The role of teleology in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
The role of teleology in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
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目的论在亚当·斯密《国富论》中的作用
DOI：
10.1080/10370196.2000.11733331
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发表时间：
2000
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Richard A. Kleer
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文献类型：
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作者：
Richard A. Kleer
如今，人们普遍认为，亚当•斯密（Adam Smith）的“看不见的手”（invisible hand）不过是对他的观点的一种生动的隐喻，这种观点有充分的观察和理论基础，即竞争性市场往往会自发地以最优方式分配社会的经济资源。今天，大多数经济历史学家可能都会同意这一点。但情况并非一直如此。人们一度普遍认为，这个概念表明了史密斯对仁慈之神存在的信仰。学者们进一步认为，他的整个“自然自由体系”都建立在这个目的论基础之上，没有它就无法维持下去。早期的解释有一些可取之处。在本文中，我认为神性创造者的观念在他的《国富论的性质和原因》中发挥了重要作用。在19世纪下半叶，批评家坚持认为经济自由主义最终源自过时的启蒙运动自然秩序学说。为了证明自己的观点，他们举出了自由主义政治经济学赖以发展的主要著作《国富论》。克利夫·莱斯利认为，史密斯整个思想方法的“原始基础”是“自然理论……教导人类制度扰乱了简单的自然法则，……以及一种有益的、和谐的自然秩序，这种秩序出现在任何留给自然的地方。”史密斯“混合”了自然秩序的古典理想“与神学概念‘伟大的，仁慈的，全智的存在，他指导自然的所有运动，并决心……在任何时候都保持尽可能多的幸福’”([1870]1879，第151页，153页；引自TMS VI. ii。3.2)。“在《国富论》和他的《道德情操论》中，他对个人利益的不受干扰的发挥所产生的有益经济的信心的真正基础，是天意的指引”（[1875]1879，第173页）。斯密将这种偏见灌输给后来所有古典政治经济学的分析。“如果不是亚当·斯密的权威将公共利益和私人利益的同一性假设转化为一种原则，那么经济研究早就可以穿透货币利益的表面，深入到决定财富的性质和用途的实际目的的大不相同的特征上了”（[1870]1879，第155页）。德国历史学派成员威廉·哈斯巴赫（Wilhelm Hasbach）也对斯密的著作提出了同样的观点（以及隐含的自由放任主义纲领）。总的来说，斯密的工作的“出发点”和他的自然自由体系的基础是
It is now the common view that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was nothing more than a colourful metaphor for his perception, well grounded in observation and theory, that competitive markets tend spontaneously to allocate a society’s economic resources in an optimal manner. Today most historians of economics would probably agree. But it hasn’t always been so. It was once widely accepted that the concept signalled Smith’s belief in the existence of a benevolent deity. Scholars further supposed that his entire “system of natural liberty” rested on this teleological foundation and could not be sustained without it. The early interpretations had some merit. In this paper I argue that the idea of a divine creator played a significant role in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the latter half of the nineteenth-century, critics maintained that economic liberalism ultimately derived from the outmoded Enlightenment doctrine of a natural order. To prove their case, they pointed to the main treatise from which liberal political economy developed, the Wealth of Nations. According to Cliffe Leslie, the “original foundation” of Smith’s whole intellectual approach was “that theory of Nature which... taught that there is a simple Code of Nature which human institutions have disturbed,... and a beneficial and harmonious natural order of things which appears wherever Nature is left to itself.” Smith “blended” the classical ideal of a natural order “with the theological conception of ‘that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being, who directs all the movements of nature, and who is determined… to maintain in it at all times the greatest possible quantity of happiness’”([1870] 1879, pp. 151, 153; citation is from TMS VI. ii. 3.2). The “real ground of his confidence in the beneficial economy resulting from the undisturbed play of individual interest, is expressly stated in the Wealth of Nations, as well as in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, to be the guidance of Providence”([1875] 1879, p. 173). Smith imparted this bias to all subsequent analysis in classical political economy.“[E] conomic investigation would long since have penetrated beneath the surface of pecuniary interest to the widely different character of the real aims determining the nature and uses of wealth, but for that assumption of an identity between public and private interest which Adam Smith’s authority converted into an axiom”([1870] 1879, p. 155).The same view of Smith’s work (and implicitly of the laissez-faire programme) was put forward by Wilhelm Hasbach, a member of the German Historical School. The “point of departure” for Smith’s work in general and the foundation of his system of natural liberty, was