Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. By Nicholas Phillipson. Yale University Press; 368 pages; $32.50. Allen Lane; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
《亚当•斯密：启蒙人生》尼古拉斯•菲利普森，耶鲁大学出版社；368页；32.50美元。
ADAM SMITH has inspired some fierce books in recent years: books that seek to rescue him from the economists, or indeed, to rescue economics from him. Nicholas Phillipson’s diligent biography is a quieter work of scholarship, ignoring Smith’s disciples and critics to reclaim him for the historians. Mr Phillipson is more interested in documenting Smith’s influences than in exploring his influence. He traces the ancestors of Smith’s ideas, but largely ignores their many offspring, legitimate and illegitimate.
近年来，亚当•斯密成了几本言语激烈的作品的灵感来源：这些书希望把亚当•斯密从经济学家中分离出来，确切地说是把经济学从他身上分割开来。尼古拉斯•菲利普森这本倾尽心血的传记却是一部言辞平和的学术著作，亚当•斯密的门徒和批评家想把他塑造成历史学家，这本传记也毫不理会。菲利普森的兴趣在意记录斯密所产生的种种影响，而不是探究他的影响力。他追溯亚当•斯密思想的根源，却对这些思想的产物视而不见，无论是正统还是异端。
This intellectual story is nonetheless lively. It is like the tale of a sporting hero who springs from relative obscurity to triumph over a string of worthy opponents, often by assimilating their techniques. Smith’s early patron was Henry Home, a philosopher and lawyer who sponsored the Edinburgh lectures that launched Smith’s career in 1748 when he was just 25. His great sparring partner was his friend and fellow Scot, David Hume, who taught Smith many of his best punches. Most of Smith’s opponents were French or French-speaking, including the philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac and the Baron de Montesquieu.
尽管如此，这本学者传记却写得生动鲜活。犹如体育明星的不朽传奇，书中主角战胜一连串势均力敌的对手，借鉴他们的经验技巧，从默默无闻到平步青云。亚当•斯密早年的恩主是哲学家、律师亨利•霍姆，他在1748年资助年仅25岁的亚当•斯密在爱丁堡演讲授课。斯密最重要的搭档是他的挚友，苏格兰哲学家大卫•休姆，他把自己的许多秘笈传授给了斯密。斯密大多数的对手不是法国人就是讲法语，包括哲学家艾蒂安•博诺特•德•孔狄亚克和孟德斯鸠男爵。
Smith’s first book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, “turned the tables” on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that society enslaved man to vanity and ambition. Smith argued, instead, that society taught man to be good. This tuition started from man’s capacity for “sympathy”: his ability to feel what another man feels. It continued with his capacity for sympathy squared: his ability to sense what other men feel about him, putting himself in the shoes of other men putting themselves in his shoes. The moral education was complete when a person chose the perfect shoes in which to put himself: those of an “impartial Spectator”, who “considers our conduct with the same indifference with which we regard that of other people”.
斯密的首部著作《道德情操论》就占了让•雅各•卢梭的上风，卢梭认为社会迫使人成为名利野心的奴隶。斯密则认为，社会教人向善。该书开篇就谈到人类的同情心：即感同身受的能力。随后谈到人的互相同情：人能够感知其他人对他的感受，能设身处地为他人考虑，而他人也会转而为他着想。当一个人选择了完全吻合自己的判断尺度，就完成了道德教育：人心中有个“公正的旁观者”，他会“以我们对待别人不偏不倚的态度来指导我们的行为”。
Smith’s greatest work, “The Wealth of Nations”, was a “very violent attack” on Britain’s commercial policies, which misdirected the nation’s energies, weakened its colonies and plunged it into deep rivalries with its neighbours, all in the mistaken belief that a nation’s wealth lay in the gold and silver it hoarded. Smith’s intellectual challenge was again French. His book had to better the work of François Quesnay, author of “La Physiocratie”, and the man to whom Smith would have dedicated “The Wealth of Nations” had he lived.
亚当•斯密的皇皇巨著《国富论》对英国的商业政策进行了猛烈抨击，这些政策误导了国家精神，错误地以为一个国家的财富在于储备的金银数量，使国家实力被殖民地削弱，和邻国成为宿敌。斯密再次对法国发起了学术挑战。他的著作超越了《重农主义》作者弗朗索瓦•魁奈的作品，如果魁奈在世的话，斯密会把《国富论》题献给他。
Quesnay was one of the first to think of the economy as a system of interacting parts, to be judged by the necessities and conveniences it produces, not the bullion it amasses. But he erred in thinking that the wealth of nations lay only in agriculture. In his scheme, merchants, artisans and manufacturers added nothing to labour and capital they diverted from the land. For Smith, who had lived in a Glasgow transformed by trade and industry, this was implausible. The wealth of nations lay not in land, but in labour, deployed to its best advantage and divided as finely as demand would allow.
魁奈是最早把经济视为各要素互相关联的体系的学者，他认为要靠生产的必需品和便利品来判断经济，而不是储备的金银数量。但是他误以为国家财富依赖于农业。在他的体系中，商人、工匠和手工业者没有增加从土地中转移的劳动和资本。对生活在格拉斯哥的亚当•斯密而言，贸易和工业改变了这座城市的面貌，这种看法简直难以置信。国家的财富并不依赖土地，而是来自劳动，而劳动能够发挥所长、按需细分。
Mr Phillipson’s book includes a pen-and-ink caricature of Smith trapped in a bubble of contemplation, holding a nosegay to ward off Edinburgh’s stench. The great man once walked 15 miles to Dunfermline wrapped only in his thoughts and his dressing gown, according to an early biographer. But he was nonetheless a worldly philosopher. His books are fat with illustrations and examples, drawn from his erudition and his conversations with statesmen and merchants. He knew that his propositions would not convince people unless his illustrations entertained them.
菲利普森笔下的传记收入了一副钢笔漫画，画中亚当•斯密沉思冥想，手持花束来抵挡爱丁堡散发的恶臭。据早期的传记作者描写，这位伟人曾经徒步15英里，走到苏格兰的丹弗姆林，路上冥思苦想、衣着单薄。尽管如此，亚当•斯密还是位通晓世故的哲学家。他的书中插图丰富、举例翔实，都取材于他的渊博学识以及他与政客商贾的谈话。他深知自己的观点不能让人信服，除非以插图娱乐读者。
Mr Phillipson salts his biography with well- observed details. He notes that Smith collected receipts for the pocket money he gave to a young nobleman in his charge. He loosened up a little in Paris, if his servant’s inventory of his wardrobe is any guide. And this staunch free-trader spent the last years of his life as a commissioner of customs, administering 800 acts of parliament that clogged and fettered trade. It would take a “skilful pencil” to bring Smith to life, warned one of his friends. In bringing Smith’s ideas to life, Mr Phillipson shows that his pencilwork is skilful indeed.
菲利普森的传记中增添了充分观察的细节。他细细写道，斯密曾给他照管的贵族子弟零用钱，并把这笔钱记在帐目中。而从仆人的衣物清单来看，亚当•斯密在巴黎时花费颇多。这位忠诚的自由贸易者在晚年担任海关专员，亲自执行800多条阻碍束缚自由贸易的议会法案。他的一位好友提醒道，须有生花妙笔才能栩栩如生重现亚当•斯密的人生。菲利普森的确笔下传神，生动鲜活地体现了亚当•斯密的伟大思想。
