Sovereign Sentiments: Conceptions of Self-Control in David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jane Austen The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40046464 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA TITLE PAGE Sovereign Sentiments: Conceptions of Self-Control in David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jane Austen A dissertation presented by: Lauren Kopajtic To: The Philosophy Department In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Philosophy Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2017 COPYRIGHT PAGE © 2017 Lauren Kopajtic All rights reserved Dissertation Advisor: Professor Alison Simmons Author: Lauren Kopajtic Sovereign Sentiments: Conceptions of Self-Control in David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jane Austen Abstract The mention of “self-control” calls up certain stock images: Saint Augustine struggling to renounce carnal pleasures; dispassionate Mr. Spock of Star Trek ; the dieter faced with tempting desserts. In these stock images reason is almost always assigned the power and authority to govern passions, desires, and appetites. But what if the passions were given the power to rule—what if, instead of sovereign reason, there were sovereign sentiments? My dissertation examines three sentimentalist conceptions of self-control: David Hume’s conception of “strength of mind”; Adam Smith’s conception of “self-command”; and Jane Austen’s examination of these conceptions. Hume divests reason of motivational power, and with this new moral psychology comes a new conception of self-control. Humean strength of mind is indirect, artificial, and social—a regulatory system that humans cannot develop until societal systems of government and regulations have been instituted. Smith accepts Hume’s anti-rationalist arguments, but he emphasizes that only certain sentiments are fit to rule. And he argues that self-control develops without the sophisticated external conditions posited by Hume. Smithian self-command is the capacity to modify one’s feelings in accordance with a regulative ideal: the sentiments of an imagined impartial spectator. Austen responds to these conceptions, illustrating and complicating them. Sense and Sensibility explores the difficulties of discerning the feelings of others, and Persuasion dramatizes the difficulties of distinguishing strength of mind in another, offering sets of characters for the reader’s scrutiny, each with a competing claim to strength of mind. Taken together, Austen’s novels offer a fuller and more delicately shaded depiction of the sort of self-control that Hume and Smith imagine in their philosophical works. iii Table of Contents Title Page ............................................................................................................................................................................... i Copyright Page .................................................................................................................................................................... ii Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................................................................. vi Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One The Government of the Passions and Humean Strength of Mind ................................................... 8 Part One: Humean Strength of Mind ....................................................................................................................... 11 Part Two: Limitations on Cultivating Strength of Mind ........................................................................................ 15 Section 2.1: Temperament and Natural Abilities ................................................................................................ 16 Section 2.2: Regulatory Virtues – Justice and Fidelity to Promises ................................................................. 18 Section 2.3: Regulatory Virtues – Allegiance to Government .......................................................................... 22 Section 2.4: Strength of Mind as a Quasi-Artificial Virtue ................................................................................ 27 Part Three: Self-Reform and Self-Control in a Humean Society .......................................................................... 35 Chapter Two The Moral Psychology of Smithian Self-Command ......................................................................... 40 Part One: Sentimentalized Self-Command .............................................................................................................. 45 Section 1.1: The Motivational Basis of and Standard for Self-Command ...................................................... 46 Section 1.2: Passions and Sentiments ................................................................................................................... 55 Section 1.3: Merit and Praiseworthiness .............................................................................................................. 61 Section 1.4: The Impartial Spectator and the Operation of Self-Command .................................................. 67 Section 1.5: The “Influence” of the Sentiments of the Impartial Spectator .................................................. 76 Part Two: Other Forms of Command of the Passions .......................................................................................... 82 Part Three: The Cultivation of Self-Command and Smith’s Critique of Stoicism ............................................ 92 Section 3.1: Smith and the Stoics on Impartiality and Sensibility .................................................................... 93 Section 3.2: Recent Interpretations of Smithian Self-Command ..................................................................... 98 Chapter Three Authority and Normativity in Smith’s Moral Philosophy ............................................................ 103 Part One: The Authority of the Impartial Spectator ............................................................................................ 107 Section 1.1: The Details Question ...................................................................................................................... 108 1.1.1: The Function of the Supposed Impartial Spectator ........................................................................ 110 1.1.2: The Epistemic Superiority of the Standpoint of the Impartial Spectator .................................... 118 Section 1.2: A Hidden Theological Grounding of the Impartial Spectator? ................................................ 122 Section 1.3: The Why Be Moral Question ......................................................................................................... 132 Part Two: The Vindication Question ...................................................................................................................... 143 iv Section 2.1: The Problem of Relativism ............................................................................................................. 144 2.1.1: The Impartial Spectator as a Critical Tool ........................................................................................ 146 2.1.2: Universality and Objectivity ................................................................................................................ 154 Section 2.2: The Problem of Sentimental Irregularities ................................................................................... 160 Chapter Four Self-Command and Strength of Mind in Austen ........................................................................... 168 Part One: Interpretive Issues .................................................................................................................................... 172 Part Two: Extending Conceptions – Self-Control on the Battlefield and in the Parlor ................................. 182 Part Three: Sense and Sensibility .................................................................................................................................. 187 Section 3.1: Marianne and the Great School of Self-Command .................................................................... 189 Section 3.2: Elinor and the Complexities of Civility ........................................................................................ 200 Section 3.3: Moral Education in Sense and Sensibility ......................................................................................... 211 Part Four: Persuasion ..................................................................................................................................................