menger's celebratory essay on Adam Smith's 100th birthday. And in that essay, the exact line from Menger is, and I'm going to read it out. It's. It is not true that the newer school of social politik in Germany stands in substantive contrast to classical political economy. In every conflict of interest between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, Smith sides without exception with the latter. I use the term without exception with proper consideration, as one cannot find a single instance in the works of Smith in which he represents the interests of the rich and the powerful against the poor and the weak. As highly as Smith praises the free initiative of individuals in economic matters, he just does as energetically promote interventions to abolish laws or execution of laws which oppress the poor and the weak in favor of the rich and powerful. The reason why I wanted to read that out is because many years ago, Jim Ottison, who's a Smith scholar, went to University of Chicago and his. His dissertation was on Adam Smith and Our Marketplace of Life, I think is the title. But he always used to tell the story that the very first question he got at his dissertation defense was one that was basically arguing that Smith's in favor of the powerful and. And the strong. Why are you, you know, like this? So why 1. Could you address that concern with Smith as you do in your article? But then also why do you think there's a persistence of what is it in the language that might make possible this reading which we view as so wrong? Where did we make it make a mistake? Maybe in the way we communicate our ideas.
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That's a really great, great question. I think the way that I would. Maybe the sort of quick, you know, what brings to mind to the point of what mistake was made is more that I think, and I don't think that this essentially so much of a mistake, but there is this problem that we always have, maybe as a part of liberalism, but this emphasis on neutrality and impartiality. And so when you focus on a language of. And Smith articulating this natural system of liberty and a minimal kind of. I don't wanna say minimalist, that's kind of imposing our own language onto it. But this sort of. As long as you know the line better than I do. Even the easy taxes and administration.
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Yeah, Peace, eas taxes and a tolerable administration of justice.
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A
So much of that language, when it's used to simply and to kind of, you know, quickly and as almost like the sort of slogan or the motto to others will read as though a validation of the status quo. When you look at, when you have that language and you see how deeply plagued the world is by various injustices, by various forms of relations of power, not only between the state and private actors, the state and corporations, but also within the private realm, within families, within private organizations like churches and schools, and then and of course, within companies. People will read that as, as somehow then, you know, to say impartiality, say neutrality, to say something simple and easy in the face of all that differences of power is going to come across as though actually just affirming the powerful is actually just legitimating the powerful. And I don't think, and like I said, I actually think, you know, you read some of the, I think often the economists, the Chicago School thinkers will sometimes be kind of oversimplified as doing that. And then you read a little bit more and you'll see or for example, James Buchanan, quite clearly, and Maria Pia Pacinelli, who I had on the podcast so recommend that episode for sure, has great work on Buchanan as well, and Smith and this idea of Smith kind of being an early public choice theorist and the way that Smith's doing it. And maybe this wasn't done clearly enough for various reasons. Maybe it's also thinkers being impacted by the politics of their own time, their own partisan beliefs or other things. And we do that as well. Smith was not only concerned from a public choice perspective, and in writing wealth of nations as a project that's engaged with ideas of justice and power, he also was extremely aware that the way the political system functioned was very much in favor of both the aristocrats and also the manufacturers and merchants, the capitalists, as we would call them, or the employers of the workers. And also there's all sorts of important infrastructure there, too, that further enriched or entrenched a certain class and special interest groups of his time that is distinct from ours. But maybe we haven't done a good enough job because that history is also so complicated or articulating all of that texture and all of that context within the book. And I will say so to the article that you mentioned, I will say, though, the thing that is hard for me just to now I'm like a little it sticks in my craw a little bit is that when I wrote my article, I wrote it so heavily on theoremoral sentiments. And the reason why was because I remember reading wealth of nations in grad school. I Think was when I did read Theorem, Moral Sentiments in an undergrad was one of the first books I read in my intro class. But I read wealth of nations in early grad school and I remember reading it and immediately understanding, oh, this whole entire book is about power. And it's about a particular class of people being able to capture and influence politicians and shape what he called the mercantile system, or shape tariffs, subsidies, bounties, policies that would enrich them at the expense of the entire country. That to me is so obvious. I just thought we all know that. Like, we all know that. And he has all these incredible, you know, passages on the plight of the poor, including the poor without jobs, including, you know, the. And the working poor of poor workers. I mean, it's just, it's just suffused with all this concern for workers. Also critiques of slavery. And I think maybe sometimes, you know, it's very economic, but I think, you know, with your Moral Sentiments, it's quite clear that he was morally condemning slavery as well and as well as more morally condemning the policies that would further oppress the working poor as well and workers as well. So I thought all that was obvious. So to the degree that my article focuses on theory of Moral Sentiments, it's that I was going the direction where I felt like we weren't. We didn't adequately attend to all this rich argumentation in theory, moral sentiments, where he's not just talking about economics, he's not just talking about political institutions, political economic institutions and relationships and contracts affecting employment, but he's talking about the actual psychological experience, experiences of being judged by the public. And I think the idea here is that, you know, people will read Thermal Sentiments and they'll say, look, this model of spectatorship he has, and this idea that we internalize, this idea of spectatorship is almost panoptic. It's almost what Michel Foucault would ascribe to the Enlightenment and kind of the liberal tradition is, oh, if people just internalize judgments, we'll be able to have a peaceful, orderly society, avoid any kind of unrest without necessarily using the violence of the state. And so there's this sort of, you know, pernicious element of that where it's people internalizing power relations as well and learning to be obedient. Whereas in fact, Smith was still. He kind of paired all that political economy and wealth of nations that was concerned with power and oppression with a sensitivity to the different experiences that the, you know, maybe the average observer or the middle class observer would have of admiring the rich versus Disdaining, neglecting, or ignoring the poor and all those are slightly different, but in the end was extremely sensitive to both the psychological and also what that meant morally and ethically for how people understood and attributed blame and praise and what that would feel like in society.
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B
So I want to get eventually to asking you a couple questions about Bentham and this issue, because I think there's a. A fascinating move that you make in one of your articles, which is to shift the focus from the Panopticon to this home that was created for pregnant unmarried women. And somehow the way that. That. So it changes like, you know, to use a James Scott thing, it changes where you're seen from. So you're not seen from the state. You're more seen from the individual at some level or whatever. So I want to come back to that, but I want to stay on Adam Smith just for a second, because I wonder whether or not the problem in the economics interpretation of the wealth of Nations. So the wealth of nations becomes the book that everyone talks about in the 19th century more than the Theory of Moral Sentiments, at least certainly among economists. Economists don't even know that the other book exists. And then there's this Das Adams Smith problem. But one of the issues, I think, is that you can read Smith in two ways, because one way is to explain the engine of economic growth and the amazing efficiency of the economic system to generate growth. Now, the criticism of the state putting its thumb on the scale is that it screws up that efficiency to a large extent. There's another aspect of the book which is the tremendous do commerce thesis that's associated with growth. And in that sense, the state screws up social relations and power structures and things like that. And we tended to emphasize the first one rather than the second one. And until, say, for example, Hirschman came along and wrote the Passions and the Interests and argues, oh, look, there's an argument for capitalism before capitalism, and is this duke of this thing. And so that kind of captures certain amount. But not economists, more political scientists. But I wanted to ask you a question about this issue of in the face of the injustice, what is it that we can do? And I've become enamored recently because of Bill Easterly's book on the Violent Saviors with this, the passage, the two paragraphs in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he contrasts the man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, and then the man of systems. And one of the things that's fascinating when you, you know, you've mentioned a Couple times. If we put Smith in his historical time, when you put him, Smith in his historical time, those passages are not about, you know, state intervention, they're about imposing free market reforms because the physiocrats want to be the man of systems, whereas he's faced with this system of injustice. But the man of public spirit is going to have to be, if he can. It's all about reason and persuasion. He cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion. He will not attempt to subdue them by force. Right. And so there is a kind of, There is a kind of point that Nussbaum is right at some level. Right. In that Smith is requiring us not to feel that our emotional reaction to the injustice justifies us from overturning the system. But, you know, people forget that. What he's telling you is that you need to engage in reason and persuasion, which means you need to identify and see. So you can't treat the injustice by not seeing it. You have to expose it and you have to try to get others to see it. That's a different kind of argument. But what you can't be is the man of systems who thinks you can fix it by imposing. I was wondering what your reaction was to that. Yes, we read this passage all the time in our, in our discussion. So.
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A
Yeah, and so I love that. And so I love that you bring up. Yes, I think it's so important to keep in mind that in context, he's thinking about the physiocrats, and he's likely. And you know what that does. It does bring me back to, like, where have we. Your question of, like, where did we go wrong? And I do think, I actually often think about how. Or I worry about the invisible hand becoming its own dangerous kind of inspiration for the spirit of system. And so, and that's, that's why, like, the thing is, like, if we, and I take the invisible hand out of context and we forget that it was as a part of what he would say later, this violent attack on, on the commercial system of Great Britain, then we might. It then becomes. And because again, this analogy, I mean, he, in these passages he talks about, just to maybe take a step back and talk about them in context, is that he's, as you said, he talks about the man. And these are also some of the most political passages. They were added to theoremoral sentiments. I think Istved Hant talks about this and how they were even potentially material, meant to be in his third book on jurisprudence that he had planned but never finished. And then asked for the manuscripts to be burned on his death. And so these are some of the most political passages. And what's so fascinating is that he's not totally anti politics, right? He's arguing for, and he even says the leader of the successful party, if he has authority enough to prevail upon his own friends to act with proper temper and moderation, parentheses which he frequently has not, may sometimes render his to his country a service much more essential and important than the greatest victories in the most extensive conquests. He may re establish and improve the country constitution. And from the very doubtful and ambiguous character of the leader of a party, he may assume the greatest and noblest of all characters, that of the reformer and legislator of a great state, by the wisdom of institute of his institutions, secure the internal tranquility and happiness of his fellow citizens for many succeeding generations. And so this is all about, you know, civil violence, civil conflict of fanaticism, of partisanship of party. And he's suggesting, you know, if there is such a thing as an ideal leader, it's someone who's able to manage all this while negotiating all the different interests and affections within the society and being motivated by the well being of the fellow citizens, by the public spirit of humanity, of sensitivity to individuals and the community and its traditions and what inspires and shapes people, right? And so that's distinct from the spirit of system, which is the idea of kind of acting politically, trying to establish a certain kind of politics on the basis of what's almost a more aesthetic approach. And I'm not somebody who, you know, thinks. I think aesthetics are a part of politics. I don't. But I think the way to put it is to think of it in terms of somebody who's so enamored by something so beautiful and systematic and orderly and wanting to bring that into the world, even if that is totally at odds with the desires and well being of the individuals who actually occupy that world. Right. In that kind of imposition. And that's a really dangerous motivation. And it's something that, you know, doesn't. It's not, you know, like it's only one side of the political spectrum that does that. It's something that. And I would, I would even say perhaps like we say the physiocrats. I mean, that kind of system can also be its own, even assist even. I guess what I'm trying to say is even somebody who's motivated by something like the invisible hand, something that should be about emergence, should be about institutions that enable people to pursue their interests in ways that benefit everyone in a positive sum way rather than a zero sum way that can also become its own kind of aesthetic system that might inspire more reckless or ruthless, to use Joshua Chernis, a, you know, I know, a political theorist that I know you're familiar with in his liberalism book recently, kind of understanding liberals as trying to guard against this ruthlessness. And I think that's something that you can see here in Smith, even if we don't want to attribute it directly to him.
- [30:03]
B
I mean, look, I mean, this is gonna be too big a topic for us to settle today. But it's quite fascinating because if you read Smith or any of the liberals, actually, there is gonna be this tension between the necessity for social change and the grounding that we must begin in the status quo. Right? And so we're not privileging the status quo normatively. It just all change begins from the here and now. And the question is, how do you then move from the here and now off of that position towards this other one without imposing violence on the. You know, so it creates a tension. And I think that, you know, this goes back to what you were talking about earlier about reason and emotion balancing with one another, because our, the grand injustice that we see, you know, it cannot stand. You know, history, the arc of history bends towards justice. And we want to be the ones that are the, the social change agents for justice. But at the same time, we can't just run roughshod over our fellow citizens. So it's like, how the hell do you balance all this stuff? And if you put concrete things and you go and you think about various different. Because liberalism is the accumulation of various long, hard fought battles for liberties by various different individuals and whatnot. And so anyway, well, and I want
- [31:38]
A
to add to what you're saying and also maybe close the loop on something I had in mind when I was bringing up that invisible hand as a system risk, which is two things. One, I mean, I think one thing we can do, even if it's very hard. And this is also a proposal to you because we've talked about, I think there's a high quote that we also like to talk about, which is the idea of liberalism needing to talk about kind of a liberal utopia and like engage in this kind of utopian thinking or at least or provide this more positive vision of what is being described when one focuses on the market as a process or spontaneous and emergent order. I often think, actually, maybe sometimes what the problem is though is that utopia should be, and often is actually partly a social critique. And so it is also one can be wary of, you know, top down imposition of the sort of a Viberian ethic of ultimate ends that if you're so convinced of the righteousness of your political cause, you might be willing to kind of destroy the world for it. And how dangerous that is. And that cannot be the sole kind of guiding principle of anyone who seeks to affect politics. Including I think, even if you see yourself as an intellectual thinker and what you're arguing for, I think you should think that your arguments might have political implications. But the point I want to make with this is that the risk that we have is that if you don't, what you need to at least do is show that sort of sensitivity to what's wrong with the world. And that way, whatever your proposals are, they won't be taken as just an attempt to justify or just as attempt to. To cool down the temperature, but as one that's much more keen with a. We see things that are wrong, we are just sensitive to the fact that it's so hard to correct them. And in knowing that we're gonna be. There's a reflexive process here. Whatever you act and whatever you do in the world will bring forth its own reaction is important and to this more moderate side of Smith and why, even though I think he's concerned with injustice, there's something to Nussbaum's point points. He talks about that in the chapter that's on the origin of the distinction of ranks and ambition where he talks heavily in theory of moral sentiments that your eye draw on in terms of how we disdain the poor and admire and trust the rich. He talks about the English Civil War and he talks about the incredible sympathy for the rich will also mean that as civil wars go on, as the monarch is humiliated, that creates its own reactionary backlash. And so in terms of. Even if one has a. Even if one sees that there is grand corruption in the system and it requires an ambitious political vision, if one isn't careful about that, if one just seeks, you know, violent revolution in the way that what Smith's describing in that era, that doesn't mean that you're going to get your. Your vision. It could also give your. The people that you think have an even more troubling vision and advantage. And so you need to be very kind of. This is a. This is very much what politics is about, is trying negotiating these different camps. The other thing and we don't. I mean, I don't want to. So I'M sure you have stuff you want to say to that, but I wanted to kind of close the loop on why I mentioned the invisible hand thing as a system and what, you know, something that liberals have to negotiate is also just that and maybe to some degree, the development of Smithian interpretations in the 20th century that were more. More in economics, although I don't want to paint a discipline I'm not really in with a broad brush, is the impact of the Cold War. And so at least members of my generation might assume that there's a lot of this kind of the privileging of Smith as being a part of a Cold War, championing of the liberal capitalist system and association with that. And I don't think that there's so many jumps that we have to go from Smith's text to American military, sorry, American military interventions in South America and all these. That sort of American imperialism. But for many people, that's what comes to mind. They think that this, this sort of capitalist system then became the justification for imperial violence and occupation. And so that's something that I don't. I think it's quite. When you read Smith, you can see how he's actually quite critical of imperialism. He's critical of military domination in various ways. So. And that's not. But if you are, you know, coming up in this post Cold War environment, that's maybe the hangover that you have to deal with in terms of what this gets associated with politically.
- [36:26]
B
You know how I said earlier about that we've had this boom because we had the 300th birthday and then the 250th celebration. I think it actually is quite fascinating. You know, I can't remember if Glorie in her book understand, you know, gets this timing, but I know that she gets like, you know, what Stigler and Friedman and whatnot were trying to do. But there was a particularly interesting timing because the 200th anniversary was right in the middle of the. In 1976, which is right when the political winds are starting to shift because of the stagflation that took place in the UK and the United States. You end up very soon after having Thatcher and Reagan. And it was all connected up in that. As someone who read Adam Smith, more as someone who was a process theorist and things like that, we always used to make fun when I was learning, which is in the 80s, we used to make fun of Stigler is that he only read the first five chapters of the wealth of nations and then
- [37:39]
A
stopped kind of thing.
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B
And you Know, didn't read the rest of it, but I was just wondering if, you know, just very quickly, because it ties into your discussion. I think maybe I'm wrong about this, but would connect up to what you were just saying with what your discussion with Judas Galar and the liberalism of fear kind of idea. And maybe if you could talk a little bit about that and then we'll get to Jeremy Bentham.
- [38:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, do you have any. Do you have any specifics then that you want to talk about with Sklar that you had in mind? Because I remember you said that there were two challenges.
- [38:12]
B
Well, the only thing is, is that she talks a lot about Hayek, and I tend to think that she doesn't always get Hayek. Right. But. And so I think there's actually some areas of overlap between concerns that she has and what Hayek has, but she doesn't see those. But. So, but I. But, you know, I know that you've, you know, at least given a talk or whatever on some of this stuff, so. Yeah. So just. Yes, well.
- [38:39]
A
And I would say that there's more I would have to do to really do justice to kind of putting Sklar in conversation with Hayek specifically and thinking about. Because I do agree, I mean, I think. I mean, I've been more focused on the fact that she often, I think, oversimplifies Smith, although she's not alone in that. I mean, I think, honestly, so much literature, Charles Taylor also does this. I mean, even though we now take for granted, at least in Smith's scholarship, I don't know that everybody outside of specialists appreciate all this myth, especially Theory of Moral Sentiments. But Theory of Moral Sentiments, really, in terms of interpreting it and bringing it into political theory and philosophy, really took off, you know, more after, I think some of the influential texts were written that still people are reading. And then if you don't read Smith, you might get confused.
- [39:23]
B
Anyway, not to interrupt you, but I mean, I just read a piece the other day that was accusing Smith of atomism.
- [39:29]
A
Yeah.
- [39:29]
B
You know, and all these things. And so you read it and you're kind of like, I don't know, what the hell, That's a classic one. Go ahead.
- [39:36]
A
And, you know, I honestly, I find it strange because I. I'm very sympathetic to critiques of mod modern society in, like, 20th century, 21st century, and the issues of atomism, maybe more so than some liberals. Like, I'm, I'm very interested in that literature. I mean, I think liberals are interested by maybe more sympathetic than some. But I always find it weird to get to project that onto the 18th century. I just, I don't really think that that's. I mean, he is talking about urbanization, but, you know, it's, it's very different. And I don't, I agree with you and especially with theor. Moral Sentiments. I mean, such a. One of the few thinkers that we read in the canonical, you know, the political theory canon who just starts from an assumption that people are social and sociable and empathize with each other. Sociability that is like something to see as very different from what, what people will, will tend to assume of the liberals, quote, unquote. Anyway, so let's, let's, let's set that aside. But to, to the Sklar points, I mean, so what I'm interested in with Sklar and what I think is interesting is that I, it's, it does strike me a little bit that Hayek is much more antagonistic or I don't know if that's like, it's always a, a line, a blurred line between is a thinker antagonistic or, and, or kind of critical of or skeptical of a concept, or do they just deprioritize, you know, see it as important, particularly given whatever the context that they're in, like, given whatever challenges they see at the moment. And so it seems to me like Hayek is a little bit skeptical of what we would say, positive liberty or the idea of like political participation and engagement as being a part of freedom. Because there is this more, this emphasis on emergence. There's an emphasis on the English common law system, and so therefore not so much on actual kind of parliamentary legislation or political parties and those types of actions. And so I know that, I know there's other ways in which Sklar and Hayek might talk past each other or ways that Sklar criticizes Hayek. But what I'm struck with Sklar is that she takes a lot of care in her work to talk about the American context specifically, and in the American context, just how important being able to access legal standing was. So, you know, especially if we're also celebrating this year, the semi quincentennial of the Founding and the Declaration of Independence, the ability for enslaved people, for formerly enslaved people to have legal standing in the judicial system was essential to actually having what we think of as negative freedom, what we think of as negative liberty. And so that, that is a little bit distinct from maybe just even the right to vote, although that I think is also really crucial. And so this idea of do we Think of freedom from interference and the more positive liberty of ability to be engaged in self governance or being able to participate in politics. Do we see these as completely separate? You know, there might. I understand why analytically we separate them. But if we look at them throughout history, is there a way in which, at least in particular contexts, for particular cases, they are much more interrelated than we might analytically treat them as?
- [42:49]
B
It's funny, the thing about standing, and this is going to sound really weird, but on NPR this morning, because the Tonys are. This weekend they had an interview with Andre de Shields, who is 80 years old but now, you know, up for his second, I guess, Tony, because he's in the remake of Cats or whatever that they do. But what's fascinating is they were talking to him and he was telling what you know, because he's had a long career, you know, and they said, what do you hope your career? And he said, one of the things is that I want to represent Black elegance. And then they asked him to talk about that and he said, what I mean by that is that I want people who come from an enslaved background to look in the mirror and say that they have dignity, you know, and they can acknowledge themselves that they are here. And they, you know. And so it's quite fascinating to me, this notion that you talk about and other people talk about because, you know, a book that had a big influence on me was Jeremy Waldron. I actually really am a huge fan of his. And he has this one book called Political Political Theory, which I think is really quite good. But then he has another book called One Another's Equal and that's been a like. It was an influence on me because to me, when I was a student of Jim Buchanan's, Jim Buchanan stressed that it's a. It's a big part of his discussion which is we are one another's equal and we must treat equal things equally. And then you go from there in terms of like the calculus of consent or whatever. But again, just like with Adam Smith, a lot of people don't see that in these thinkers. Right. And I think it's your point that you just made, which is that they tend to de. Emphasize certain aspects which other people elevate because they themselves are working on something else that has occupied their imagination to some extent. It is a kind of invisible hand process and, you know, quite an aspect of how markets can liberate people that are previously not don't have access, rather than the idea that the power structures keep people from having access it's like, okay, let's get rid of the power structures, and then look what happens with the access. And they want to focus on telling that story. And so it's. It's kind of. Anyway, I don't know. That's just a reaction. I don't know if it's an answer to this.
- [45:23]
A
And I do think that. I do think, to be fair to Sklar and to the differences with Sklar and Hayek, I mean, she was, I think, much more enthusiastic. The kind of rise of the welfare state and also, you know, the ability to. The importance of work, but also the complexity of being able to work and being respected to work. And so there is this element of this deep concern with kind of social recognition and dignity. And I don't know that I, you know, I don't think that necessarily means that Hayek is in concern with those things, but it could be a change of emphasis. And also, I think, like, you know, I think it's fair to acknowledge the disagreements. But one also, you know, it's always. It's always tricky to. It is. It always is always interesting of. One could probably always kind of say, well, there's these elements that maybe. So, for example, when it comes to the welfare state, you know, Hayek talking about the idea of there being a kind of minimum, a social minimum. Right. And that's something that, you know, maybe. But at the time, if you. Because of other kind of political concerns and arguments that are happening, that just wasn't coming to the fore. Right. So, you know, was she totally wrong to, you know, disagree in those other ways? I'm not sure.
- [46:31]
B
I'm a. I'm a little blind to the. This aspect of social history. I'd rather. It's not that I. I really value social history, so I want to, you know, be honest about that. But I also think that sometimes it's just a disciplinary, you know, emphasis issue, because in some sense, Hayek comes to liberalism from technical economics, because the liberal background was the framework within which the economic process plays out. And then what happened was his fellow economists stopped paying attention to the framework, and so then he has to do analysis of the framework. Whereas I think a lot of political theorists, you know, the framework is their subject matter, not, you know, the operations. And so then it's about the representative of political rights or whatnot within this framework. And so they just come at it in different ways. But in both cases, I think what they really, you know, want to do is, is develop to go along with Waldron's thing. A system of, you know, where we begin with the recognition that we're one another's dignified equals and then what are the rules that allow us to live together in that kind of experience. But anyway, like I said, we're not going to solve that today. But I wanted to finish up by asking you to talk a little bit about the work that you did on Jeremy Bentham. Because what's fascinating about Bentham is again, what economists adopt from Bentham is basically utilitarianism and the thrust of the, you know, philosophical radicals of the 19th century. So, you know, basically James Mill, Ricardo Bentham and then John Stuart Mill kind of idea that tradition. And what I was fascinated with, and I have to tell you, before I read you, I did not know this, which is this shift of Bentham from the Panopticon to this issue having to do with, you know, much more on the ground and dealing with these pregnant, you know, unmarried women and how they are. He's solving a problem so that they don't, if I understand you rightly, he's solving a problem so that they can still be connected to society but not suffer society's social shame.
- [49:01]
A
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [49:02]
B
So maybe you can explain that.
- [49:05]
A
Yeah, no, thank you. And it's. It's funny because this. So. So the institution. And I'm always asked how to pronounce this and I always worry because I pronounce so many things wrong that I'm sure I can't possibly pronouncing it right.
- [49:19]
B
That's why I avoided saying it because I'm afraid I'll say it.
- [49:22]
A
I also believe in like people should be able to say, like, I don't love. I'm not. I'm like the opposite of like a grammar Nazi. I'm like a grammar anti fascist or anarchist or something. Like, I just feel like everybody should be able to what they want to say and we should try to just try to make sure we can understand each other. Maybe use more words if required. But anyway, the point is that. So he had these other designs and what's so fascinating is he's working on these, you know, after the initial Panopticon designs, but then at the same. In the same time period where he's. He's working with the government to try to create what would have been this Panopticon prison that. That then becomes this huge influence on Foucault and still influences the way people talk about surveillance today. But at the same time he was. Had these notes on something that he referred to as a. Sodomion or we could also say so to me, and would be the maybe other way to say it. I like saying Sotomayan, mostly because it rhymes with Panopticon. Like, it just seems like we should lean into that kind of what people are already used to saying. And so what this institution. What's so fascinating about this is it's. And he has all these other writings at this time, too, that we should read these notes in context with. And these were writings that were very critical of the criminalization of sodomy, the social center, as well the Christian aesthetic norms around sexuality. And so he's both criticizing. He's both defending homosexuality, but he's also defending other marginalized sexual practices, including prostitution, including, you know, sexual. You know, unmarried pregnant. Like, unmarried pregnant women, the idea of illegitimate pregnancies and. And childbearing outside of marriage. And all of these writings, he has such an institutional approach to these questions. So he'll talk about. So in terms of institutions at the time that were similar to what he ends up designing in the Sodomian, which the sodium never existed. It's. It's all hypothetical. It's all notes. It's all in his archival manuscripts. But it's such a provocative. I mean, it's similar to the Panopticon. The Panopticon was this project he was really enthusiastic about, but it wasn't created in his time by him, not in the way that he was envisioning. And so, you know, it's just. We have less material on this on the side of neon. But he had these writings about, you know, criticizing the way society would stigmatize and socially punish women who had children outside of marriage. And he makes it quite clear that from his point of view, this was really not a problem for people to do this. And often, to the degree that this was happening, it was maybe because of poor marriage laws, similar, similarly with prostitution itself or sex work, that it was. It was difficult to have a marriage, to have marriage laws. It was difficult to get divorced. There was also all he talks about, you know, the institution that did exist at the time there was the Magdalene Hospitals for Penitent prostitutes. If you're familiar with the book Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, she talks about what is essentially Magdalene Laundries in Ireland later. But the Magdalene Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes was a institution to try to reform young women who were sexually promiscuous and potentially prostitutes. And it required this kind of, oh, I repent. I regret what I did. And, you know, Bentham talks about how some of these women might be like, they are not like, their fundamental problem here was poverty, was a lack of opportunities. It was also all these hospitals were so focused on the problem of these women and not the idea that men who were in the military, the armed forces, military and the navy, they were unable to create the relationships required to have marriages. And so you couldn't have people having kind of short term marriage contracts. What Bentham argues in all that literature is talking about having short term marriage contracts so that you would ensure that a man would be responsible for any offspring and enabling these more. These couplings are also this idea of, like, why are we punishing people for these activities when our institutions make it more likely that they will do this? So the Sotomayon is something he designs or he imagines in this period for, like, how do you deal with this problem that women are punished for their pregnancies outside of marriage? And has this really moving writing and some of these pieces about describing what it's like to be a woman who is punished by society for this. She's essentially opened up to the center of the world. I mean, it has this language that we would say panoptic of the idea of being an object of surveillance, of being judged and then being kind of encouraged to internalize that public shame and stigma. And then. But it's this. It's an isolating experience. And that is what I think is interesting, that surveillance. I mean, talk about atomism. What surveillance can do is force you to be exposed to the public and exposed to total social judgment and observation while isolating you as well. And so he talks about how the women then are isolated from their friends. They're, you know, treated as. As. As dangerous. Right. And so how can you deal with a situation where you want to protect women from that, you know, social judgment, maybe give them measures of privacy, but you also don't want to actually isolate them from. From their friends, their family, because they, you know, from Bentham's perspective, they didn't do anything wrong. There's no reason for them to be punished for this. And so he imagines this institution called the Sodomion, which was not a panopticon in design. So a panopticon is this central inspection tower with cells circling around it or spaces, because it could, you know, imagine it being applied to various things, but in a prison, all the prisoner cells around it, such that the inspector at the top, hidden by blinds, wouldn't be seen by any of the prisoners at any time, but the prisoners would know. And internalize that it could be under surveillance at any moment. So this. This is this disciplinary. And I think, you know, to say that Bentham has all this other stuff doesn't deny how disturbing and strange this is. Although, you know, there's more we could say here, too, where he was attempting to create a system that would actually also protect prisoners from themselves, that also make the prisons more hygienic, would also subject the inspector, the guards, the management to the public as a whole system of public oversight as well. But setting that aside, the Sotomayon was very much not that it was. Would have been a part of the same. He was imagining as part of the same grounds he was trying to get the government to set up in the center of London. So it could all be under public oversight to some degree, not be kind of set aside and. And on the fringes of society. But there would be a. A bunch of cabins for each woman to live in, Very well equipped, A common room that the women would govern themselves. It was basically like a gentleman's club at the time, a blackball system where, you know, if any of the. If they disagreed with each other in terms of their behavior, any kind of offensive behavior or something like that, they might be able to exclude one another, at least temporarily or to various parts of the grounds from that common room. But it was still managed by the residents themselves, not the management. And it was very much, you know, a social environment. He also envisioned all these, like, very fun, nice things. Made it seem very idyllic, almost in utopian, really. But all that was so the mix of common spaces, of these private spaces. But then the entrance, this was the. I think the special crowning for me, like such striking element of this design is that there would have been a entrance and a porter at the door to welcome any visitors to this space. And again, very unique, very different from the other institutions at the time, like the Magdalene Hospital, where not only could these women be pregnant and give birth and maintain their privacy, but also they could allow visitors, friends, lovers, family members to come, but they would have a. What he called an examination room in this entrance, such that the woman could be hidden and they could observe whoever the visitor was that came. They would give to the porter, you know, their name, the name. The visitor would give their own name. The porter would kind of go back, see, you know, check with the resident. Is this the person that they say they are? And do you mind that they know you're here and they want to see you? Is that okay? And they can say yes or no? I Mean, they could be actually in total control over the terms of their public appearances. They could conceal the fact that they were pregnant. They could maintain their social reputation, which mattered so much in this time, would help them maintain things like domestic servant, servant roles, various jobs. But also, of course, the time. I mean, this is the era of Bridgerton really, after all, the ability to get married, all those things, while also still again, not being isolated, not being atomized. And it is this extremely. He writes about women that he would consult for this project. And in fact, it seems like he probably was maybe influenced by Mary Fordyce, who was his sister in law, or I have to remember the timing, she, I think, had not quite gotten married yet to his brother. And potentially this other Maria Gisborne may have been. That's something that Eileen Hunt, who's also one of the guests of my podcast, talks a little bit about this possibility that maybe she was also an influence, although that's very speculative. I mean, but, you know, in these circles in his life are women like that. And he writes about these novelists, these female novelists that he thought maybe they would be, you know, people he could consult for this project who were writing sentimental novels. And so this is all to say, you know, it doesn't deny, you know, the utilitarian, you know, so much of his actual utilitarian arguments, his conceptions of utility, but it does. There has always been this, like, oversimplification of Bentham as not concerned with individual rights, or not concerned with the individual and autonomy, or not concerned with this more emotional, complex social experience that in fact he was very much motivated about. And actually, and again, to kind of go back to what I was saying about Smith, the fact that these thinkers, they were not just envisioning these simplified, you know, projects of how to make the world, you know, adhere to a system. Like, it wasn't just this like, system thinking of the man of the system or something. It was also a social criticism. It was also a keen sensitivity to the relations of power, the entrenched institutions and interests that shaped the status quo.
- [60:04]
B
When I was reading your piece and a couple other things that I've read, you know, I kept on thinking to myself, there's this relationship that these people have, Smith and Bentham or whatever, to the essentialness of being seen as connected to the cultivation and practice of the moral sentiments. And so that's such a crucial thing for them to make sure that you spread out who is seen more and more. And so I was quite struck by that. And I thought that this example that you gave of this thing that Bentham envisioned, given the time in which he's writing, that is pretty amazing. It's also the case. I see it also when Adam Smith, when he talks about slavery, he refers to the slavers as the refuge of the prisons of Europe, but refers to the slaves as nation of heroes. He wants you to see them, right. In a way. And so that gets all lost when we just pigeonhole these thinkers in different ways 100%.
- [61:17]
A
And I want to add to that, because that is a part of this larger book project that I've been working on, is that what I think is so striking about this notion of being seen is that there is this pernicious surveillance that we can find, feel. We can feel as though, especially when we are not in control and we don't have the discretion over how we're observed and judged by other people. We're exposed in this way. There's also a way in which people can subject people. The public, ashamed, can like, bring them out in society in order to humiliate and punish them and to serve as an example against what for others to kind of make others afraid and control them. Right. But. But the issue with this is that, like, we can't just then avoid visibility entirely. That's not there. Isn't this, then this way that we could just ignore? We could say, well, just don't think about what other people think of you. I mean, that's. I think, also to get to the opening stuff we were talking about, is that even though Smith. There is a way in which you could say Smith's answer to us would be something stoic of, you know, don't worry about what the public thinks or what, you know, the average person thinks, or this idea of vanity or the idea of, like, all these public performance we have in our lives. Just try to cultivate that inner sense of integrity and self esteem and imagine that impartial spectator that you're trying to imagine. I think he's quite still sensitive that this is not something we can just wish away. We can't just form. It's very hard for any one person to form the total security of self absent, absent validation. But also in the face of such stark social opprobrium or judgment or more severe legal prohibitions and punishment as well. And in fact, it is a political and social problem that we must face. And we. And I think we have to kind of acknowledge to get to this sort of like, how do we manage our emotions? You don't just suppress the desire to be seen and understood, you figure out a way to how to find these fulfilling experiences and how can we create a society both, you know, through more emergent or bottom up or, you know, what is available to us where people really do feel seen and acknowledged and recognized on equal terms as opposed to in that kind of punitive, disciplinary surveillance way.
- [63:37]
B
Well, Kristin, I greatly appreciate you taking the time today and you know, I'm so grateful that you are here as my colleague because I constantly learn so much from you about the liberal project and how we need to restate it for the current generation and build on it and improve on it. So thank you so much for that as well and I wish you all the best this summer and be a big hit in Glasgow.
- [64:03]
A
Thank you so much Pete. No, I'm really grateful and again, I'm always so grateful when we get to talk and it definitely is one of the privileges of my job that we get to be at so many tables together chatting and thinking and arguing too, but in a way that is always productive and always makes me feel seen and respected. So thank you so much Pete for creating that environment, for giving me the opportunity to come on the podcast. Thanks Pete for having me on the Hayek Program podcast and to you for listening. If you want to hear more from me, Kristin Collins Check out my podcast Virtual Sentiments, a series on the ethics and politics of digital technologies today. With an eye to the past, I talk to scholars, practitioners, journalists, and other experts in political science, history, philosophy, computer science, and all sorts of other fields with the aim of bridging the gap between expertise and public discourse. My goal is that you come away from every episode feeling like you learned something new and are more confident to contribute your own voice to the public debates about major technological, political and economic changes our societies are undergoing today. Currently releasing our fourth season, we have a truly varied and interdisciplinary slate of guests from over the years that you can choose from. Our latest episode was with AI scientist Catherine Jarmul on her work on data privacy and open source or open weight large language models. Past guests include international political economist Henry Farrell on AI as a social technology, political theorist Diva Woodley on social movements, journalist Samantha Cole on how sex Changed the Internet, and political theorist Eileen Hunt on Mary Shelley and the ethics of AI. If you're interested in my work, I'm currently finishing up my first book, Spectatorship and Surveillance in Liberal Democracies. Seeing and Being Seen. Drawing on canonical figures including Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jack Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham, I reinterpret the liberal tradition and illustrate its continued relevance for criticizing the impact of surveillance and inequality on freedom and democracy today. I also write a substack newsletter, Theory of Virtual Sentiments, and my handle is kristenrosec on Twitter and bluesky. I also share news about my latest research, including my book, at my website, kristenrcollins.com. Thank you for listening to the Hayek Program Podcast. To learn more about the real research, scholars and work of the Hayek program, visit hayek.mercatus.org for more information about graduate student fellowship opportunities for students at Mason as well as at universities across the Globe, please visit students.mercatus.org we hope you recommend students to our programs or consider applying yourself.