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Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 95:8996 Springer 2010 DOI 10.1007/s10551-009-0349-9
Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Ethic,and Adam Smith Harold B. Jones
ABSTRACT. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) Adam Smith draws on the Stoic idea of a Providence that uses everything for the good of the whole. The process is often painful, so the Stoic ethic insisted on conscious cooperation. Stoic ideas contributed to the rise of science and enjoyed wide popularity in Smiths England. Smith was more inuenced by the Stoicism of his professors than by the Epicureanism of Hume. In TMS, Marcus Aureliuss helmsman becomes the impartial spectator, who judges actions in terms of the way they are seen by others. This is the key to justice, without which society collapses. Business school students should be taught that Smiths invisible hand is best understood as a universal rationality that uses just actions for the benet of the whole.
KEY WORDS: Stoic, logos, Christian Stoicism, impartial spectator, invisible hand
Look at the plants, sparrows, ants, spiders, bees, all busy with their own tasks, each doing his part towards a coherent world order. These lines come from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius ([180] 1964,p. 77). Their place in the history of thought is suggested by the fact that, 17 years before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations (hereafter: WN), he included a long summary of Marcus Aureliuss ideas in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS, [1759] 2001, pp. 339341), referring at one point to this very passage.von Mises ([1949] 1996, p. 147) described the birth of modern economic theory as the spiritual, moral, and intellectual emancipation of mankind inaugurated by the philosophy of Epicureanism. Marcus Aurelius, though, was not an Epicurean; he was a Stoic, in fact the best known of the Stoics (Hill, 2004). It may be that von Mises is mistaken. Perhaps the birth of economic thought was a vic-
tory, not for Epicureanism, but for Stoicism. It may be that Smiths invisible hand is understood better in terms of Stoic duty than of Epicurean pleasure, and as conscious cooperation rather than narrow self-interest. If so, it is time for a revision in the way this issue is addressed in business schools curricula.
Stoic metaphysics
The history of Stoicism can be traced...