Self-Command in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: A Game-Theoretic Reinterpretation

Stephen Meardon and Andreas Ortmann

Chapter 3 in Adam Smith’s System, 2022, pp 67-92 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Meardon & Ortmann—building on a detailed analysis of Adam Smith’s enumeration of five classes of passions—formalized the idea of the acquisition of self-command, the central construct of Smith’s first major book, his TMS, with a numeric example that ties the principal’s (Man Tomorrow) and agent’s (Man Today) actions to their respective payoffs. They show that this game can be framed game-theoretically as an interaction between the two protagonists battling it out within (wo)man. It turns out that the game between speaker(s) or writer(s) and listener(s) or reader(s) is essentially the same as that between the two inner selves that struggle with the passions, i.e., an internal reputation game.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-99704-5_3

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