Adam Smith and the Natural Law: The Impartial Spectator, Synderesis, and Moral Judgment Properly Understood

Adam Smith’s impartial spectator has been the subject of much scholarly attention over the years. Moreover, there has emerged a broad consensus concerning its empirical basis, essential role in clearing our perspective of intense personal attachments and emotions liable to undermine our capacity for reasoned judgment, and its susceptibility in its development and practice to both reason and experience.[1] 

The Impartial spectator is most important in Smith’s theory as a means by which we can step out of our own shoes (or rather, our own intense pain, attachment, or simple selfishness) and so more fairly perceive actions we seek to judge morally good or bad.[2] The understanding that one will arrive at a properly balanced, rational judgment about an action more easily if one sets aside emotions rooted in intimate relationships or self-interest regarding the circumstances of that action seems admirably commonsensical rather than revolutionary.

Given this general clarity, I will not, here, attempt to set forth any radically new theory regarding the impartial spectator. Why, then, place it at the center of my argument? Because, by understanding the limited role of this reasonable perspective, we can more fully understand the true character of Smith’s moral theory, especially in relation to what one might see as a competing theory—namely, natural law. 

Again, I make no claim to any great originality in pointing out that Smith’s work is not, in fact, properly seen as a competitor to natural law but rather as a form thereof; Smith’s well-known Stoic proclivities go a long way toward establishing this much.[3] However, a brief examination of the impartial spectator’s role in Smith’s theory can help show how well it fits within the natural law tradition properly understood.

Key to my argument is the central natural law concept of synderesis. Synderesis is the name for the experience of a kind of automatic recognition of, and attraction to, moral truths that are necessary to judge any specific action’s moral character, be it good or bad. It is often seen as the true grounds of conscience within the natural law tradition. 

Moral judgment in Smith rests on moral instincts and insights on which judgment relies. When the moral instincts—in his terms, “sentiments”—are properly disciplined, they will result in proper judgments. Smith’s views on nature and our immediate, natural sentiments regarding actions’ moral status are much like the affective understanding of synderesis (especially that more closely aligned with Saint Bonaventure than Saint Thomas Aquinas) in its origins, content, and functioning. Most importantly, affective synderesis works as a kind of instinctive knowledge that nevertheless can and should be developed through moral education and practice.

Smith identifies conscience with the impartial spectator (or the “man within the breast”), indicating that all these terms relate to judgment concerning the morality of actions, especially one’s own. (TMS p. 134.)[4] In this way, Smith rejects more rigidly prescriptive theories of duty and utility as primary guides to moral conduct in favor of natural affection disciplined by reason. (TMS p. 171)[5] 

The impartial spectator is neither an abstraction nor a being with its own will; it is a device we use to bring ourselves to proper conduct. We do this not by abandoning, but by disciplining our sentiments. Whether we judge an act morally right depends on whether, on reflection, we can “entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it.” (TMS pp. 109–110) Smith’s is, after all, a system of moral sentiments. His system is rooted in affection, though it is guided by a prudence and natural reason that focus on understanding the natural order of existence. 

In discussing systems (like his own) that make sentiment the natural mechanism of approbation, Smith outlines the bases on which persons approve actions. We first 

Finally, we judge such actions to make “part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the happiness either of the individual or of the society,” rendered beautiful by their beneficial design and performance. (TMS p. 326) Sympathy, gratitude, judgment according to a reasonable view of such sentiments, and reasonable determination of overall tendency toward the good. Here, sentiment is dominant, though guided by a reason naturally aimed at the good of human happiness.

Such affective analysis is a regular part of judgment among thinking, feeling persons who seek to pursue good and avoid evil. But why accept such discipline? Why not simply “give in” to our selfish passions? Because we, by nature, seek approval from the man within our own breast and by the “still nobler and more generous principle” of trust in and reverence for a divine providence that seeks the good of all even in our own tribulations. (TMS p. 292)[6] It is not pure selflessness or abstract rationality, but a wider perspective on what is good, not just for oneself in given circumstances, but for everyone by nature, combined with the pleasure resulting from the knowledge that one acts rightly, motivates a virtuous person to follow disciplined, affective judgment.

Here we can see the continuing importance of the concept traditionally labelled synderesis. Aquinas saw this “spark of conscience” as a rational disposition by which persons “apprehend without inquiry the basic principles of behavior.”[7] In Aquinas, synderesis is an intellectual disposition that carries throughout the practice of conscience, ordering our understanding of good and evil. It may be said to lead to the detailed enumeration of rules and judgments on which rest the volumes of casuistry Smith so sharply derides in Section IV of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

Whatever one thinks of Smith’s criticism, it does not apply to a major if not dominant strain of natural law thinking. In this iteration of the natural law tradition, synderesis is seen as an affective disposition; it is the drive toward good and away from evil on which conscience acts. The unerring, immediate knowledge of good and evil that synderesis produces in the person who observes a given set of actions is a response of sympathy or antipathy according to that person’s immediate perception of those acts. The person then should (though, if corrupted by vice or miseducation, he may not) engage in the reasonable exercise of conscience (or the impartial spectator) to read the facts aright and so properly judge the actions good or evil.[8] 

Conscience deals with practical principles necessary to act properly on the motivation toward the good that is provided by synderesis. The combination of synderesis and conscience is not unerring; our reasoning faculties are limited, including by passions and/or simple mistakes. But we can train our conscience, shaping it through reason and experience, such that we comprehend additional general principles throughout our lives.[9]

What, then, is the standard against which a person is to judge actions? Christian natural law focuses on the ultimate good—God—whereas modern thought tends to either reject such considerations completely or set them to one side. For Smith, we naturally recognize our proper ends, rooted in the nature of existence. We then use reason in attempting to achieve them, not just by application of rules, but by disciplining our sentiments.

There is a debate in Smith studies over whether the impartial spectator and the man within the breast, referred to at various places, especially in the final edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, are one and the same, or whether such names denote instances “of a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God supposed to be unsurpassable in intelligence and benevolence.”[10] The textual evidence is somewhat thin, intrinsically complex, and even conflicted, sometimes seeming to represent the man within the breast as a personification of an impartial spectator that is itself the whole of conscience, not merely the mechanism for applying reason to the spark of conscience.[11] More important—at no point does Smith refer to either the impartial spectator or the man within the breast as the author of the principles of right conduct, let alone the order of existence. 

Thus, it seems best, for present purposes, to see these references as representing Smith’s attempts to personify instincts, truths, and sentiments at various levels of abstraction and give them a kind of motive force. In practical terms, the salient point is that Smith argues that one should seek to become a “prudent man” who will be “always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast.” (TMS p. 215)

But how does one become a prudent man? Through the means of moral development and the reasoning found within the traditional natural law. Like most Enlightenment thinkers, Smith pushes God into the background of rational thought and action. And it is fair to say that natural law thinking—e.g., that engaged in by Stoics like Cicero, who held that reason produces law—does not require a personal God who directs specific conduct. Some things are true simply because they are a part of the fabric of existence, whatever one may discern regarding the source of that fabric. 

Thus, human law is not in itself the creator of good and bad. Crucially, some acts by nature are good or bad. To give charity is good, though proper judgment is required to guide us toward real charity rather than, say, enabling addiction. Murder, on the other hand, is always and everywhere morally wrong, regardless of whether the law declares it illegal (though it may be defined to encompass or set aside certain acts, such as dueling, according to local circumstances). As Montesquieu noted, “To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying, that before the describing of a circle, all the radii were not equal.”[12]

Thus also, true, proper standards of conduct are to be found (though not created) through reasonable examination of the order of existence. This requires that one be trained, not only in reason, but in the virtues necessary to exercise that reason. It also requires that one not simply give in to one’s desires and prejudices, including the mere desire to secure approbation through conformity.

In Smith, one sees this training in “the great school of self-command.” (TMS p. 145) Having passed through the indulgences of parents during one’s youth, each person comes across groups that show no such indulgence but from which he desires and even needs approval. (TMS p. 145) And so we begin the process of learning how to see ourselves and our actions within our world in the way others see us. The one wise and strong enough to seek “real constancy and firmness,” that is, “the wise and virtuous man,” will seek to live up to “the idea of exact propriety and firmness,” properly understood, “so far as we are each of us capable of comprehending that idea.” (TMS p. 247)

Is this wise man guided by an impartial spectator, a man within the breast, or both? In some places, Smith appears to give the man within the breast (perhaps guided by the impartial spectator) more power, rooted more purely in reason, than is congruent with the limited role of taming our emotions. 

“It is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart,” that can counteract our strongest, presumptuous passion. Rather, “It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” who “calls to us,” with a powerful voice “that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it, and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.”(TMS p. 137) Yet, even here, the man within the breast is not creating or even decreeing what is right. He merely reminds us, in a manner more fully reasoned than that provided by synderesis (which is merely the “spark” of conscience), of the natural order and the duties it imposes on us.

The best interpretation of Smith’s varied formulations of the man within the breast and his relationship to the impartial spectator seems, then, to be one that elides any demand for precision regarding personalities in favor of a general understanding of the mode of judgment such personifications intend to convey. Seen in this light, Smith’s man within the breast, while he at times seems to play the role of conscience overall rather than of the more limited perspectival device of the impartial spectator, acts primarily in the role of guide. 

The man within the breast is merely one voice inside us, albeit a powerful one. Nor is this man a creature of pure reasoning but “a stronger love, a more powerful affection…; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.” (TMS p. 137)

It seems clear that Smith grounds moral judgment in the proper formation of character such that the person may act according to a right understanding of a divinely ordered universe. 

There is, here, a classic teleological understanding, which Smith applies to virtues themselves, each having its own proper end, set forth for the great purpose of ordering the world. That order is rooted in God’s benevolence, which we should read and work out to practical application. At its base, this order stems from an original, ordering good: “the happiness of mankind…seems to have been the original purpose intended by the Author of nature” (TMS p. 166), and our moral faculties aim us toward that good. 

Our moral faculties “were plainly intended to be the governing principles of human nature” and so “are to be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, promulgated by those vice-regents which he has thus set up within us.” (TMS pp. 168, 166, 165) These faculties can be strengthened and honed through proper upbringing and education as they can be degraded through bad company and vice. But the key to understanding their function is to see the process of moral judgment: a spark of recognition, rooted in sympathy for the persons involved, of an act as good or bad, followed by dispassionate consideration regarding the accuracy of our perceptions of facts and circumstances before coming to judgment according to our understanding of what is required by God’s higher ends, revealed in the order of existence.

Douglas Langston’s summary of Bonaventure’s treatment of conscience and synderesis reads as much the same process: “Given that, for Bonaventure, the conscience deals with practical principles, it appears that the spark synderesis provides conscience is the general drive to do good that is expressed in humankind’s search for the good, in the drive to formulate true principles leading to the good, in the desire to follow those principles, and in the vexation at having failed to follow them.”[13]

Crucially, it is the good found in objects, not merely “good objects” that we seek. We require reason to determine how to reach the good that, by nature, exists in various objects.[14] Conscience provides guidance to our natural, affective drive toward the good we find in the world around us, such that we can act in accordance with the natural order of existence. 

How far down the road of finding rules we should go in following the spark of conscience is the object of much debate within natural law thought. It is determined in significant measure by whether one thinks of synderesis as rooted in affect or reason. But this is a disagreement within natural law, not between natural law and some other theory of moral judgment and action.

Smith’s wise man may not fit comfortably within the syllogism-filled world of medieval or contemporary Thomism. He does, however, fit within the broad tradition of natural law represented by figures like C.S. Lewis, whose appendix to The Abolition of Man contains illustrations of the Tao (his word for the natural law) to be found throughout human civilization. Perhaps more directly relevant, here, jurisprudence around the time of the American founding, and at least through the 19th Century in America, was rooted in precisely this understanding of natural law. [15] 

As R. H. Helmholz points out,[16] Western law was generally (before imposition of the Napoleonic Code) rooted in natural law. Natural law in this context can be stated briefly as the assumption that God implanted certain principles of conduct and justice in the hearts of men and that these principles furnished a correct foundation for all positive law. It includes a presumption that all positive laws should be read, where possible, to be consistent with natural law principles. 

Law, then, was assumed to be rational by nature, to recognize basic human dignity, and to uphold natural duties like supporting one’s family. On this view, the purpose of law is, through legal process (itself a natural right) to do right and secure to each person his due. This does not mean that judges should use unbridled discretion to “make” the law just, but rather, that they should use well-understood tools to put the assumption of legislative rationality into action. This was done in large part through the application of axioms. 

Axioms are legal rules of thumb (e.g., “no person should profit by his own misdeed”) that once provided everyday tools for legal decision making, shaping a common legal language and mind.[17] Legal maxims, axioms and assumptions, taught, for example, through the very wide use of Blackstone’s Commentaries in the early United States, influenced common law decision making under the guise of mere legal reason, as well as statutory interpretation in the form of an assumption of rationality and the assumption that the lawmaker could not have intended to violate natural justice. Thus, laws, contracts, and private actions were read in light of expectations that, for example, one would not seek to defraud, and that men are by nature free. The assumption that men are by nature free meant that slavery could be permitted only by express statutes, narrowly read and applied. 

The American constitutional order was founded and, until well into the 20th Century, operated according to a natural law understanding of law and public order. Judges and lawyers were expected, in the words of Stuart Banner, to apply learned study to one’s “natural bent or inclination which prompts us to approve of certain things as good and commendable, and to condemn others as bad or blameable, independent of reflection.”[18]

This process was not intended to result in judicial rejection of statutory laws. Rather, the law might be found not to apply to a given set of facts because to do so would bring manifest injustice, or to leave a gap that must be filled with natural law principles. Banner provides an example of this latter instance, with a case in which a debtor hid assets from his creditors in order to induce them to settle for less money than they were owed, and which he could have paid. No law at that time provided for the creditors to recover the additional funds upon discovery of the fraud. The court provided that very remedy, stating that “Where the positive laws are silent, all Courts must determine on maxims of natural justice, dictated by reason; that is, according to the law of nature.”[19]

Banner ably describes the decline of natural law thinking in America. He traces it especially to causes including a stifling outpouring of written law, lawyers’ increasing scrabbling after precedents, and descent into ends-oriented lawyering and judging. Progressives in particular treated natural law as mere Filio pietism, a “naïve state of mind that accepts what has been familiar and accepted by them and their neighbors as something that must be accepted by all men everywhere.”[20] 

Not surprisingly, this view helped lead to the formation of an entire, and soon ruling, infrastructure of legal education that ignored not just the natural law itself, but public law more generally. This legal infrastructure sought to make subjects with too “philosophical” a basis disappear from the curriculum and make room in practice itself for private law methodologies (i.e., adherence to precedent and, especially, newly-adopted codes) to rule in constitutional, administrative and eventually all aspects of law.[21]

Some claimed that natural law reasoning remained active, or at least that it was persistently being reintroduced into American law through “substantive due process” claims of individual rights lawyers essentially read into the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. But, as Banner points out, such reasoning does not fit with even the broadest confines of natural law reasoning. Instead, such ideological jurisprudence forms a kind of substitute for natural law rooted in a narrow and absolute set of assumptions regarding individual rights, not any overall vision of the common good.[22]

The loss of natural law, then, is not to be found in sentiment, impartiality, or even the requirements of modern law. Smith was part of a tradition that upheld the rights and duties we have by nature as important parts of an ordered universe in which all wise and virtuous persons seek the common good as we are capable of seeing it. Perhaps, then, rejection of such a vision should be seen not as liberation from superstition, but as a determination to leave to one side, not just one’s personal prejudices, but our nature as affective beings when determining the nature of actions as good or bad.

Read more:
Reclaiming the Higher Law by Bruce Frohnen
Adam Smith's Jurisprudence by Charles Korsmo

——

[1] Samuel Fleischaker, “Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator: Symposium Remarks,” 13 Econ Journal Watch 2, (May 2016) 274.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982) introduction, pp. 5–10. Page numbers throughout are from the Liberty Fund edition.

[4] Below, I treat with some relevant aspects of the debate over whether Smith’s man within the breast is equivalent to the impartial spectator or something quite different.

[5] The references are to Kant and Hume, respectively. 

[6] This may be seen as the basis for arguments that the man within the breast takes on the role of a kind of deity—the ultimate observer who is not only impartial but benevolent and naturally cognizant of and oriented toward the good; in brief a kind of natural law or, perhaps, a personification of natural law’s author. See, supra, fn 12 and accompanying text.

[7] Douglas C. Langston, Conscience and other Virtues (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 39.

[8] See, e.g., Id., 24–5.

[9] Id., 31–2.

[10] Daniel B. Klein, Erik W. Matson and Colin Doran, “The Man Within the Breast, the Supreme Impartial Spectator, and other Impartial Spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” 44 Hist of European Ideas 8 (July 2018) 1153.

[11] See, e.g., Dylan DelliSanti, “Moral Innovation in Adam Smith” in Daniel B. Klein and Erik W. Matson, Just Sentiments: 22 Smithian Essays (CL Press: Vancouver, 2024) 179–87 for a set of textual references attempting to establish a higher role for the impartial spectator. The argument, while both interesting and plausible, requires placing great emphasis on relatively few alterations in the final edition of TMS.

[12] Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1802) 1:18.

[13] Langston, 30.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Whether the man within the breast has the greater role of a kind of god or author of natural law is unclear, to me at least, from Smith’s texts. In natural law terms it seems most reasonable to see this being as a representation of the author of natural law, to whose will we seek to conform by properly disciplining both our conscience and our reason.

[16] R.H. Helmholz, Natural Law in Court (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

[17] Id., especially at 2–4.

[18] Stuart Banner, The Decline of Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021) 15. The quotation is taken from J.J. Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Politic Law (Boston: John Boryle, 1792), 89–90.

[19] Id., at 27, citing Hargrave v. Dusenberry, 9 N.C. 326, 326-27, 328 (1823).

[20] Quoted in Id., at 174.

[21] Id., at 303.

[22] Id., at 212–13.