1Adam Smith makes a brief but important distinction regarding preferences at the outset of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (“TMS” hereafter). In Chapter 2, Part I (Smith, [1759] 1976, 13-16; “Chapter 2” hereafter), Smith distinguishes between two genera of preferences—what we can equivalently call utilities, satisfactions, wellbeing, or pleasures. The first is the ordinary everyday satisfaction that arises from the consumption of entertainment, food, housing, and so on—which this article calls “substantive utility”. Substantive utility is effectively identical to the standard economist’s concept of “utility”. Substantive utility can be amplified via mirroring and mimicking among people as in the case of laughing while watching a comedy in a group. Still, it qualitatively differs, according to Smith, from the second genus of satisfaction that is also generally the outcome of social interaction: the satisfaction that arises from sharing an experience with a dear friend or a loved one. Even when the experience is sad, the mere act of sharing originates a sweet feeling of belonging, love, and fondness—which this article calls “transcendental utility”.
2The substantive/transcendental utility distinction is called here the “utility incommensurability thesis”. It entails that the satisfaction arising from friendship-and-love, i.e., transcendental utility, cannot be reduced to the satisfaction arising from the ordinary consumption of food, entertainment, and clothing, i.e., substantive utility.
- 1 There is another concern with the standard rationality single-metric view of satisfaction. It is th (...)
3The utility incommensurability thesis challenges standard rational choice theory, and particularly, its tendency to conceive different satisfactions as basically or ultimately commensurable (see Becker, 1978; Gilboa, 2012). This article questions one kind of commensurability, the idea that satisfactions arising from bonding with friends and loved ones belong to the same metric as substantive satisfaction, i.e., the utility of consuming food, entertainment, and clothing (Khalil, 2024b). This article challenges this unidimensional, single-metric view of utility by highlighting the substantive/transcendental utility distinction.1
4This article grounds the proposed distinction upon Smith’s demarcation, in Chapter 2, between two genera of satisfaction. Smith uses the term “mutual sympathy”, although only in the title of the chapter, to denote the sharing of experiences among friends as giving rise to a satisfaction—i.e., the transcendental genus—that differs from substantive satisfactions. Mutual sympathy, i.e., what transpires between friends when they share a moment or an experience, produces a (transcendental) utility that is incommensurable with substantive utility. Transcendental utility, and here is the key point, is a by-product, as it depends on a substrate satisfaction. Such a substrate satisfaction is usually substantive—although it can also be transcendental. In any case, given that transcendental utility is a by-product of a substrate utility, it cannot be reduced to such substrate.
5Smith’s novel idea in Chapter 2 is the justification of why transcendental utility cannot be reduced to substrate (usually substantive) satisfaction. For him, transcendental utility arises from a source different from the source constituting the substrate (substantive) satisfaction. Smith effectively justifies the incommensurability of the two sources of satisfaction—by highlighting the uniqueness of mutual sympathy.
6Smith scholars have related mutual sympathy to friendship-and-love (e.g. McHugh, 2021, 83-90). However, they have generally failed to appreciate its significance, specifically, how it radically differs from “sympathy” understood as the fellow-feeling with substantive utility. Even when Smith and Wilson (2019), McCloskey (2021), and others (e.g. Gintis et al., 2005) hail Smith’s moral sentiments as the proper entry-point for new principles of economics that departs from the standard neoclassical approach, they fail to notice the exact difference between mutual sympathy, on the one hand, and the many other functions of sympathy, on the other.
7There is one exception. Sugden (2002) appreciates the significance of mutual sympathy—namely, as uncovering how friendship-and-love differs from other fellow-feelings. However, Sugden went to the other extreme. He elevated the significance of mutual sympathy to the point of relegating the other functions of fellow-feeling to secondary positions, as if they are derived from mutual sympathy. He argued for folding “sympathy” and what he calls “empathy”, supposedly another sentiment he finds in TMS, under the over-encompassing concept of “mutual sympathy”. He effectively turned all other kinds of fellow-feelings as offshoots of friendship-and-love (see Khalil, 2023a).
8Section 1 lays out the core question and the core thesis. Section 2 clarifies the terms friendship, mutual sympathy, and reciprocity. Sections 3 marshals four arguments expressed by Smith explaining the distinctiveness of the transcendental utility produced by friendship-and-love. Section 4, the main section of this article, focuses on the most important argument by undertaking an exegetical analysis of Smith’s text in support of the distinction between transcendental utility and substantive utility. Section 5 draws the implications of Smith’s distinction with respect to the proposed utility incommensurability thesis, rational choice theory, and taboos prohibiting the commodification of some goods.
9Smith uses the same term, “sympathy”, within Chapter 2 to denote diverse meanings. To mention two: sympathy as mirroring or transfusing “self-love” and sympathy as “mutual sympathy”:
1. Smith employs the term “sympathy” to denote “self-love”, a term that Smith mentions in the second sentence of the chapter. Self-love is self-interest and, as such, it is related to the interest in the other’s wellbeing, i.e., altruism. Smith regards both self-interest and altruism as lying along a continuum (Khalil, 1990). Indeed, standard economic theory treats both self- and other-interest (altruism) as elements that make up the objective function, i.e., the substantive utility function.
2. Smith employs the term “sympathy” to denote “mutual sympathy”, understood as “the sweetness of … sympathy” with “companions”. It is friendship-and-love that is most sought when one is in pain as a result of a loss (grief) but still one seeks to share joy with a friend as a result of a gain. Smith mentions the ever “sweetness” of friendship-and-love in the fourth paragraph of the chapter. This sweetness, along with other inputs, produce transcendental utility—which differs from substantive utility.
10These two genera are about preferences (utilities). They stand apart from a third meaning of the term “sympathy” in Chapter 2—which is already mentioned above:
3. Smith employs the term “sympathy” to denote the mechanism of mirroring that amplifies the original substrate emotions. This amplification is responsible for “the additional vivacity” afforded by interacting with others and mirroring either their mirth or their pain—irrespective of whether it is substantive or transcendental. Becker’s (1974) theory of social interaction stresses how preferences are enhanced by watching the preferences of others, which also explains the spread of moods, fashion, and mob behavior. Smith mentions this mechanism function of fellow-feeling in the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the chapter.
- 2 There are two additional meaning of sympathy—but which Smith discusses in other sections of TMS. Fi (...)
11There is a fourth meaning of “sympathy” in Chapter 2. In the first sentence of the chapter, Smith notes that sympathy with the emotion/action of the person principally concerned makes such person feel vindicated. The vindication is a pleasure as it signals that spectators approve the emotion/action. Actually, Smith ([1759] 1976, 18, 67, 187-188) identifies such sympathy as one kind of judgment, one concerning the “propriety or impropriety” of action of the person principally concerned. This article discusses below this fourth meaning only tangentially—in the effort to link Smith’s theory with rational choice theory.2
12With this brief clarification (and more is undertaken below), the research question of this article could be succinctly stated: Why can we not deduce mutual sympathy, i.e., friendship-and-love that contributes to transcendental utility, from self-love, i.e., substantive utility—while keeping in mind that either genus of utility can be the subject of “sympathy” in the sense of mirroring/transfusion during social interaction?
13The answer to this research question, i.e., the core thesis, can be expressed tersely: for Smith, mutual sympathy expresses the union of the substrate emotions of two or more two people engaged in a friendship moment—an amalgamation that affords a utility that transcends the original substrate emotions. The amalgamated outcome is transcendental utility.
14Two people engaged in a moment of friendship feel the transcendental emotion as pleasure—which is puzzling when the original shared experience happens to be pain such as grieving over, say, the loss of a son. Thus, we cannot treat transcendental utility as commensurable with the substantive sentiments or whatever are the substrate sentiments. The former is always positive even when the latter happens to be, as the case on many occasions, negative.
15This article defines “friends” somewhat differently from the everyday usage of the term. In everyday usage, people use the term to denote specific persons, say, Mary and Joseph, who have a particular relationship, friendship, with another person, the decision-maker (DM) under focus. This article stresses the “relationship” rather than the specific person. A “friend” can be anyone with whom the DM happens to have a friendship that can amount to a singular experience engendering what this article calls a “friendship moment”.
16This article does not analyze the on-going, deep, and historical past between people that solidifies into friendship, but rather the singular experience that can be called a “friendship moment”. Examples of friendship moments include the DM’s sharing a personal event with a stranger sitting next to her on an airplane, the DM’s encounter with a stranger at a work Christmas party, the DM’s conversation with a barber in a city the DM is visiting as a tourist, and so on. To qualify an encounter as “friendship moment”, the participants of the encounter need not be “friends” in the everyday sense of specific people with on-going, deep, and historical past.
17Put differently, in everyday usage, Mary and Joseph are the very close friends of the DM simply because the DM habitually has “friendship moments” with them more than others. This should neither mean that the DM’s encounters with them are exclusively “friendship moments”—the encounters could also be market-mediated exchanges, altruistic help, or an alliance formed to attain a collective goal such as building a public good. Nor does it mean that the DM’s encounters with strangers cannot involve “friendship moments”.
18To simplify the discussion, this article employs the term “friend” to mean “friendship moment”. It should not be understood in the everyday usage of the term, i.e., as a way to specify whether people, in reference to the DM under focus, are friends as opposed to mere acquaintance or total strangers.
19This article understands the term “mutual sympathy” in TMS to denote the “friendship moment”, whereas love is only studied here in the restricted sense as the fondness and warm feeling that a “friendship moment” typifies.
20In Chapter 2, Smith uses the term “mutual sympathy” only in the title (Smith, [1759] 1976, 13). He marches through the three pages of the chapter without ever mentioning the term again. He only mentions it again toward the end of the book. He mentions it twice, on the same page, while discussing love in the sense of fondness and warmth that family members experience, where mutual sympathy develops into “habitual sympathy” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 220).
21Aside from these three mentions of “mutual sympathy”, Smith refers to mutual sympathy by other terms throughout TMS: “mutual fondness” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 33, 177); “mutual friendship” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 38); “mutual regard”, “mutual love”, “mutual raillery”, and “mutual kindness” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 39); “mutual love and affection” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 86).
22More importantly, Smith discusses friendship-and-love (mutual sympathy) in detail in three consecutive chapters in TMS (Smith, [1759] 1976, 31-40). In the first, he shows the importance of love as “habit of the imagination” which—along with generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, esteem, mutual friendship, and other “social passions”—enhance happiness (Smith, [1759] 1976, 31-34). In the second, he warns against hatred, anger, and other “unsocial passions”, as they “are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 34-38). In the third, he alerts us against the maladies of love, such as obsessions and emotional upheavals of the heart (Smith, [1759] 1976, 38-40; Khalil, 2024b).
23However, all these references to friendship-and-love and its importance are merely descriptions. What matters is analysis. How does friendship-as-love (transcendental utility) differ from other notions of fellow-feeling pertaining to material benefit (substantive utility)? And Smith undertakes such analysis only in Chapter 2, which is an orphaned as he never goes back or uses his analysis.
24As Walraevens (2020) shows, Smith paid a great attention to reciprocity. Reciprocity, broadly speaking, is to act favorably toward others in response to their favorable actions, and otherwise in respond to their disfavorable action. How does friendship-and-love (mutual sympathy), the focus of this article, link with reciprocity?
25This turns out to be a difficult question, as there are different kinds of reciprocity. For instance, in Smith’s ([1759] 1976, 78-91) discussion of beneficence, he distinguishes “beneficence” from “justice”. While justice is the reciprocity of rights enforced by law, beneficence is the reciprocity of favors that are non-legally binding. If a grocer treats a customer nicely, the customer is not legally obligated to return and shop at the same grocery.
26With respect to friendship-and-love, reciprocity must be pertinent—but not in the sense of trading favors. Otherwise, it would render friendship as no different from substantive transactions, quid pro quo. Such transactions would undermine the friendship relationship. Reciprocity in the context of friendship-and-love must entail that one party does not take advantage of the friendship of the other. Indeed, Smith ([1759] 1976, 38-40) warned about the aches of friendship-and-love. It is too often that when one party extends love to the other, the other may take it for granted, i.e., fail to appreciate it. Smith’s solution is not to avoid friendship-and-love, but rather to avoid its excessive forms that may leave one party vulnerable to the abusive behavior of the other (see Khalil, 2024b).
27With the above conceptual distinctions, we should be ready to ask the key question that is the focus of this article. Namely, why should friendship-and-love be modeled differently from the inputs producing substantive satisfaction? Smith marshals four arguments.
28In the first argument, in the first paragraph of Chapter 2 (Smith, [1759] 1976, 13-14), Smith argues that the pleasure of friendship is instantaneous, while substantive utility requires calculation. Actually, this argument is weak, if not false. Calculation of costs and benefits can also take place instantaneously.
29In the second argument, again in the first paragraph of Chapter 2, Smith finds that friendship originates “mutuality” of feeling, which differs from the transfusion of substantive utility. When two friends experience mutuality, and hence “mutual sympathy”, they reflect on an event that can be equidistant from both. That is, the event, such as reading a book, need not have happened to only one of them. Even if the event has fallen to only one of them, the friend’s fellow-feeling-as-mutual-sympathy varies in intensity following the degree of friendship. In contrast, in the transfusion of substantive utility, there is an impartial spectator who experiences what the DM is experiencing, but expressly to approbate and command the emotion/action as seen fit (according to the optimality criterion or other criteria). The criterion of approbation is constant, i.e., it does not vary in intensity following the degree of familiarity.
30In the third argument, found in the third paragraph of Chapter 2(Smith, [1759] 1976, 15), Smith notes that people seek friends more to share their unfortunate events than to share their fortunate events. While this asymmetry is noteworthy, it merely strengthens the central fourth argument.
31In the fourth argument of Chapter 2, found in the fourth paragraph (Smith, [1759] 1976, 15), Smith is puzzled that people seek friends to tell them about their sad events. This would not happen if the fellow-feeling is limited only to sympathy, i.e., the transfusion and approbation of the original emotion/action. This is the central argument, which is elaborated next.
32Sympathy is based on transfusion, where the mirrored emotion/action copies the original at least in direction but not intensity. If mutual sympathy was no different from transfusion, the DM who is stricken by an unfortunate event would not seek any friend or company. By telling the friend the unfortunate event, the DM relieves him- or herself of the agony, the pain, and the grief. Not to mention, there would be no friends who are ready to listen to the agony of anyone—unless they were masochists.
33So, Smith is puzzled. When normal people seek friends in times of grief “by relating their misfortunes they in some measure renew their grief”:
How are the unfortunate relieved when they have found out a person to whom they can communicate the cause of their sorrow? Upon his sympathy they seem to disburthen themselves of a part of their distress: he is not improperly said to share it with them. He not only feels a sorrow of the same kind with that which they feel, but as if he had derived a part of it to himself, what he feels seems to alleviate the weight of what they feel. Yet by relating their misfortunes they in some measure renew their grief. They awaken in their memory the remembrance of those circumstances which occasioned their affliction. Their tears accordingly flow faster than before, and they are apt to abandon themselves to all the weakness of sorrow (Smith, [1759] 1976, 15).
34People derive pleasure from relating their misfortunes to friends, Smith ([1759] 1976, 15) continues: “They take pleasure, however, in all this, and, it is evident, are sensibly relieved by it.”
35Smith solves the puzzle by arguing that the fellow-feeling of friendship, occasioned by mutual sympathy, must be positive, and even potently positive to compensate the revived substantive bitterness of that grief and sorrow. And it is the “cruelest insult” or “inhumanity” for a friend not to relieve the DM of his or her “bitterness of that sorrow”:
the sweetness of his sympathy [friend’s mutual sympathy] more than compensates the bitterness of that sorrow, which, in order to excite this sympathy, they had thus enlivened and renewed. The cruelest insult, on the contrary, which can be offered to the unfortunate, is to appear to make light of their calamities. To seem not to be affected with the joy of our companions is but want of politeness; but not to wear a serious countenance when they tell us their afflictions, is real and gross inhumanity (Smith, [1759] 1976, 15).
36But for the pleasure of friendship to be always positive, even in cases when it cannot be potent enough to compensate for the relieved substantive pain, there must be two different utilities, each made of a metric incommensurable with the other. This is the conclusion that Smith ([1759] 1976, 14) reaches in the second paragraph of Chapter 2, when he recounts the famous story of the pleasure of reading a book with a friend. Smith distinguishes two genera of utilities: the substantive, what he calls the “mirth of company”, and the transcendental, what he calls “another source of satisfaction”.
37The substantive mirth arises because the friend’s amusement allows the DM to recall his or her original amusement. Also, if the company is not amused, the DM would be vexed:
When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On the contrary, we should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the same case here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us (Smith, [1759] 1976, 14).
38However, and here is the core point, Smith continues to state that to enliven our own mirth or disappointment is about transfusion or correspondence of feeling, but this is not the only fellow-feeling in operation. There is another fellow-feeling, which is mutual sympathy—but which he confusingly calls “sympathy”—and it does not simply replicate our joy or our grief, but rather presents “another source of satisfaction” that provides pleasure, irrespective of whether the original emotion is joy or grief:
The sympathy, that my friends express with my joy, might, indeed, give me pleasure by enlivening that joy: but that which they express with my grief could give me none, if it served only to enliven that grief. Sympathy [mutual sympathy], however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction; and it alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it is at that time capable of receiving (Smith, [1759] 1976, emphasis added).
39This additional “source of satisfaction” is about the case when the other person is not simply a passer-by who reflects the emotion of the person principally concerned. The other person is additionally a friend, or actually any person, who enters into mutual sympathy with the person principally concerned.
40For instance, if the passer-by sees, say, the principal falling off a ladder, the passer-by feels the pain in the substantive sense and, if his or her resources permit, acts altruistically (e.g. rushes to reduce the pain of the victim). This article does not discuss altruism in relation to Smith’s conception of sympathy (see Khalil, 2023a). It discusses, as noted above, the transfusion of fellow-feeling that leads to approbation. Altruism is analytically similar to self-interest, i.e., about substantive utility that concerns a cared about the self or other. However, if the passer-by is additionally a friend, and they both meet a year later and reflect on the unfortunate incident, the reflection is another source of satisfaction, which is always pleasant, even when the original utility is negative.
41Smith starts Chapter 2 by rejecting the utility commensurability thesis. In the second sentence, Smith makes it clear that he rejects the reduction of the non-substantive utility to “self-love”, substantive utility. Smith criticizes those thinkers— namely, Hobbes and Mandeville according to the editors of TMS—“who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love” (Smith, [1759] 1976, 13, emphasis added).
42However, Smith’s rejection of the utility commensurability thesis as advocated by Hobbes and Mandeville is a mere assertion. It is only when Smith analyzes mutual sympathy in the second paragraph, the moment of friendship experienced when reading a “book or poem” together, that he starts to provide an argument for why the consequent transcendental satisfaction of friendship differs from substantive satisfaction. In the third and fourth paragraphs, Smith reveals the puzzle: why is it the case that mere sympathy entails the copying of the original emotion, while mutual sympathy occasioned by the friendship moment transcends the original emotion? He reasons that the sentiment arising from friendship-and-love must be of a different source than the substantive utility copied by mere sympathy.
- 3 The received literature, including my own work (e.g. Fleischacker, 2019, Chapter 2; Khalil, 2015), (...)
43Smith’s distinction between the two sources of satisfaction amounts to postulating the utility incommensurability thesis. It is the thesis with which he started the chapter. However, surprisingly, Smith never returns in TMS to his analytical point, the substantive/transcendental distinction. Smith seems to have suffered from “amnesia” regarding his distinction. He even failed to mention the distinction again in his defense against the misguided critique leveled by David Hume in his famous letter dated 28 July 1759 (see Smith, [1759] 1976, 46, n.*).3
44Although Smith does not employ rational choice theory, his analysis of mutual sympathy implies it.
45The reading of a “book or poem” together is an act that amounts to an input that entails an output. The input may produce an output consisting only of substantive pleasure—a pleasure that can be enhanced via vivacity or mimicking. However, the input may produce an additional output if combined with another input. Namely, if the input of merely reading a book together also involves a friendship moment, the output could be transcendental utility. The transcendental utility output is always positive—i.e., even when the substrate experience involves sharing a sad story or a terrible event.
46Thus, it is straightforward to express the rise of transcendental utility in parallel to the rise of substantive utility. For substantive utility to rise, the function should entail inputs such as the consumption of food or entertainment as reading a book alone or, better, with others as such sharing allows for vivacity or mimicking. For transcendental utility to emerge, the function should also entail reflection or musing. The person under focus can secure the reflection input if the sharing of the experience with others is not limited to mimicking, but also involves a friendship moment.
47The rational person decides the proportion of inputs in order to attain the highest (maximum) substantive utility. Likewise, the rational person decides the extent or degree of exhibited affection in order to secure the highest transcendental utility. Smith ([1759] 1976, 38-40) has warned about excessive affection or fondness that may lead to obsessions, the upheaval of emotions, and inviting the abuse of others. An exact model can be constructed to capture how rational choice is pertinent to the choice of the intensity of fondness or love (see Khalil, 2024b).
48The rational analysis of the degree of fondness should not be totally strange to Smith. He applied such an analysis with respect to his analysis of sympathy taking the function of approbation (judgment). Staring with the sixth paragraph at the outset of TMS (Smith, [1759] 1976, 11), Smith argues that spectators may suspend fellow-feeling until they examine the cause of the emotion/action of the person under focus. This examination amounts to propriety-of-action judgment. As mentioned above, if the judgment involves approval, the spectator will sympathize with the observed emotion/action and, corollary, the person under focus feels vindication. If the judgment involves disapproval, the spectator could not sympathize with such emotion/action and, corollary, the person under focus blames the self for taking the wrong (suboptimal) action.
49The proposed recasting of Smith’s theory in terms of rational choice is the proverbial low-hanging fruit. Hence, it is surprising that Smith scholars generally have eschewed this reading. Once one reads TMS via the lens of rational choice theory, one realizes that Smith’s impartial spectator is about making the optimal. Also, Smith’s impartial spectator is about self-command, i.e., the execution of what has been already determined to be the optimal act (Khalil, 1990).
50The proposition that substantive utility is incommensurable with transcendental utility has many implications. The incommensurability explains the existence of taboos that prohibit the mixing or conflation of substantive utility with transcendental utility that takes place when objects of friendship-and-love are traded in the market or subjected to quid pro quo transactions. Taboos that perform such a function vary across cultures. For instance, in modern cultures, it is distasteful to accept payments for human kidneys, ask for monetary rewards for participating in the voting process, and to keep the price-tag on gifts.
51Once a culture designates certain goods as carriers of friendship-and-love, taboos emerge prohibiting the treatment of such carriers as commodities. The proposed utility incommensurability thesis can easily explain such taboos. Of great interest is the exploration of how such taboos—which appear as sacrosanct to their practitioners—change, although with some resistance, in response to changes in economic and ecological conditions. It falls outside the scope of this article to undertake such exploration.
52This article vindicates Smith’s theory of friendship-and-love. As he argues, friendship-and-love amounts to “another source of satisfaction”, a transcendental utility that is distinct from substantive utility. While substantive utility involves tradeoffs because they are costly, transcendental utility need not be costly, as it ultimately a free nostalgia-like reflection. The reflection can be about a more elementary transcendental utility, as when the DM loses a child or watches a tragedy that involves lost love. However, in many cases, the reflection is about substantive utility.
53In either case, the produced transcendental utility cannot be commensurable with the object of reflection. The product depends on the object, as the object acts as an input that produces the product. This explains why, as Smith stresses, the product can always be sweet—irrespective of the nature of the input. The input can be painful such as the loss of a job or a limb in an accident, a house in a fire, etc. The sharing of the event with someone in the context of a friendship moment always produces a pleasure, which tends to relieve the pain of loss. The fact that the transcendental product differs from the input is key. It is the basis of the proposed utility incommensurability thesis.
This article benefited from the support and the hospitality of the Liberty Fund’s Adam Smith Scholarship program. Earlier drafts benefited from the comments of Erik Matson, Boudewijn de Bruin, Jonathan Wight, the guest editor, and two anonymous reviewers, and from the editorial help of Meryem Özgüven and Maks Sipowicz. The usual caveat applies.
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