Smith's egalitarian view of human cognition

●Sam Fleischacker, “Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith”（Library of Economics and Liberty, October 4, 2004）

Far more important to Smith's work is the belief that ordinary people normally understand their own interests without help from politicians or professional philosophers. The distinctive mark of Smith's thought is his view of human cognition, not of human motivation: he is far more willing than practically any of his contemporaries to endorse the ability of ordinary people to know what they need to know in life. And it is this view that explains both much of Smith's philosophy, and the degree to which his politics anticipated modern libertarianism.

・・・And in both TMS and WN he condemns those entranced by "the love of system," those who want to impose their own vision of how the human world should work on the people who actually live in that world. Smith's account of moral and political cognition is strikingly egalitarian: experts know less than they claim to know, and ordinary people know more than they seem to know, about what will best promote the human good.

This egalitarian view of human cognition provides the essential premise for Smith's arguments against government interference with the economy.

アダム・スミスによる自己利益（self-interest）の強調は、人は自己利益に基づいて行動するという意味での行動の動機（human motivation）の説明を意図したものではなく、人は自分にとって何が利益になるのかを本人が一番よく知っているとの理解に基づいて、一般庶民の知能・能力（human cognition）に対する従前の（特にインテリによる）低評価の見直しを意図していた、とのこと。一般庶民は、知識人や政治家・官僚等による指導やアドバイス（善導？）などなくても自分が何をすべきかをよく理解している。アダム・スミスと同時代（18世紀）の知識人との際立った違いは、一般人とインテリとの能力面における平等主義的な想定であり、スミスによる政府の市場介入批判にはパターナリズム批判という意味合いが大きく込められているということになろう。

（追記）

スミスによる政府の市場介入批判には、パターナリズム批判という側面に加えて、政府が市場に介入することによって個々人が徳の基礎たる「自己規制」（self-command）の能力を磨く機会が妨げられることになるという点も含まれているであろう。市場という場は、過剰な自己愛の抑制と、他者の立場（他者の自己利益）を慮ることの必要性を教え込むことを通じて、自己規制の経験を積む機会を与える。そういった意味で、「市場＝人を倫理的にする学校」とも捉えられるであろう。

what really provides us with moral education are the humble institutions of everyday social interaction, including the market. The foundation of all virtue for Smith is "self-command," the ability to control our feelings, to restrain our passion for our own interests and to enhance our feelings for others. But we achieve self-command only after the disapproval of others has led us to develop a habit of dampening our self-love. The first great "school of self-command," says Smith, is the company of our playfellows, who refuse to indulge us the way our parents do; when we are adult, the major arena in which we need constantly to attend to the interests of others, and restrain our self-absorption, is the market. When I try to strike a bargain with someone else, and especially when I try to hold down a regular job, I need to try to meet other people's needs instead of just bleating about my own.