Like Scotland’s first minister, I was recently in Princeton, New Jersey, attending an event organised by the town’s Centre of Theological Inquiry (CTI). Somewhat to my surprise, the CTI turned out to be a wholly independent institution distinct from both its distinguished neighbours: Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary. A kind of theological think-tank, established in 1978, CTI’s current director is a Scot – William Storrar – who chooses to define ‘theology’ in decidedly liberal terms.
Professor Storrar had invited around 25 scholars in different disciplines to come to Princeton in the first week of April to take part in a symposium on the Adam Smithian theme of ‘The Wealth and Well-being of Nations’. The participants came from a range of countries – the majority from the US, but others from France, Germany, South Africa, and the UK. Scotland was well represented by a group from Glasgow Caledonian University including Pamela Gillies, its principal and vice-chancellor, who had chosen to support the symposium.
The first day consisted of a book festival in the Centre’s Luce Hall – named after Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life magazines – whose foundation had been a major contributor to the establishment of the CTI. The format was a discussion between Sally Magnusson of BBC Scotland and the authors of three recent books: ‘Adam Smith, An Enlightened Life’ by Nicolas Phillipson; ‘Francis Jeffrey’s American Journal, New York to Washington 1813’, edited by myself and Clare Elliott; and ‘A Floating Commonwealth, Politics, Culture, and Technology on Britain’s Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930’, by Christopher Harvie. Sally Magnusson was characteristically generous in her ability to bring out what was of greatest general interest in all three books.
In the following days the symposium was structured around three presentations by the authors of published or forthcoming works addressing the issues involved in any analysis in today’s world of the wealth and well-being of nations. Nicolas Phillipson, however, began proceedings by providing an 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment context for the contemporary debate by describing Smith’s analysis of the relevant moral and economic factors in first ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ and subsequently ‘The Wealth of Nations’. Smith never uses the term ‘well-being’, but his emphasis on economic self-interest in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ does not negate that on virtue, friendship, sentiment and imagination, as essential elements of civic society, in the earlier ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’.
The first contemporary analysis came in the form of the opening chapter of a forthcoming book by Angus Deaton, a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, originally from the Scottish Borders. His book is entitled ‘The Great Escape’ and is about how in the modern world vast numbers of people have escaped from the poverty and premature death that was the norm in earlier centuries. For many ‘life is better now than at almost any time in history. They are better off, healthier, and live longer. But at the same time in the world at large, massive inequality prevails. Millions still experience the horrors of destitution and of premature death’. Deaton’s book ‘tells stories of how things got better, how and why progress happened, and the subsequent interplay of progress and inequality’.
The symposium’s following session was led by Joao Biehl, professor of anthropology at Princeton University, and author of the book ‘Will to Live’. Published in 2007, the book focuses on a range of issues surrounding the treatment of HIV/AIDS in Brazil, the first developing country to adopt an official policy of making anti-retroviral drugs universally available to all who need them. As the author puts it, his book ‘moves between a social analysis of the institutional practices shaping the Brazilian response to AIDS and the stories and lives of people affected by it’.
For the reader unfamiliar with the scholarly language of the social sciences, it is that second dimension concerning the lives and stories of actual individuals that is the source of the book’s enormous and moving power. Again and again we listen to the voices of individual people telling in their own words the story of their lives as HIV/AIDS sufferers. And we not only hear them, but in a multiple series of photographs taken over a space of years, we add faces to their voices. The result is that the world of academic analysis and discussion remains embedded in people’s actual daily lives.
The symposium’s final session on governance, wealth and well-being, was somewhat disrupted by preparations for, and the actual arrival, of Mr Salmond. Words of greeting and welcome – and books – were exchanged, and in no time we were bussed off to hear the first minister deliver his speech on ‘Adam Smith and the Wealth and Well-being of Nations’ to a Saturday afternoon audience of three or four hundred in an auditorium on the Princeton University campus.
It was an effective, polished and well-judged performance by an astute and experienced politician. There were a few good jokes and the tone throughout was confident but measured rather than triumphalist. Before turning to his central theme – that the economics of ‘The Wealth of Nations’ should be read alongside, not against, the morality of ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ – Mr Salmond paid due tribute to the links between Princeton and Scotland, and between Scotland and America more generally, in the 18th and 19th centuries. I was disappointed, however, to hear the first minister apparently endorse the popular myth that the Declaration of Independence was somehow modelled on the so-called Declaration of Arbroath. Again Mr Salmond or his speech writer managed to confuse William Small from Aberdeen, Thomas Jefferson’s teacher at the College of William and Mary, with James Blair, also from Aberdeen, the college’s first president many years earlier.
In a question and answer period, the first minister handled various questions involving the politics of independence with deftness and humour. Hence it was no surprise when the chairperson, bringing the event to a close, suggested that if the referendum vote were taken in the hall that afternoon, the result would be a resounding Yes. I suspect she was right. Certainly Mr Salmond’s visit to the Centre of Theological Inquiry and Princeton University left his personal well-being in good shape.
Andrew Hook is a former professor of English literature at Glasgow University
