Of the corruption of the Moral Sentiments: Adam Smith & Plato

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.[1]

Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759)

 

Then comes the moment, my dear Glaucon, when everything is at stake.  And that is why it should be our first care to abandon all other forms of knowledge, and seek and study that which will show us how to perceive and find the man who will give us the knowledge and the ability to tell a good life from a bad one and always choose the better course so far as we can; we must reckon up all that we have said in this discussion of ours, weighing the arguments together and apart to find out how they affect the good life, and see what effects, good or ill, good looks have when accompanied by poverty or wealth or by some different disposition of character, and what again are the effects of the various blends of birth and rank, strength and weakness, cleverness and stupidity, and all other qualities inborn or acquired.  If we take all this into account and remember how the soul is constituted, we can choose between the worse life and the better, calling the one that leads us to become more unjust the worse, and the one that leads us to become more just the better.  Everything else we can let go, for we have seen that this is the best choice both for living and dead.  This belief we must resist with an iron grip when we enter the other world, so that we may be unmoved there by the temptation of wealth or other evils, and avoid falling into the life of a tyrant or other evil-doer and perpetrating unbearable evil and suffering worse, but may rather know how to choose the middle-course, and avoid so far as we can, in this life and the next, the extremes on either hand.  For this is the surest way to the highest human happiness.[2] 

Plato, The Republic (circa 375 BC)

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[1] Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, ed. by Ryan Patrick Hanley (New York: Penguin, 2009), pp. 73-74 [Part I, Section I, Chapter III].

[2] Plato, The Republic, tr. and intro. by Desmond Lee, 2^nd ed. (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974), pp. 452-453 [Book X: 618c-619b]