Brianne Wolf on Liberalism with Taste

[music] >> You're listening to the Hayek Program podcast. This podcast includes audio from lectures, interviews, and discussions from scholars and visitors [music] of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. >> [music] >> To learn more about the Hayek Program, visit hayek.mercatus.org. 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. >> Today is Tuesday, July 28th. I am here today with Professor Briana Wolf. She's a professor of political theory at the James Madison College at Michigan State University, where she also directs the political economy minor at the James Madison College. Brie is is working on a book that's forthcoming. I I'm going to mention this cuz I think it's relevant for our conversation. It's called Beyond Rights and Price, Liberalism with Taste. And it's a work that engages in a deep dialogue and analysis with the writings of Hume, Rousseau, Smith, and Tocqueville. So, Brie, thank you very much for being on the program with us. >> I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me. >> So, this is part of a series of conversations that we've been having in relationship to Adam Smith's celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the of the publication of The Wealth of Nations. And you yourself have been quite busy in in in visiting around the world. Maybe you could just tell us real briefly about some of the the conferences and and celebrations you've been to recently. >> Yes, I have had a a busy summer bringing Smith everywhere to all audiences and it's been fantastic. Um, I've talked to undergraduate students in Athens, Ohio. Um, I had high school teachers from the state of Michigan in Grand Rapids, Michigan to talk about Adam Smith and other things. I went to Edinburgh, Scotland with the US federal judges to talk about Adam Smith in uh the place where he lived and died. Um, and then I also uh went to Chicago with graduate students from around the world to talk about Adam Smith and I've got some other things coming up this year and did some things last year. So, it's been a a full year of celebration. >> Yeah, that's awesome. I think I saw a picture of you at the statue of Adam Smith. Uh, I don't know if it was from this trip or another trip that uh that I saw. Um, I've always wanted to go to Edinburgh. I I I've never been there. So, it's one of my bucket list things uh to go. >> Definitely worth it. You should um you should definitely make a make a pilgrimage. >> Pilgrimage, yes. So, let's go back a little bit. You're an undergraduate yourself at James Madison College. You go to University of Wisconsin uh Madison uh to get your PhD. One of the professors there is is someone who's a specialist in Smith as as well. Um, but can you describe how it is that you yourself got interested in Smith and Tocqueville or even the broader realm Hume, Rousseau, Smith, and Tocqueville? >> Yeah, thanks thanks for this question. So, I have liked uh working with Tocqueville's thought, struggling with Tocqueville's thought since I was an undergraduate. Many have tried and many have failed to to sway me away and get me to think about new things, but I I keep coming back to those um back then I was really interested in Tocqueville's critique of what happens if we overextend democracy or make uh democratic institutions the only priority, let's call it. Um, alongside his critique of too much bureaucracy or a kind of technocracy. And as you said, I well, I stuck with my interest in Tocqueville through my master's degree at the University of Chicago. I actually wrote my thesis on the concept of the imagination in Tocqueville. And I came to graduate school in Wisconsin. I started fall of 2012. And I kind of came to my interest in Smith and Hume through a kind of confluence of forces. So I found the Adam Smith fellowship at the Mercatus Center, which I wrongly thought was going to be all about Adam Smith >> [laughter] >> and also Tocqueville. Um but happily, happily I was wrong. I I got exposed to so many ideas in political economy that have that shaped my career. And then we also hired she was then a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, Michelle Schwarze, and she started holding reading groups on Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. She also had a reading group on sincerity and authenticity, which focused a lot on Rousseau. I had also had a great small course at the University of Chicago on Rousseau with Nathan Tarco and the interest in pursuing Smith deeper on my own really came from being bothered by the 2008 financial crisis and wanting to better understand economics and the dynamics of what was going on in that situation. And so I started exploring those kinds of economic questions in Smith and Tocqueville and other thinkers. And as I said, I'd kind of been interested in moral and literary questions from my early grad school days. So the interest in taste that I that I focus on now in in the book I'm almost done with combines many of these threads, economic and class questions, questions about moral judgment and beauty, and my ever persistent concern with how we realize individual autonomy and robust community. Nowadays I would say that I'm exploring these same thinkers with critiques of capitalism at the forefront of my mind and collusion and trying to understand uh takes on markets. >> I wanted to ask you or pursue a little bit of a question because you just dimensioned about how you yourself as a student were motivated by an external event. And then that, you know, forced you to want to study some issues in greater depth than you would have anticipated 3 years earlier, right? Or something like that. >> Yeah. >> And you've now been teaching at James Madison College. I've I've lectured there several times, you know, prior to you being there or whatever. So I know a little bit about the school and its origins and what's it all about. And so I kind of, you know, had in my head a certain kind of uh student that is in the James Madison College. Uh and what motivates them say when you first started teaching there versus what motivates them today, you know, as and when you're like the ones who decide to major in the or minor in the political economy group? >> Yeah, that's such a great question and fun to think about. Uh I might think about it through how they react to certain texts. So first I'll say when I tell them about concerns about the 2008 financial crisis, they look at me like I'm a very old person. Yeah. It's not even on their radar, even though it shaped so much of um how we think about housing policy, let's say. And none of them have most of them haven't bought a house, so they haven't thought about these things. Uh but I tell them that that they'll come to realize that it's that it's important and not quite as old. [laughter] But a lot of what motivates them nowadays inequality and I would say that's been a persistent uh question. And so we work through sort of why that is bothering them so much. They get They get the most animated, I would say, about questions of inequality and trying to clarify their concepts and where they think it comes from and what's what's possible. Since I've come, they've really developed an interest in activism around environmental questions. They're really worried that there won't be a planet to have when they they grow grow up. They're grown-ups already, but that this is the language that they use. Um, they're also really animated by questions of political polarization and they talk a lot about let's call it loneliness in American life, people being isolated from one another, being isolated from uh social situations. That's really a newer concern, I would say, post-COVID. So, I came to James Madison College in fall of 2019. So, it has shaped a lot of things um that they're they're thinking about, but but more so on the latter half. One interesting shift I've noticed in their reading of things that I'm not sure how to categorize, but I've noticed it. When we read the Federalist Papers, I teach that as part of a class on constitutionalism and democracy, where we're trying to understand the origins of the American experiment in liberal democracy, the intellectual influences, but also the debates between the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists at the founding in the we read Tocqueville and other sort of normative questions about the future of the American republic going forward. But when we used to read the Federalist Papers, the Federalists are very concerned about things like direct democracy and they want to put a number of checks between the people's passions, let's call them, and then the exercise of power through various levels of government. When I first started, students were very frustrated about those parts of the Federalist Papers. They thought them elitist. They want more and more and more democracy, democracy is always good, let's say. Now, when we read the Federalist Papers, they really like those parts of the Federalist Papers and want to restrain people's power, so much so that they want to go towards some kind of elitist control over democratic institutions. They don't trust the average person anymore and we could maybe easily explain that with some of the tensions around the presidencies of Donald Trump one and two. That would seem an easy explanation, but it seems deeper than that. They have a lot of concern about expertise and also I think frustration at inability to quickly fix problems that they're diagnosing in society. That's what I would say. >> Yeah, that's awesome. Maybe COVID had something to do with that as well and besides Trump cuz the issue is is that the polarization aspects and this distrust is actually international not just US-centric. So So Trump might be explaining too much. You know, like it's it's it's too much of a explanation. All right, let's go back to to thing. I'm sorry for that little detour, but I was fascinated by this idea and what it is that resonates with the current generation about the issues that relate to these questions. And I like the way you tied that back to the the readings in the Federalist papers cuz this is my second line of questioning for you because you have interest both in Adam Smith and then also in Tocqueville and there's you know, a century between them and they are different, you know, entities, but yet they're also connected. And you know, it relates to I think this issue of the American project. And so I wanted to ask you if you had any strong views on the relationship between those two thinkers and the American project in general or whether or not you find the arguments like in historians like Garry Wills or Gordon Wood that try to draw a line from the Scottish Enlightenment to the founders. Do you find that persuasive or you know, do you think it's a little fanciful because earlier writers stressed Locke a lot and they came along and they stressed you know, Adam Ferguson and some others, you know, and so I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on that debate and discussion. >> Yeah, so first I would just say on the the previous question, I really appreciate thinking about the opportunity to think about what my students are most concerned with, which what bothers them. Partly why I like the tradition of the history of political thought is that enduring questions are asked. And I'm not looking back at these thinkers as they're always right on any question or any kind of hero worship, although sometimes I think it ends up looking like that. But the idea is that the the questions they're asking still matter for us today and they can give us this lens to get us outside of our own particular moment and think in different ways. And it's fun with the students. They their concerns what bothers them today gets me to look at these these thinkers that I've considered for a long time in a new in a new light. So I think that's a great question. But back to to the one about the sort of through line, if there is, from the American case back to the Scottish Enlightenment or across the Atlantic, so to speak. So on the one hand I do find those kinds of connections helpful. I think I'm grateful for scholars who have done the work uncovering the philosophical connections between the American project and the Scottish Enlightenment. I think that's gotten a lot more robust in in recent years. We know a lot more about what people were reading in particular, what particular threads of different thinkers connected. So we know James Wilson's jurisprudence brings the Scottish Enlightenment to the American founding case. We know that Madison's theory of the extended republic we thought it was primarily maybe from someone like Hume. We now think maybe it's actually from Smith's comments on religion towards the end of Wealth of Nations or both are there. We know a lot about now what was on college syllabi that for example Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments would have been assigned frequently. So those kinds of things are really neat and cool to think about that the potential connections, but I also think that there are important differences that maybe are getting covered over now that we're so excited about finding all these connections. So, um essential for the American founding project, as you said, is the social contract theory coming out of Locke. Um Montesquieu, after the Bible, is the most read thing in in the colonies. So, his separation of powers theory is a a big source of debate between the uh federalists and anti-federalists, right? So, the Scots, like Hume and Smith, are interested uh in a more common law evolutionary account of rights. And so, that's one important difference that could have helpful discussions. Uh I think the social contract is a very helpful idea, but it's not the only one, right? Um and then political their political economy is both sort of less agrarian focused than a Jefferson, who calls Smith's Wealth of Nations the best book on political economy extant, right? And also less industrial and focused on the domestic economy than Hamilton, who sort of quotes Smith to his own ends in the report on manufactures and report on public credit to Congress. So, I think there are these these through lines, uh but maybe they are overdrawn sometimes. Um and then I think you were asking me about Tocqueville too on this and and the American project. Uh I mean, Tocqueville is concerned with democracy generally, but he's using the American project sort of his, let's call it his jumping off point or as this key comparative example. Uh but he's actually sometimes really criticized by scholars of American political thought because he's not focused on the importance of the Declaration, right? Which is kind of interesting in the 250th year of that and uh Wealth of Nations as well. It doesn't bother me as a scholar as much. Um not because I don't think the Declaration of Independence is important. It is, it's essential. But Tocqueville is more interested in the, let's call them, the practices needed to sustain freedom in democratic times more than he is in the theory that makes the argument for self-government possible and I think that allows us to do different things with his his questions and his ideas than if we were just sort of focused on this one through line about the American project. >> Yeah, that's fascinating. I I don't know if you and I have ever sat down and had any kind of extended conversation on methodology. >> No, I don't think we have. >> Cuz I was quite intrigued by you raising the issue about the purposes from which we do political theory or history of economic ideas or history of political economy because I completely agree with you in the idea of that we don't want to do hagiographic history, that a lot of people do that. Uh we also don't want to just do Whig history, the history of the victors, right? Kind of thing. We also don't want to do critical condemnation, which is another thing that people do, right? They apply the the hermeneutics of suspicion to all writers in the past in some sense. So, we're kind of stuck in this weird thing. No hagiography, you know, no just, you know, the history is written by those who succeed. And three, no like just outright condemnation in advance. So, what are we doing? We're doing something where we're looking for them to be part of our extended present and our current problem. And this is relates to what you said on enduring problems. You know, so like I don't like the way Rousseau solves his enduring problem. But the but the enduring problem of how can an individual be free while subject to wills other than their own, it's still with us today. It goes back to what your students were complaining about as well, right? Uh how is it that we can still be free while we're subject to these uh you know, Yahoo's, right? >> [laughter] >> They're imposing They're imposing their world on us. And so, I do think that this issue of what it is that we can learn. And so I guess I wanted to ask you, when you were meeting with the judges, it's a very practical field, right? US judges. And you're talking about Adam Smith. They're not necessarily intellectual historians that want to know about, you know, what did Smith mean or whatever, and they don't necessarily want to match up. Like I mentioned this Garry Wills book. You know, what he does, it's called Inventing America. And what he does, he takes the Declaration and then tries to match the language in the Declaration to the language in the philosophical treatments in the Scottish Enlightenment and tries to show that the words, you know, come across. That's kind of fascinating, but that's not what these judges were interested in, right? So what is it that the judges were getting from Adam Smith? And what did you help them see in Adam Smith? >> So I gave two lectures on Smith and there were other scholars uh talking about various other things, but for me, exactly as you're saying, I want them to be able to think about why we might still read Smith or or care about them him in a way that might be relevant to some of the questions that they're thinking about as as judges. He's not going to map on exactly. He's not going to be part of their precedent that they're considering, but maybe they think about some of the roots of these ideas and exactly as you said, um how can we do robust thinking about the the history of thought? What are the ideas that have persisted? So to some extent the thinkers that we still read, we're still reading them for a reason. They quote unquote won out for for a reason, but um how can we think about that in a robust a robust way? So I gave lectures on uh the connections between some of the American founding ideas and Smith on the problem of plutocracy. So thinking about um the wealthy ruling and what did Smith have to say and then especially John Adams, but also the Federalist and anti-Federalist debates um overall. And that was kind of fascinating and surprising to them, I think, because they're thinking about inequality questions, I think, in a different way than the academy is and the way that my my students are. They're thinking about all of the cases and what does this do with property rights and what does this do with people's ability to acquire wealth and amass it? What does that mean? And then the second lecture I gave them was on Adam Smith's political economy as moral philosophy. And both were very fun. Um the the second one was fun in particular because like many people, they have a real misunderstandings, I would say, or weak, let's call them weak conceptions of capitalism, sort of cheap shots at what it means to have a market society. And so I wanted to think through some of that with Adam Smith. So how we started was right in the beginning. It's the third paragraph of Wealth of Nations and he says, "Who wealth acquisition is for?" And if you ask people who wealth acquisition is for in capitalism, generally, {quote} {unquote}, they'll say, "Corporate elites, uh the 1%, the very, very wealthy." And that's not what Adam Smith says. He says it's for the least advantaged, so that the young, the old, and the diseased don't have to be abandoned, which he says was is the case in a subsistence society where you can't care for those who can't work. And I think that's a really surprising insight that sort of flips a switch when people are considering the rest of what Smith has to say about about trade. >> You know, it's fascinating. There's two two references that I'd like to make. One of them is to uh a paper recently published by Maria Pia Paganelli, which was in is was in Social Philosophy and Policy, which talks about Smith in this very point that you're talking about, that Smith's general concern was always with the least advantaged and the most vulnerable among us and how you address the the structures of the of the system in order to you know, address those concerns. And it's also the case that our colleague Irwin Decker, he has this great paper introducing the for the first time the translation of Carl Menger's celebration of Adam Smith's death, you know, 100 years after Adam Smith's death. And in it, Menger is criticizing the Germans who are viewing Smith as greed works, right? So, these these these uh you know, characterizations aren't brand new to the modern times, right? This is the the source of the Das Adam Smith problem and all these things like that. And what Menger says in response to them, he says there's not a single instance instance in Adam Smith's writings where when it comes down to a judgment, and I'm going to come back to that word in a second, a judgment between the interests of the wealthy or the elite and the interests of the least advantage and most vulnerable, that he doesn't side with the interests of the least advantage and most vulnerable. And you know, that's a that's not how people think of it, right? >> Yeah, that's powerful. >> Yeah. So, anyway, that's fascinating. So, let me ask you a little bit about the reason why I said the thing about judgment is you use the term taste, okay? Um and you put a premium on this aesthetic judgment, you know, kind of idea. And to me, I see you as explaining Smith as someone who's trying to as a moral teacher cultivate taste in the people. So, this emphasis on the aesthetics, do you see it at all at odds with enlightenment values of reason and evidence? Right? Or do you see them as not so much in tension? And a follow-up question on that is why not the term sensibility? I think if you were in modern moral theory class, what you mean by taste, correct me if I'm wrong on this cuz you're closer to this literature, but what you mean by taste, they would call it moral sensibilities because taste is viewed as too sub is too personal and subjective nowadays, right? >> Yeah. >> But when you're talking about taste, you mean this cultivating of this sort of you know, moral sense I guess in in some sense. Yeah. Uh yeah. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but but let you know, let me know what you think. >> Yeah. Uh this is fantastic. So, I am using taste because that is the language that's being used in the 18th century both by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, but also by the French Enlightenment thinkers, and I think how many times can I say thinkers there? I I I really they're doing this for an important reason, which is that they want to make a connection between our senses, let's say, our empirical experience of the world and then the reason we use to make a judgment from that sensory empirical interaction with with the real world. In French, the French context, the language is the same for our actual eating of things and the taste we experience, that sense, and then what an aesthetic judgment would be. It's interesting to think about though why not sensibility in particular because even though other folks in the 18th century, someone like Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith's teacher, Hume also interacted with him, does use the idea of moral sense theory, and he means that when we're making judgments about taste, sometimes also in the in the moral sense, that we have kind of a organ within us that that us to decide whether things are are good or bad. What I'm after involves more discernment than that. I think it's not just a reaction and in that sense it's also different than an economic preference. I like it because I like it. We have to give reasons for it. So I'm interested in both the tastes as you said that people express and what they might find beautiful or good. I think the thinkers are interested in that, too, but also the faculty like how do we make an aesthetic judgment? What is the process? And I find that that's helpful for politics and also morality. So I'll say a little bit more about that. So reasons why I put a premium on taste. So one, I'm genuinely concerned thinking about these enduring questions I've been talking about about the current crisis in liberalism. And part of my concern or why I think we're in this place. There are there are many, many reasons, but one is that I think as classical liberals or people concerned with the liberal tradition, we could do a much better job explaining our normative commitments. In other words, explaining to people why they should actually care about liberal institutions. And I think we often give them empirical results, which are not unimportant. They are very, very important that people are wealthier, healthier, more educated, freer, better political institutions. All of these things are essential and crucial. But I think that sometimes the critics have, for lack of a better phrase, sexier arguments that are more persuasive to people, right? You were complaining about Rousseau a few minutes ago. I had regularly have occasion to teach him to my undergraduate students in a course on radical challenges to liberal democracy, and I always find that they are, with a rare exception. They they usually are really excited about his critique. They find it so persuasive. It speaks to all these problems in their soul. They feel seen by him. This is exactly what's wrong with modernity. But I also think it's really important to turn to his solutions, exactly as you were saying, and they a lot of them get off the train. They find that to be harder harder to digest, but speaking to people's souls, I guess, about what really matters to them, what what they want their life to look like, their values. I think sometimes liberalism doesn't do a great job, and taste um is all over the proto-liberal tradition, let's call it. No one's using that that language yet. And it's an important uh idea that they're thinking about for how we have social coordination uh outside of formal uh political or economic engagements. And so, what I'm trying to bring out is that it's not just properly aesthetic philosophers who are concerned about understanding all the inner workings of um aesthetics as its own self-contained study, but I want to understand how the way we make judgments about the good and the beautiful affect our everyday lives and our economics and our moral judgments and our and our politics. >> No, so I'm So, I I was struck as you were talking about how this relates again back to your students and their sense of loneliness. >> Yeah. >> Because it's it's the our current conception of modernity it has delivered for them a sense in which they feel alienated, you know, and and lonely and and disconnected. And so, how is it that you This is what motivates the post-liberalism stuff, which you know, in my head, I you know, I find it abhorrent because usually it's followed by we need to have a teleology, and you know, the next thing I I see is like some grand planner, you know, again telling me what it is that to my highest value, you know, in society or whatever as opposed to the liberal pluralism of my youth. Um, but I think that you're right. I mean, this is a this is something that relates. I I think I've maybe I've told you about this, but I read this book by a guy named Bernard Yack. I don't know if you know him from years ago, but he he wrote this book called Longing for Total Revolution. Um, I mean, it's like really old now, like 30 years old or more. And uh I was struck by it when I read it because what he argues is that Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche are non-enlightenment thinkers. And as a result, what they do is the reason why I raised the issue about the aesthetics, what they do is they paint an aesthetic. And either you as a reader find it pleasing or whatever, but most of us most people in some sense because of their success, they found it to be pleasing, the picture that they paint. And the picture that they paint is one of you know, horrendousness about modernity, but people buy into it, and we respond as enlightenment thinkers with reason and evidence. And it like it falls flat, you know, for two >> having two different conversations. >> Yeah, so for two centuries, this has just been, you know, like boom, boom, like not working, and yet we keep beating our head against, you know, thinking about it. And so if you think about even, you know, like Steven Pinker, you know, writing about his defense of the Enlightenment or even, you know, Jonathan Israel in this massive tome about, you know, the nature of the Enlightenment or whatever. I read those those books, and I'm like, yeah, you know, like that. >> [laughter] >> But at the same time, you know, it's not clear that a someone who sees loneliness or this sort of this alienation from the current system as that they would find those arguments, you know, all good and well. And I think this relates to you mentioned earlier like the the historians of capitalism, they paint a picture about the nature of capitalism which economic historians have exposed as being, you know, really at some level fundamentally flawed, but yet it doesn't matter at some level. It still marches forward. >> How how do you you know, just just very briefly cuz I want to ask you more about your own work here in a second, but you know, how do you think that that is like for liberals, like classical liberals how are they supposed to respond to that? >> Yeah, um and I want to add something to your list too about ways in which the empirical response or just focusing on reason doesn't speak to a lot of people's concerns and they can contemporary I mean I think another big critique of liberalism is coming from, let's call it identity politics, but real concerns about persistent racism in society, sexism, these kinds of questions. And then especially let's take the racism question, the way in which the power of the state is used to further illiberal attitudes, undesirable attitudes. And I think my sort of one of my takes on that is that when we continue saying like here's why the enlightenment was such a success, we act like the project towards freedom is is done. I mean, your one of your books, The Struggle for a Better World, is trying to convey that no, it's not done. Like it's a continued struggle, but I think sometimes when we just say things like look how much higher GDP is, look how much wealthier we are. People who still are struggling and are poor hear the project is done. Or look at all these rights we have, but then people who don't experience those rights being respected in their own life here the project the project is done, right? So, I do think that's why it's really important to think about these aesthetic questions and it's not to say like here's the liberal aesthetic and everyone has to jump on in to it. In a way that would contradict some of the aims of the liberal project which is a plural one, right? But it's how can we relate to connect to people who are viewing the good and beautiful maybe in ways that are different than than ours. So, some of the thinkers Hume for example has a really interesting idea about how we sort of enter into what the taste of other people are and make reasons and defenses about why we like things. And one of the things that I think is important about it is in so much of these questions the post liberal ones, the identity politics ones, when we are talking to people who think differently than we do we start with the most controversial thing and then are surprised when we butt heads and can't get along and then we go nowhere. And this I think is also rooted in some of these enlightenment sort of debates. So, when we're not working with the only the empirics and and reason and I'll say something more about that in a minute. The emphasis is on sympathy that we can do this this really difficult process of I'm going to put myself in your shoes and I'm going to think like you and then I'm going to bring it home to myself and think about how I feel. It is natural many of the thinkers are saying but that's kind of hard especially if we are viewing someone as really different from us and already opposed. For someone like Hume we sort of catch feelings by contagion but anyway. And so taste is another effort to say what if we can find connections with people on things that aren't the most difficult philosophical questions or in the 18th century it's the religious questions. Like Hume says like you know like what if we don't start with like our doctrinal views about God. And what if we started with something else and then can we build ways to make judgments and it's not complete subjectivity like anything goes. We still have to make claims about what is good and what is right but how can we do that while respecting other people's human dignity? And maybe that starts by not making um those controversial questions the most important. So, that second part of what I said, it isn't just our feelings. Those are important for understanding, but then we we do use our reason to discern better and worse, good and bad, ordering like that. >> So, I really like the way you put that because uh you know, I I really like this book uh by Sam Fleischacker comparing Human Smith on the issue of empathy and sympathy and whether or not we're talking about proximity or whether or not we're talking about projection, right? And in order to be able to do what you said, which is like the projection issue, we do have to cultivate that skill. That's not something that just naturally comes to us. Maybe proximity might just naturally come to us because we see the person right in front of us like our dog or whatever. I mean, at some level like, you know, we our animal is is is whining and we're like, oh yeah, of course, you know, like I feel bad for you and we anthropomorphize, you know, what's going on with the animal. But the proximity of seeing ourselves in somebody that's far remote from us, but seeing what, you know, living in their shoes in that sense, that's a different kind of of moral sense moral taste. Uh and so, it requires cultivating. By the way, when I was reading your stuff about this, it busted me up because when I was a uh you know, I was I I grew up in a very weird sort of family because I had very working class, you know, things, but then I also had these pockets of people who had escaped from that and were very elite. So, you know, my my uncle uh was an architect and and an interior decorator in in Manhattan. He lived this very lavish lifestyle. And I had an aunt who was a professor and you know, like that, but like other people who were like an you know, a great uncle who, you know, was a uh uh washed out minor league baseball player who spent his life as a drunk, you know, living in a bar in Elizabeth, New Jersey, you know, like that. So, I had all these various, you know, things that were all impinging upon me at the time. So, but I was not very a studious person. I go off to college and my uncle gave me a series of tapes to learn classical music. Cuz he said, "Look, you're going to college now. You need to learn, you know, classical music." And then, you know, I I listened to some of it, so I was like, "Yeah, this is pretty cool." And I made the mistake of telling him that. So, the next year he gave me opera, >> [laughter] >> learn all about opera. So, you know, whatever. I never quite took to that in the same way. But, I So, okay, that's a weird story, but now let's go back to Adam Smith. I think it's really important to remember that Adam Smith was a teacher, right? Of And he's trying to teach people like in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, he's trying to teach them a certain aspect. Now, when I read the book, to some extent, I think he's trying to communicate the like the wisdom of the Stoics. Uh but, there's even in doing that, you have to cultivate that sense that you have in that. Is that what you are talking about in terms of the necessity for a liberal society at some sense to sustain itself that we must develop a certain, you know, set of liberal tastes? >> Yeah, um I I'm not sure that there is a set of tastes that then count as liberal and nothing else is. However, I think we can identify things that are illiberal tastes. So, the desire to dominate other people, we could say is an illiberal illiberal taste. Um and also, I think along these lines that we it's not as though the the the process for making a judgment of taste and aesthetic judgment that the the thinkers Hume, Smith, and and Tocqueville in in my telling, it's not this process isn't going to by itself generate liberal institutions or a liberal society. It might help us sustain them. It might help us talk about the kinds of things that would lead towards that, make self-government easier, make uh civil society more robust, social connections easier. Um so I I'm hesitant to sort of say that there are only certain things that count as liberal tastes. Um I think for me it's much more about the the process of interacting and liking opera could be part of liberal taste, but liking whatever pop music just came out and I'm not going to date myself or show how little I know about my students. [laughter] Like um but those kinds of things could both be in the choice set of liberal taste. But why we why we like it, the reasons we give for making that judgment uh are what we could classify as liberal or not. And also the ways that we cultivate or pass down judgment. So Rousseau's in the book. I'm not claiming Rousseau is has liberal taste or that he is cultivating liberal taste. He has really innovative ideas about how we might make aesthetics an important part of society. Some of the ways he suggests we cultivate them are really illiberal. Let's have um a one-on-one situation between a tutor and a student where all of the quote unquote experiences or empirical uh living in the world that we would have is extremely cultivated and constrained by the tutor so that you get specific outcomes. >> Yeah. >> That doesn't seem like a liberal process to me. The state forces people to only read uh specific things or listen to specific music so that you get a given output that makes them good citizens uh submissive to state ideas. That doesn't seem like a particularly liberal process to me. Um so, that's more um what I'm after and thinking about. Hume, for example, is kind of concerned that we need really specific taste. I think he's thinking about all of these new people that are going to be part of what today we would call the {quote} middle class. They're going to be part of the people making decisions and self-governing. They're going to be in civil society and he's sort of worried about the unwashed masses sort of changing everyone's understanding of what is beautiful and he has really good strong opinions about authors that are good authors and paintings that are are good paintings. And yet, he still thinks that the the process would involve reason-giving for why we think a particular uh writer or thinker or painter or sculptor is better than another. So, even as he has this maybe elitist uh strand in him, he's still thinking about process over uh what the thing is. >> You know, I wanted to go back very quickly to your point about um you know, the kind of responses that liberals sometimes give to their critics that fall short. And the reason why I was I wanted this is that um I just recently res- reacted to an argument by Corey Robin, which I disagree with about Hayek. And my response, which I don't think succeeded, uh was to stress something, you know, which I thought was was you know, a winning argument, was that classical liberals are formally committed to the idea of a political structure that exhibits neither uh relations of domination nor, you know, discrimination. So, you have non-domination, non-discriminatory politics. That is a means by which we try to have a absence of any relations of coercion and the abolition of privileges that are handed out by the state to different people. So, liberalism was born, Adam Smith, you know, aggressive assault on all of British commercial life. British commercial life at that time was filled with privileges and power relations that were done, the East India Company or whatever. And so, but yet like someone like that's a critic, they hear you say that and their response is basically but you really don't mean it. Right? Because, you know, like what you said before about corporations or whatever, you know, you know, who is the profits for? Well, it's profits, not people, right? And and these kind of things. And no matter, you know, how you respond back, um they do it. So, I think that one of the things that, you know, that might be valuable is for us to think back critically on our own points of emphasis of what it is that we're missing in this. So, it's like, you know, how do I effectively, as you put it, robust argument? How do I effectively respond to these different sort of criticisms? And it may be that you have the only way that you can respond to them is to talk about these aspects of what are these, um you know, tastes or whatever that can cultivate What is it that's a liberal sensibility is what I would call it like what's, you know, what are a liberal liberal attitude or liberality as I used to, you know, the phrase that sometimes used to be used. What do you What do you think about that? That's like >> Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about something that I find really valuable in Smith's work and I think why reading Smith with many different audiences works well. And it was a big debate I was I was at what's known as Smith Camp this last last week with a bunch of graduate students where we write most of Smith's work and we always start with Theory of Moral Sentiments and students were sort of wondering about why that is. Smith is really good at giving human examples. He has characters that he brings you in to their experience and even in Wealth of Nations, students of mine who I'd teach a seminar on Adam Smith are sometimes nervous because they they don't do economics. They don't do numbers. They can't do this math. They don't they don't want any part of it and I tell them, well, neither can I, but that's a whole other whole other issue. But even Wealth of Nations has a number of examples that he brings you in and I was thinking about as you were talking about all the special privileges. The the very beginning of the famous chapter on free trade, which even within that chapter he gives a number of exceptions to free trade, which we could talk about why he's doing that, but um it's book four, chapter two. It starts right away with uh and this kind of manufacturer gets a special privilege and this kind and this kind and this kind and the linen manufacturers are up next. They want what everybody else is getting. He has this way of bringing you in along to make it real to you, to make you understand. An example I've been playing up in that same chapter recently, he says you could use greenhouses and hot hot houses and all these things and by all those means you could make halfway decent wine. Halfway decent. And it's nothing compared to a burgundy in France. And I I tell students he's he's saying like you could do a lot of things that use a lot of energy, maybe are not good for the environment. He He brings you along and also who wants a Scottish burgundy? You don't you don't want that. You can't even make it, right? And so I wonder if it's not a matter of the fundamental liberal value or and a fund to me fundamental to liberal sensibility alongside the things you said is to take seriously the human dignity of every person, which is why we don't want to dominate them and why we don't want to discriminate against them. And I think part of that is telling the stories and they're not just stories and not making them up. They're not fictions, but relating to who people are as human beings with values, with all the things that they're they're worried about. And I think that's why for me Smith is very fun to teach and helpful because he gives us the stories that mean something to us and then can help us do something with them. >> So, you wrote a paper about cos Smith and cosmopolitan liberalism. I want to ask you to to imagine a conversation that you get a chance to go to dinner with Martha Nussbaum. And Martha Nussbaum wrote a book about cosmopolitan liberalism as a failed ideal. And in her chapters, she has two chapters at least in that book devoted to Adam Smith talking about his ideas. And the way I read her, and again, it might be, you know, the economist mistaken reading, you know, which cuz I, you know, the way I read her is what she says is that Smith is demanding too much of us as a human being because we must be stoic in the face of a lot of deformities and things like that that in order for us to have the system. He's asking us to quiet our discomfort that leads to like these concerns that many of the critics have because in order to sustain cosmopolitan liberalism, there's a greater aspect of that than responding to any one of these things. I mean, is cosmopolitan liberalism in your mind sustainable? Is it a a project that can overcome what Nussbaum is talking about? Or is And And how would you respond to her in this part about Adam Smith? >> This is fun. Um so, the paper is about Smith as a cosmopolitan liberal, as you as you said. And I think, because I wrote the paper, that genuinely Smith is a cosmopolitan liberal in some senses. He cares about the dignity of all human beings, and we know this, as we've discussed, cuz he expresses concern for the least advantaged outside of his own class. He also condemns slavery, again, not as strongly as we would like from a 21st century perspective. But he has he has lots of things like this. And he it's important to him that we extend the market as far as possible to realize all of the gains possible from the division of labor and exchange. So yes, he is a cosmopolitan liberal in those senses, but he also has, and this I would say to Nussbaum's emphasis on his stoicism, he also has arguments taking very seriously what he calls circles of sympathy, which is just that the people who are closest to us, we can most most naturally be concerned with and connected with. That could be your family or those you interact with most often, your your close friends, people you work with. And he even goes so far to talk about people in your nation, and then there's everybody else, strangers, right? And he doesn't condemn this. He says it's good, in fact, in some places that we we have this, cuz this is where we can actually have the most meaningful relationships and the most meaningful connections, and maybe even make the most impact, I think he would say. And that is at odds with this cosmopolitan sensibility that we have to be, let's say, Nussbaum sometimes calls it a citizen of the world, okay? That we have to care a lot about everyone else. And at times Smith is critical of that, and the Stoics who say we have to care, what does he say? We have to care about the world and the moon, right? And that is so against our our human nature. I mean, even in some places he's advocating for policies that might defy a kind of cosmopolitan liberalism in favor of strengthening national ties. So I would say that Smith is not systematic in that way, actually, on those things. It depends on the particular policy. Um, think the fundamental goal for him overall is human flourishing, human prosperity, freedom, but I think partly Nussbaum thinks it's a failed ideal because of how she defines what cosmopolitan liberalism demands of us. Like we have we must if we are a cosmopolitan liberal always prioritize, not just the dignity of all, but the the in a moral way we are compelled to care about the greatest disasters farthest away from us. It doesn't matter, right? And so we should give everyone's moral capacity our first allegiance and respect and as you said always quiet, it seems to me in my reading of it, those particular interests that we have. I think I think she is demanding too much of us and not and not Smith actually. Um, she does acknowledge things like our local ties and she sometimes talks about a turn to institutions as a solution, but they're still with treating our moral obligation to all, let's say, and I think that that is unachievable and unrealizable and maybe not even helpful for for freedom. So I think Smith is like other 18th century thinkers uh who sometimes get a bad rap for thinking about how we can have institutions that take seriously our, let's call it, partiality and direct us towards some kind of impartiality. I take very seriously for him a kind of scale of both moral capacity, so we don't all have to be what he calls the wise and virtuous man, like virtues along that scale are are equally valuable. And we don't all have to be the perfect impartial spectator all the time. We can be thinking about that and interrogating our partiality, but institutions work best when they utilize both aspects of our nature. Um, I would also criticize someone like like Peter Singer and effective altruism, like caring about other people, you can't um Smith says a couple of times you can't force people to be benevolent and I think holding this moral acts above their heads like if you're not at all times concerned with the whole world you're a failure isn't productive. >> I like that response. I did want to say something about the slavery aspect because again if you put Smith in context right he refers to the slavers as you know the refuse of the jails of Europe. That's how he describes and then and the slaves themselves he refers to them as a nation of heroes. Those nations of heroes. So given the context of his time this is actually quite an amazing you know statement of words a powerful word words and I think that you can see you know that in many of the things that he's arguing that he's that you know you can build on you know when he uses the man of systems argument in the theory of moral sentiments. The man of systems was not a socialist cuz there wasn't socialism at the time. They actually were the physiocrats who were his compatriots in in in understanding that markets are these great vehicles but they wanted to impose them on there as opposed to and he he argues that the man the paragraph right above the man of systems is about the man of public spirit and he argues that the man of public spirit should adopt no violence towards you know his others than he would towards his own parents right kind of thing. He has this line in there and so you know there's a kind of a fascinating thing with Smith because he he is actually even you know he's he's not an advocate of because I have the right I have I have the right idea I have the right to impose it on everyone else. I instead must only rely on the tools of persuasion. It's a very democratic way of thinking, a very self-governing democratic society kind of way of thinking. >> Yeah, I mean everybody misses the man of public spirit comments in favor of the man of system, which is so egregious. I mean it's that discussion is fascinating about the sort of difficulties of as you say that kind of more democratic sensibility. It's not easy to be motivated by these things and then also sort of figure out what would be in the best interest that people actually want. Like what can I what can I actually do? Um >> Well, the constraint that I can't impose on others what I think science has taught me is the right way to do things, but still nevertheless, I don't have that right. All I can do is, you know, the in the social world I I have to only rely on my tools of persuasion and which is another reason why it may be the case that you need to cultivate taste so much is because only a certain, you know, person that has a certain level of taste will appreciate certain arguments. You know, again I I was thinking this as you went as you were going along in Smith's essays on philosophical subjects, the one on astronomy. He argues that science advances through three stages: wonderment, surprise, and then appreciation. But it it requires a cultivation to be able to see those steps. And that might be part of what it is that you're getting at that I'm quite fascinated by this, yeah. >> That's such a helpful reading of the history of astronomy, too, because I've I've long wondered he sort of mentions those three stages at the beginning and then admiration kind of falls off. He no longer talks about it in the rest of the essay and he'll talk about things like the division of labor where once you've once you're you're master of a craft, you no longer experience wonder and surprise anymore. But then I wonder if the problem is is that we aren't experiencing the admiration of the thing, a proper way of explaining to other people why it is so good. I mean, it's also persuasion as you said, too, that is the thing that makes exchange work. You brought up animals earlier. He says like the dogs don't persuade each other to share the bones or benefit, but human beings can do that. >> We talk. >> Yeah. >> Human beings talk. Yeah, yeah. >> I think there's something really interesting there thinking about the the man of spirit public spirit and what he can do. I mean, he wouldn't be able to know what the chess pieces want unless he asks them, right? >> Yeah. Yeah, and they have to they have their own will of their own that that that we have to appreciate. The way I try to talk to people about this nowadays is that you know what we really want to do is we have to recognize the aspirational aspects and the chess metaphor misses that because a pawn can't say I want to be a bishop. A pawn, >> [laughter] >> right, can only be a bishop, but in humans we actually speak back and you know, but let me just wrap up going back to these celebrations these last few years because I think it's fascinating to me and and I think to you as well is an aspect of this which we could call reception studies. So, a mutual friend of our Glory Lu has written a you know, very well received book and it's about reception studies actually. It's not about necessarily Smith's thought per se, but how it is Smith was appropriated and thought of by other people. So, this relates to what you were talking about with Hamilton or you know, others, too. And then how it was in the 20th century that he he he he was received. But it's quite fascinating to me that you have two major thinkers in the history of Western, you know, philosophy that have had, you know, opportunities to have attention paid to them. So, just a few years ago, we celebrated Adam Smith's 300th birthday. And that caused this, you know, massive running around trying to reevaluate Adam Smith. And then the next year was Kant. But like it didn't actually generate all that, you know, like Kant kind of, you know, and then right on the heels of that, we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Wealth of Nations. And again, this outpouring of discussion or whatever. So, it's quite fascinating because I think if you would have asked me 15 years ago whether or not people would have thought that Smith or Kant would have generated more discussion, people would be like, "Oh, well, Kant." Right? This is, right? And so, what is it that you, you know, this this sort of new appreciation and attention that Adam Smith has brought, you know, in many ways we we benefited from it, you know, cuz we work in that field or whatever. But at the same time, what do you see as maybe some of the the benefits and what are some of the costs that have been associated with this? >> Yeah, this is a a fascinating question and uh the the the Kant anecdote just just makes me chuckle. I've also been lamenting poor Edward Gibbon. It's also the 250th year after the >> [laughter] >> Decline and Fall of the ROMAN EMPIRE AND NOBODY knows that. Uh the Declaration and Smith have completely eclipsed um eclipsed that work. And Gibbon and Smith are in the same drinking club in London. So, I mean, this kind of it's funny to think about those things. But I I mean, I think it goes back to the enduring questions, although um and maybe accessibility, but when I read Kant with students, they are really interested in uh the sort of moral improvement theory, let's call it, in Kant that we are better in subsequent generations than we were and they they really like that that idea. Yeah, so I think some of the benefits are that even with all this attention that you've outlined uh in the last uh several years because of the the birthday and the the 250th, it's not even been several, like five five to 10. >> Right. >> You know, even with all of that attention, each audience I find myself with uh still has the same very deep preconceptions about what it is that Smith is talking about as the quote-unquote father of capitalism. And so I think there's still work to be done there. And the work isn't everyone uh one of the one of the graduate students put it this last week that uh she thought she was going to be baptized a Smithian cuz it was so different than what she thought and so interesting and so nuanced. And I I thought, "Great." Um but that that is not the goal, to baptize everyone as Smithians, but to to think through these questions in a in a robust way. And I think a lot of the questions I mentioned earlier, concerns about inequality, people are trying to understand what capitalism is. And I think that economics sometimes feels so far afield from what they can understand or too complicated. And and Smith is a way that it can come home to them. And they're shocked at how much nuance there is, but also relatability. So I would say that's a that's a benefit. Um maybe some of the the drawbacks is that I think in a kind of weird way, some of the attention is reifying some of these attitudes and ideas. Like here here they are holding up their heroes and the like we could talk about who the they is, but the the Declaration and in Smith and ignoring all the problems. And this is why the the criticism is stronger. And I'll I'll give an example. So the uh Michigan teachers were telling me that now in the required standards for AP Gov uh classes, that they have to talk about The Wealth of Nations. And so they were excited to be able to talk about it cuz they're all panicking, like I have no idea what that book says. It's a thousand pages long. Like what? [laughter] And it hadn't said, you know, like what to teach, just that you should cover it. But the unit that it's in is American Attitudes and Public Opinion, which is kind of a strange thing, but I think also speaks to some of this that I think I mean I don't know exactly, but I think cuz I don't know who made the standards or or what they read to put in there, but I think what they want is a kind of discussion about here's here's the the preacher of laissez-faire no government intervention socialism like these cheap straw man arguments from from both and that just speaks to the problem. So I guess we've gotten Smith on some radars, but they don't understand what's what's going on there, but I'm super curious too what what you're thinking about here here Pete from your perspective. >> Well, I mean I I I just that that relates to Glory's book, right? Because in the in the the the bicentennial celebration of Adam Smith which is happened when I just before I started college. In fact, my volume of The Wealth of Nations is the 200th anniversary volume that Chicago put out on it is is you know viewed as the you know the Adam Smith wearing you know tie of the conservatives and you know whatnot in Washington D.C. who wanted lower taxes, less regulation and and all this stuff like that. So it misses the the Adam Smith that has this aspects that are associated with his humanity and and you know, I mean I think that one of the issues to me I'm a Hayekian scholar and I've always keep on thinking that you should be able to do for Hayek what you do for Smith. Because I think Hayek is much more subtle and nuanced thinker than people treat him as, but I don't think Hayek wrote with the same sense of humanity that Smith did. And I don't know if that's just a language thing from you know, 18th century to 20th century, you know, and the differences of those worlds and the nature of what you know, was intellectual discourse, you know, in those different times. But it it when you read Smith, I think that this sense of humanity just leaps off the pages. You know, I mean, to me, you know, compared to reading modern economics. So, when you read you know, and and so I I think that that's, you know, trying to communicate that to people and expose them to that and then try to show that the continuation of that can be also found, though in less articulate forms, right? In modern liberal economic liberal political economists. I think that's a big challenge, you know, because they they I think there's a lot of tacit presuppositions that people have about what they expect to read you know, when they they read Adam Smith. I'm always reminded, by the way, of Jim Otteson's story. Jim Otteson did his dissertation at University of Chicago in in political theory and his dissertation is his book Adam Smith's, you know, in the marketplace of life or whatever that he he published. And do you know that his very first question in his dissertation, at least he the story he used to tell, I don't know if it's accurate or apocryphal, but was that he got asked a question about the Exxon Valdez and how Adam Smith, you know, would like allow that because corporate profits or whatever. And it's like, no, you know, >> [laughter] >> you know, what are you talking about? And but that I think is like goes back to what you're saying before, that is some of the the issues that that and you see it, it's fascinating that you were able to do so many different audiences, you know, high school teachers, undergraduate students, graduate students, judges. Because you get to see across all of that the different what sticks in the different group, right? And so, how what a great experience that's been. >> It has been really fun at thinking about the practical implications of all this as we as we do these celebrations. And I think there really is something to what you said about different expectations in academia and discourse between the 18th century and the 20th century, right? So, even that Smith is thinking about political economy and not just economy, right? Um these questions affect so much of people's everyday lives. Uh people ostensibly vote in elections based on the economy. That's the old law in political science and we've got graphs to back that up. And then we treat the understanding of economic concepts like they're impossible for the average person to understand. I always like um Chris Coyne lately has been saying the casual empirics of everyday life as economic sort of evidence. And I think this is true, but getting people to think sort of self-consciously about all this uh knowledge that they have just by by living in. So, what are the ways that authors can can give us these understandings or allow us to to think about them? And as you said, I think Smith brings a lot of that that forward in a way that isn't impossible in these other avenues, but maybe isn't uh as accessible or isn't celebrated as much. So, maybe that's that's a good thing, but I think we have to be sort of self-conscious about being aware of where Smith wasn't perfect, where it doesn't perfectly map on to our 21st century situation, um gaps there because otherwise uh we we risk having sort of negative side effects, I think, from all of this attention. >> Well, thank you very much, Bree. That's wonderful, and we're really looking forward to reading your book. Uh and so, uh yeah, thank you for everything. >> Thank you so much for having me, Pete. This was great fun. >> [music] >> Thank you for listening to the Hayek [music] Program Podcast. To learn more about the research, scholars, and work of the Hayek Program, visit hayek.mercatus.org. 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