Ella: Smith and Blackburn: What Virtues Build Societies?

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 A question that cuts across the writings of both Blackburn and Smith is: what virtues build a society? For this blog post, I will consider what Blackburn calls "cooperation" and what Smith calls "beneficence" to be similar. Beneficence is doing good to another, whereas cooperation is an instance where good is done to the other, mutually. Therefore, cooperation is a type of beneficence.

In examining Smith's account of justice and beneficence, we find that Smith does not think beneficence is essential to building society, stating, "It is an ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building" (Smith, 86), with the 'building' being society. He continues to say that "Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice." From these excerpts, we can conceive that Smith believes systems of justice create a society. While beneficence helps support a just society, it is not essential. Furthermore, he seems to imply that a sense of justice is innate in mankind, stating that "Nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment, which attend upon its violation, as the great safe-guards of the association of mankind." Smith's belief in the innateness of justice in mankind seems to imply that societies are built simply from the systemization of human nature.

Blackburn, however, would disagree. In Blackburn's account, he discusses at length the building of trust that brings men out of the state of nature, discussing trust as being built by "reciprocal altruism" (Blackburn, 175). He describes that once there are instances of people cooperating and acting to benefit one another, they begin to trust that the cooperation will continue. According to Blackburn, mankind has learned the benefits of cooperation and built trust, which creates a society. When we continuously cooperate, "we grow into communities in which the mechanism of counting on people and signaling that we can be counted upon is embedded" (Blackburn, 194). To support this point, he brings in an example of a population at war, saying that, "If war is debilitating the population sufficiently, and [a small group of cooperative individuals] can find time to establish a sufficient bridgehead, their superior reproductive success can begin to tell. A small enclave of peaceable people can expand at the expense of a wider population of war-torn belligerents" (Blackburn, 193). Once again, cooperation can be perceived as instances of mutual beneficence. Thus, Blackburn seems to believe that beneficence, rather than justice is "the main pillar" that creates societies. 

In my opinion, Blackburn's account of cooperation building societies is much more plausible and well-supported. Blackburn's argument is empirical compared to Smith's, and explains how we have grown to create societies rather than claiming innateness. In Smith's account, justice being innate and the central pillar of society implies that societies are innate in mankind. Blackburn does not confirm nor deny whether or not cooperation is innate, which makes his argument stronger because I do not think that questions of the innateness of justice nor cooperation can ever be conclusively answered. 

Comments

  1. HurleyFebruary 16, 2023 at 10:26 AM

    Great idea to compare the two. I wonder, however, if it can be quite right to identify cooperation with beneficence instead of justice. If cooperation is mutual benefit, then isn't one of the themes of these chapters that justice is a necessary condition for mutually beneficial interaction.? Otherwise leaving one's home is like entering a "den of lions." Also, although you are clearly right that for Smith the impetus towards justice is natural, isn't it a recurrent theme in his account that these natural tendencies, e.g. towards self-love and sympathy, can and must be shaped through socialization to allow for effective functioning in a particular society -- channeled through the standpoint of the impartial spectator? If so, the contrast with Blackburn might not be as great as you seem to suggests (need there be any contrast at all?)

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