"All feelings of mankind will be leading for morality." - Adam Smith
THE INVISIBLE HAND
In The theory of moral sentiments (1759) Adam Smith describes how almost all feelings are related to a leading norm. Only 17 years later he wrote The Wealth of the Nations that gave him the fame of being the spiritual father of economics as a science. Adam Smith himself said that The Wealth of the Nations is the logic continuation of The theory of moral sentiments. Economics mesure values as feelings mesure norms. Therefore, the subject of a third book of his planned triptych that remained unwritten can't surprise: justice.
To act virtuously according Adam Smith it is sufficient to imagine how the others would react if we should do or leave something. He exchanged the Eye of God by the opinion of the impartial and invisible spectator. Also in The Wealth of the Nations he mentions the invisible when he says to be convinced that the public interest is a result of everyone's conquest of his own personal interest. At that time the Industrial Revolution had to begin. Socialism was to transform soon his invisible hand into a rebellious and even totalitarian fist.
The invisible appears only a few times in the work of Adam Smith, just to confirm ironical that the society is religious but no necessarily because of its religion. Everyone has at one's disposal a fine mechanism that captures and interpretes signals concerning the valid values and norms. Determinated to live and to survive Adam Smith's citizen is set in a spiritual network that reveals the mesure of the society. In that mechanism the feelings are the receivers and transmitters of ethical information.
God is not absent in the ethics of Adam Smith. On the contrary. God created men judge of mankind, because men need to be leaded during their terrestrial lifes. Thanks to, or despite the distance taken by God, Adam Smith counted on the ultimate justice that everybody will find or receive his legitimate place. The moral sentiments realise a worldy spirituality that doesn't count with God's mercy neiter with God's cruelty. Adam Smith says that God's judgement is superiour, but as if mankind can't know or derive God's judgement, the need for a secular morality is obvious. The human judgement is provisional but necessary and legitimate. Adam Smith was certainly horrified by the Inquisition that judged in the name of God. The thricks of fate that convicted so many to death, to satisfy the will of God, confirms the image of a God that looks like Fortuna.
COINCIDENTIA OPPOSITORUM
The relationship between feelings and morality is even closer reading Spinoza: "The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of joy or sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it." (Ethics, IV, 8). The opinion that feelings should be tempered by reason is confirmed by Spinoza, but only when that means that one should go into the feeling in order to know and to understand that feeling. There is no need to deny, to avoid, to oppress or to try to canalize any feeling, there is no need to wait until the passional storm lays down before knowing the feeling. Spinoza warns for feelings, but only when one doesn't recognize or doesn't find out what it means. "Because the power of the mind is defined only by understanding, we shall determine, by the mind's knowledge alone, the remedies for the affects." (Ethics, V, preface). Reason is not opposed to passion but ripens out of the good knowledge of the feelings.
Spinoza defines most of the feelings in pairs of opposite feelings. A feeling exists because of the opposite feeling. In the beginning of the fifth chapter of the Ethics, Of the power of the intellect, Spinoza writes down the following axioma: "If two contrary actions are aroused in the same subject, a change will have to occur, either in both of them, or in one only, until they cease to be contrary." He implies a new definition of emotion, i.e. the sudden confrontation between two opposite feelings.
The normative theory of feelings of Adam Smith and the dialectic definition of Spinoza, who are complementary, invite to a spirituality of all men who are moral connected as if they were parts of one and the same body. The wanted distinction between body and mind, that limits both religion and science, is not a problem for Spinoza. "The mind is united to the body from the fact that the body is the object of the mind." (Spinoza, II, 21). Every individual goes beyond the temporary and the personal by the knowledge of his feelings and emotions.
The emotion is divine and permets anybody to make the choice between whom he was and whome he becomes.
EMOTION AS A GENIUS MOMENT
Can I call somehting divine if I don't believe in (the anecdotic and theatral character of) God ? Can I call the infinite and the all-embracing, as Spinoza does, "or God or Nature", neglecting the severe distinction between the creation and the creator ? The importance of God's judgement after life for Adam Smith is equivalent to the intentions of the Creator before life according Spinoza. In addition Spinoza thinks that the mind dies together with the body. Regarding the inevitability and the providence, the spiritual ideas of Adam Smith and Spinoza are once again complementary. Mankind has to derive the sense and reason of life self, as if it depends on it.
In Profanations the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes spirituality as the permanent conscience of an experimented person that there is an important part of life to come.
One doesn't have to believe in God to call things divine, but my God is the creator of the ideal circumstances that make my minimal forces most usefull, and than I call those circumstances an opportunity, and my God is as well the creator of the ideal circumstances that maximalize my forces in order to reach the minimum, and than I call these circumstances a challenge. By the challenges and the opportunities that are presented, I feel the inevitability and providence of my life. For that reason I call the emotions divine, because the emotions are the strong signals that the ideal circumstances to realise myself are present, and that one has to choose to remain oneself knowing that one can't know everything.
According the German cardinal Nicolas von Keus (1440), Beauty is the coincidence of the minimum and the maximum, the coincidence of the opposites, when and by which the striking difference disappears. The mesure of feeling is thus like the steps of comparison, beautiful- more beautiful - the most beautiful, good - better - the best. With our feelings we mesure the Beauty and the Goodness of everything.