The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Construct For a Perspective For Objective Morality

We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them; unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavor to view them as at a certain distance from us.~Adam Smith

I pull these quotes from Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments not necessarily in any order. We often feel that since morality is subjective (is it?) that it's not really possible to create “laws” (like physics laws rather than legal type) for morality. Smith is a very intelligent (and thorough) philosopher however and as he paints us the picture through of theory for moral sentiments we are able to see we can begin to approach this otherwise seemingly unsolvable problem of a universal morality. Here I want to highlight and express his concept of the “Impartial Spectator”.

This first paragraph especially states the problem, that we cannot impartially judge ourselves without somehow removing our own bias (perspective):

The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduce, seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerting the conduct of other people. We either approve or disprove of the conduct of another man according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives which directed it. And, in the same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, according as we feel that, we we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his situation, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it. We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them; unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavor to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavoring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. Whatever judgment we can form concerning them, accordingly, must always bear some secret reference, either to what are, or to what, upon a certain condition, would be, or to what, we imagine, ought to be the judgment of others. We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it. If, upon placing ourselves in his situation, we thoroughly enter in to all the passions and motives which influenced it, we approve of it, by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed equitable judge. If otherwise, we enter in his disapprobation, and condemn it.

This sets up the need for the “impartial spectator”, which is some ideal perspective or observer that might view our circumstances with complete neutrality.

Smith uses a nice metaphor to explain the importance and difficulty in the shift of perspective:

As to the eye of the body, objects appear great or small, not so much according to their real dimensions, as according to the nearness or distance of their situation; so do they likewise to what may be called the natural eye of the mind: and we remedy the defects of both these organs pretty much in the same manner. In my present situation an immense landscape of lawns, and woods, and distant mountains, seems to do no more than cover the little window which I write by, and to be out of all proportion less than the chamber in which I am sitting. I can form a just comparison between those great objects and the little objects around me, in no other way, than by transporting myself, at least in fancy, to a different station, from whence I can survey both at nearly equal distances, and thereby form some judgment of their real proportions. Habit and experience have taught me to do this so easily and so readily, that I am scarce sensible that I do it; and a man must be, in some measure, acquainted with the philosophy of vision, before he can be thoroughly convinced, how little those distant objects would appear to the eye, if the imagination, from a knowledge of their real magnitudes, did not swell and dilate them.

And so we begin to understand the perspective and significance of the impartial spectator as an ideal:

In the same manner, to the selfish and original passions of human nature, the loss or gain of a very small interest of our own, appears to be of vastly more importance, excites a much more passionate joy or sorrow, a much more ardent desire or aversion, than the greatest concern of another with whom we have no particular connection. His interests, as long as they are surveyed from this station, can never be put into the balance with our own, can never restrain us from doing whatever may tend to promote our own, how ruinous soever to him. Before we can make any proper comparison of those opposite interests, we must change our position. We must view them, neither from our own place nor yet from his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the place and with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connexion with either, and who judges with impartiality between us. Here, too, habit and experience have taught us to do this so easily and so readily, that we are scarce sensible that we do it, and it requires, in this case too, some degree of reflection, and even of philosophy, to convince, us, how little interest we should take in the greatest concerns of our neighbor, how little we should be affected by whatever relates to him, if the sense of propriety and justice didn't not correct the otherwise natural inequality of our sentiments.

The impartial spectator allows the individual to seek a “higher tribunal” free from one's own subjective prejudices:

But though man has, in this manner, been rendered the immediate judge of mankind, he has been rendered so only in the first instance; and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, so the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, to that of the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct. The jurisdiction of the man without, is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise, and in the aversion to actual blame. The jurisdiction of the man within, is founded altogether in the desire of praise-worthiness, and in the aversion to blame-worthiness

To be virtuous then, is to satisfy the ones own moral beliefs AND those of the impartial spectator moral beliefs:

The opposite behavior naturally inspires the opposite sentiment. The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge. In both these points of view his own conduce appears to him every way agreeable.