亚当·斯密：三种社会形式
文摘
2025-02-06 11:00
山东
编者按：伊什特万·洪特认为，斯密在《道德情操论》中列举了三种社会形式：爱的社会、恐惧的社会、效用的社会，其中，效用社会被置于爱的社会和恐惧的社会这两个极端之间。在《国富论》中，他把这一实体命名为商业社会。这里是他对三种社会形式的区分：1. It is thus that man, who can subsist
only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made.
All the members of human society stand in need of each others assistance, and
are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally
afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society
flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by
the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one
common centre of mutual good offices.2. But though the necessary assistance shouldnot
be afforded from such generous and disinterested motives, though among the different
members of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the society,
though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. Society may
subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its
utility, without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it should
owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be
upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed
valuation.3. Society, however, cannot subsist among
those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment
that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place,
all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it
consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and
opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society among
robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation,
abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is
less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist,
though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence
of injustice must utterly destroy it.Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.100-101.
