A penetrating analysis by Adam Smith on our love of praiseworthiness as
distinct from our love of praise. This is a crucial passage from
the
Theory of Moral Sentiments
("On the Sense of Duty", II):
Chap.
II
Of the love of Praise, and of
that of Praise-worthiness; and of the dread of Blame, and of that of
Blame-worthiness
Man naturally desires,
not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be
that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. He naturally
dreads, not only to be hated, but to be hateful; or to be that thing
which is the natural and proper object of hatred. He desires, not only
praise, but praise-worthiness; or to be that thing which, though it
should be praised by nobody,
is, however, the natural and proper object of praise. He dreads, not
only blame, but blame-worthiness; or to be that thing which, though it
should be blamed by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object
of blame.
The love of
praise-worthiness is by no means derived altogether from the love of
praise. Those two principles, though they resemble one another, though
they are connected, and often blended with one another, are yet, in
many respects, distinct and independent of one another.
The love and admiration
which we naturally conceive for those whose character and conduct we
approve of, necessarily dispose us to desire to become ourselves the
objects of the like agreeable sentiments, and to be as amiable and as
admirable as those whom we love and admire the most. Emulation, the
anxious desire that we ourselves shoul excel, is originally founded in
our admiration of the excellence of others. Neither can we be satisfied
with being merely admired for what other people are admired. We must at
least believe ourselves to be admirable for what they are admirable.
But, in order to attain this satisfaction, we must become the impartial
spectators of our own character and conduct. We must endeavour to view
them with the eyes of
other people, or as other people are likely to view them. When seen in
this light, if they appear to us as we wish, we are happy and
contented. But it greatly confirms this happiness and contentment when
we find that other people, viewing them with those very eyes with which
we, in imagination only, were endeavouring to view them, see them
precisely in the same light in which we ourselves had seen them. Their
approbation necessarily confirms our own self-approbation. Their praise
necessarily strengthens our own sense of our own praiseworthiness. In
this case, so far is the love of praise-worthiness from being derived
altogether from that of praise; that the love of praise seems, at least
in a great measure, to be derived from that of praise-worthiness.
The most sincere praise
can give little pleasure when it cannot be considered as some sort of
proof of praise-worthiness. It is by no means sufficient that, from
ignorance or mistake, esteem and admiration should, in some way or
other, be bestowed upon us. If we are conscious that we do not deserve
to be so favourably thought of, and that if the truth were known, we
should be regarded with very different sentiments, our satisfaction is
far from being complete. The man who applauds us either for actions
which we did not perform, or for motives which had no sort of influence
upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another person. We can derive no
sort of satisfaction from his praises. To us they should be more
mortifying than any censure, and should perpetually call to our minds,
the most humbling of all reflections, the reflection of what we ought
to be, but what we are not. A woman who paints, could derive, one
should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to
her complexion. These,
we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of the sentiments
which her real complexion should excite, and mortify her the more by
the contrast. To be pleased with such groundless applause is a proof of
the most superficial levity and weakness. It is what is properly called
vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible
vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if
experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the
least spark of common sense would save us from. The foolish liar, who
endeavours to excite the admiration of the company by the relation of
adventures which never had any existence; the important coxcomb, who
gives himself airs of rank and distinction which he well knows he has
no just pretensions to; are both of them, no doubt, pleased with the
applause which they fancy they meet with. But their vanity arises from
so gross an illusion of the imagination, that it is difficult to
conceive how any rational creature should be imposed upon by it. When
they place themselves in the situation of those whom they fancy they
have deceived, they are struck with the highest admiration for their
own persons. They look upon themselves, not in that light in which,
they know, they ought to appear to their companions, but in that in
which they believe their companions actually look upon them. Their
superficial weakness and
trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from
seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own
consciences must [or should]
tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth
should ever come to be known.
As ignorant and
groundless praise can give no solid joy, no
satisfaction that will bear any serious examination, so, on the
contrary, it often gives ral comfort to reflect, that though no praise
should actually be bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has been
such as to deserve it, and has been in every respect suitable to those
measures and rules by which praise and approbation are naturally and
commonly bestowed. We are pleased, not only with praise, but with
having done
what is praise-worthy. We are pleased to think that we have rendered
ourselves the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation
should ever actually be bestowed upon us: and we are mortified to
reflect that we have justly [incurred or]
merited the blame of those we live with, though that sentiment should
never actually be exerted against us. The man who is conscious to
himself that he has exactly observed those measures of conduct which
experience informs him are generally agreeable, reflects with
satisfaction on the propriety of his own behaviour. When he views it in
the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he thoroughly
enters into all the motives which influenced it. He looks back upon
every part of it with pleasure and approbation, and though mankind
whould never be
acquainted with what he has done, he regards himself, not so much
according to the light in which they actually regard him, as according
to that in which they would regard him if they were better informed. He
anticipates the applause and admiration which in this case would be
bestowed upon him, and he applauds and admires himself by sympathy with
sentiments, which do not indeed actually take place, which he knows are
the natural and ordinary effects of such conduct, which his imagination
strongly connects with it, and which he has acquired a habit of
conceiving as something that naturally and in propriety ought to follow
from it. Men have [often] voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after
death a renown whih they could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in
the mean-time, anticipated that fame which was in future times to be
bestowed upon them. Those applauses which they were never to hear rung
in their ears; the thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they were
never to feel, played about their hearts, banished from their breasts
the strongest of all natural fears, and transported them to perform
actions which seem almost beyond the reach of human nature. But in
point of reality there is surely no great difference between that
approbation which is not to be bestowed till we can no longer enjoy it,
and that which, indeed is never to be bestowed, but which would be
bestowed, if the world was ever made to understand properly the real
circumstances of our behaviour. If the one often produces such violent
effects, we cannot wonder taht the other should always be highly
regarded.
Nature, when she formed
man for society, endowed him with an original
desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She
taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their
unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and
most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most
mortifying and most offensive.
But this desire of the
approbation, and this aversion to the
disapprobation of his brethren, would not alone have rendered him fit
for that society for which he was made. Nature, accordingly, has
endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a
desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he
himself approves of in other men. The first desire could only have made
him wish to appear to be fit for society. The second was necessary in
order to rrender him anxious to be really fit. The first could only
have prompted him to the affectation of virtue, and to the concealment
of vice. The second was necessary in order to inspire him with the real
love of virtue, and with the real abhorrence of vice. In every
well-formed mind this second desire seems to be the strongest of the
two. It is only the weakest and most superficial of mankind who can be
much delighted with that praise which they themselves know to be
altogether unmerited. A weak man may sometimes be pleased with it, but
a wise man rejects it upon all occasions. But, though a wise man feels
little pleasure from praise where he knows there is no
praise-worthiness, he often feels the highest in doing what he knows to
be praise-worthy, though he knows equally well that no praise is ever
to be bestowed upon it. To obtain the approbation of mankind, where no
approbation is due, can never be an object of any importance to him. To
obtain that approbation where it is really due, may sometimes be an
object of no great importance to him. But to be that thing which
deserves approbation, must always be an object of the highest.
To desire, or even to
accept of praise, where no praise is due, can be
the effect only of the most contemptible vanity. To desire it where it
is really due, is to desire no more than that a most essential act of
justice should be done to us. The love of just fame, of true glory,
even for its own sake, and independent of any advantage which he can
derive from it, is not unworthy even of a wise man. He sometimes,
however, neglects, and even despises it; and he is never more apt to
do o than when he has the most perfect assurance of the perfect
propriety of every part ofhis own conduct. His self-approbation, in
this case, stands in need of no confirmation from the approbation of
other men. It is alone sufficient, and he is contented with it. This
self-approbation, if not the only, is at least the principal object,
about which he can or ought to be anxious. The love of it, is the love
of virtue.
End of quote. (
TMS, Oxford UP,
1976, 114-16).
Note Smith's careful analysis of the role of point of view and of
mind-reading in the generation of moral sentiments, in this case those
of praise and praiseworthiness. Not only actual or points of view, or
other persons' points of view constructed through our theory of mind,
but also virtual, hypothetical, possible (or quite impossible) and
non-existent points of view, which have nonetheless an operational
psychological role. Social evaluations are constructed in such a way
that we shuffle all possible combinations of knowledge about ourselves
and about others in order to provide an assessment of our own position
and conduct, and of that of our neighbours and peers, should they know
about us, for instance, what we know about ourselves. The way they
would evaluate us knowing what we know, or the way they would evaluate
us were they morally reliable (i.e. their evaluation of our actions as
compared to that of
an
all-seeing God, or a scrupulous conscience).
Nobody's
point of view, resulting for instance from
a blend of our personal information
and
of the other person's values, is a relevant player in the game of
perspectives, just like the actual points of view of our misinformed or
benighted friends and fellow beings. Social evaluation is a complex
game of masks and perspectives, a play in which naked and unmasked
virtual actors play their scenes alongside the real ones. The
presentation of the self in social life involves this complex
imaginative mutual role-taking, and trying-on of perspectives, in a
fairground of multiplying and infinitely receding mirrors.
All of which brings to mind this discussion on the motivation of human
conduct according to Girard, Bourdieu, and Marcel Mauss:
René Girard / Pierre Bourdieu: des
affinités méconnues.
I summarize: according to the second speaker, we are not driven merely
by a desire of emulation, as Girard's mimetic theory would lead us to
think, or by a desire of being distinguished (Bourdieu's 'la
distinction' owes much in this respect to Veblen's discussion of status
symbols in
The Theory of the Leisure Class).
We are driven by a desire for the recognition of our contribution to
society (whether the contributions are real or sincerely imagined by
us, that's another matter). We want to
be valued as
value-givers, as
creators of positive content, as those who bring a Gift to our peers.
That is, we desire to have our
praiseworthiness
recognized —which is quite congruent with Smith's view.
It is to be presupposed that the Gift which makes us aspire to
praiseworthiness is inherently valuable both in the eyes of the giver,
and in those of the recipients. Still, some well-meaning and
well-received gifts may nonetheless be, in some cases, poisonous gifts.
Ask the Germans if you don't trust me.
—oOo—
