Inequality and political stability from Ancien Régime to revolution

The reception of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments in France

Bibliographic Data

ID11348185
AuthorsRuth Scurr (a University of Cambridge , Cambridge , United Kingdom, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume35
Issue4
Pages441-449
Publication date2009-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of European Ideas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2009.07.002
OpenAlexW2043289853
LanguageEN
Citations received5

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents' use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I'm also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. Keywords: Adam SmithRousseauHelvétiusSieyèsRœdererCondorcetSophie de GrouchyMoral sentimentsSociability, SympathyPassionsTerrorDivision of labourRepublicFrench RevolutionSocial science Notes ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I'm also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. 1 Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 268. 2 Pierre-Louis Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 8 vols. 1835-9), vol. 8, 129-305. Rœderer's Cours d'organisation sociale was delivered in Paris at the Lycée between January and June, 1793. 3 On Helvétius's critical responses to Rousseau, see Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 266-81. On Smith's critical responses to Rousseau, see Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1-156. 4 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 100. 5 For a fuller discussion of the French reception of the Wealth of Nations, see Kenneth Carpenter, The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and France, 1776-1843, (New York: The Bibliographical Society of America, 2002). I am grateful to Michael Sonenscher for the information that parts of the Morellet translation survive in the archives at Lyon. See also Pierre Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Force, "First Principles in Translation: the Axiom of Self-Interest from Adam Smith to Jean-Baptiste Say", History of Political Economy, vol. 2, (2006), 319-38. For comparative purposes, see Keith Tribe and Hiroshi Mizuta, Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith, (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2002) on the reception of Smith's ideas in Germany. 6 Richard Whatmore "Adam Smith's Role in the French Revolution", Past and Present (Oxford, 2002, no. 175, 65-89), 82. 7 Lord Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, ed. J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence, (London: Macmillan, 1907), 492, quoted in Murray Forsyth, Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbé Sieyes, (New York: Leicester University Press, 1987), 222. More recently, see Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 245. 8 For the published transcriptions of the Sieyès archives, see Emmanuel Sieyès, Des Manuscrits de Sieyès. 1773-1799, volume 1, eds. C. Fauré, J. Guilhaumou, J. Vallier and F. Weil, (Paris: Champion, 1999) and Des Manuscrits de Sieyès. 1770-1815, eds. C. Fauré, J. Guilhaumou, J. Vallier and F. Weil, volume 2, (Paris: Champion, 2007). 9 Kenneth Margerison, "P.-L.Rœderer, The Industrial Capitalist as Revolutionary", in Eighteenth-Century Studies, (1983: 11), 473-88, Chapter 5. 10 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 496. 11 Baron d'Holbach, La Morale Universelle, ou Les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la Nature, (3 vols. Paris: Chez Baillio et Colas: Chez Denis, 1796); Saint-Lambert, Principes des mœurs chez toutes les nations ou Catéchisme universel, (3 vols. Paris, 1798). 12 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 496. 13 Cited in Sophie de Grouchy (Marquisse de) Condorcet, Lettres sur la sympathie, suivies des letters d'amour, ed. J.-P. de Lagrave, (Montréal: L'Etincelle Editeur, 1994), 25. 14 Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. Campbell Mossner and I. Simpson Ross, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 33-6, "Supposing, therefore, that you have duly prepared yourself for the worst by all these reflections; I proceed to tell you the melancholy news, that your book has been very unfortunate: for the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely. It was looked for by the foolish people with some impatience; and the mob of literati are beginning already to be very loud in its praises. Three bishops called yesterday at Millar's shop in order to buy copies, and to ask questions about the author. The Bishop of Peterborough said he had passed the evening in a company where he heard it extolled above all the books in the world." 15 Keith Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2001), Chapters 7 and 8. 16 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 194. Compare Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 501. 17 On the political theory of these lectures see Ruth Scurr, "Pierre-Louis Roederer and the Debate on Forms of Government in Revolutionary France", Political Studies 2004, vol. 52, 251-68. 18 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 194. 19 Claude Adrien Helvétius, De l'esprit, (Paris: Chez Durand, 1758). On De l'esprit, see Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 267. The text was translated into English as Essays on the Mind. 20 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 181-2. Rœderer's ambition can be compared to Sieyès's interest in developing a specific language of social and political science, or the 'langue proper du legislateur', see Jacques Guilhaumou, Sieyès et l'ordre de la langue: L'invention de la politique moderne, (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2002). 21 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 186. Compare Helvétius in De l'homme (Treatise on Man): "Interest and want are the principles of all sociability." See Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 270. 22 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 187. 23 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 50-1. 24 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8. 25 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 52-3. 26 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8. 27 Emmanuel Sieyès, Œuvres de Sieyès, (3 vols. Paris: Edhis, 1989), vol. 2, s12, 13-4. 28 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 8, 265. 29 Sieyès, Des Manuscrits de Sieyès, 470; Forsyth, Reason and Revolution, 127. 30 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 468. 31 Grouchy, Condorcet, Lettres sur la sympathie, suivies des letters d'amour, 106. 32 Grouchy, Condorcet, Lettres sur la sympathie, suivies des letters d'amour, 82-3. 33 Grouchy, Condorcet, Lettres sur la sympathie, suivies des letters d'amour, 84. For a recent discussion of sympathy and dependence in Smith see Fonna Forman-Barzilai, "Sympathy in Space(s): Adam Smith on Proximity", Political Theory, April 2005, vol. 33, no. 2. 34 Grouchy, Condorcet, Lettres sur la sympathie, suivies des letters d'amour, 86. 35 See Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: the Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume & Adam Smith, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chapter 3, for a discussion of Smith's understanding of sympathy and moral approval. See also D.D. Raphael, The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy, (Oxford University Press, 2007), on Smith and the Impartial Spectator. 36 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 501. 37 Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, ed. O. H. Prior, (Paris: Boivin, 1933), 191-2. 38 Rœderer, Œuvres du comte P.-L. Rœderer, vol. 4, 466

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