The Psychology of Inequality. Michael Locke McLendon
Wealth of Nations in 1776 that the aristocratic language of glory and honor fully disappears from assessments of human nature. These natural law theorists all devote considerable attention to glory, honor, the desire for a good reputation, and envy.8 In Wealth, by contrast, Smith adopts a strictly utilitarian approach. His humans are primarily strategic and calculating.9 They do not care for glory and honor as much as they do for identifying their “advantage” and satisfying their “interests.”10 Their motives are depicted in more general and more practical terms.
It is now common to hear that sound moral reasoning involves little more than trying to satisfy vaguely defined personal preferences through strategic thinking.11 By contrast, with a few notable exceptions, political and social theorists have stopped writing about amour-propre. Even among historians of political thought, it attracts comparatively little interest (though, as I will demonstrate shortly, it has recently become popular among Rousseau scholars).
The dominance of utilitarian moral language has made it difficult to even talk about amour-propre and the emotions and cognitive processes commonly associated with it—pride, vanity, envy, desire for honor and glory, self-consciousness, existential angst about self-worth, and notions of selfhood or identity. At best, amour-propre is assimilated into utilitarian analysis as one of many preferences that can be calculated as either a pleasure or a pain. That is, just as individuals would be rational if they took certain steps to purchase a home, the same would be true if they tried to cultivate self-esteem or earn honor. Such desires are merely two of countless goals that can be satisfied through strategic, rational thinking. This argument finds expression in the earliest proponents of classical utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, for example, includes “the pleasure of a good name” among the fourteen simple pleasures that he identifies as commonly pursued by individuals and the “the pains of an ill name” among the twelve pains most try to avoid. For him, it is no more or less important than any of the thirteen other pleasures or eleven other pains.12
Such truncated analysis, however, oversimplifies the passion and fails to capture its elemental nature. In many respects, amour-propre fundamentally differs from other preferences and involves a different set of cognitive processes. It is not like purchasing a box of cereal. On the most general level, the attempt to satisfy a preference is future oriented and relies on a strategic or calculative form of consciousness. Amour-propre, conversely, is more of a backward-thinking exercise that is evaluative rather than strategic. Its questions are not “How can I attain or acquire?” but “What is my value as a person?” and “Do I matter for others?” Its essence is to reflect on one’s intrinsic value. If people sometimes make calculations to determine their self-worth or strategize to improve their social standing, it is nonetheless a mistake to reduce the passion solely to an object of calculation. This is why many modern theorists begin their analysis of amour-propre by first distinguishing it from amour de soi-même, or the desire for survival and well-being. The attempt to absorb amour-propre into utilitarian theory by treating it as just another preference thus makes a categorical mistake of confusing it with its opposite.
To be sure, amour de soi-même and amour-propre can both be at work in the same act. As Rousseau and numerous others have argued, people often try to acquire wealth as much out of amour-propre as amour de soi-même. For example, an individual may purchase a fancy car to impress his or her neighbors as well as for its superior gas mileage. Still, the motivations are analytically distinct and should not be collapsed under the general category of preference.
More negatively, some liberal and utilitarian theorists describe the passions in the amour-propre family—such as pride, envy, jealousy, and vanity—as impediments to utilitarian calculations and rational decision making. They are characterized as unfortunate behavioral tics that need to be overcome.13 For example, there is an old maxim that instructs people not to let foolish pride get in the way of attaining their goals. Similarly, envy is typically viewed as counterproductive and contrary to reason. John Rawls, who writes from a neo-Kantian perspective, defines envy as a willingness to harm oneself to deny pleasure to others.14 Conceived as such, envy appears to be a stupid emotion, or at least one that would not frequently survive a cost-benefit analysis. For instance, Harry Frankfurt argues that contemporary concerns about inequality are often laced with envy and hence are self-destructive. Too many Americans, he worries, foolishly “alienate” themselves by enviously comparing themselves to their more successful neighbors.15 In terms of mental health, he thinks nothing good can come from such comparisons.
Finally, vanity is often viewed as a puerile superficiality that distracts individuals from pursuing more substantial pleasures. Individuals obsessed with popularity or physical attractiveness may ignore what J. S. Mill termed the “higher pleasures.” In these cases, pride, envy, and vanity are ordinary, unbecoming vices that obstruct strategic thinking about what is truly best for individuals. The message is clear: “thou shalt not” experience pride, envy, or vanity, as if somehow humans would greatly improve as a species if they could expunge many of the passions and emotions that shape how they experience life.
The Limits of Rationality for Understanding Democratic Behavior
The near domination of utilitarianism, however, has been detrimental to political, social, and economic analysis precisely because its understanding of human psychology is confined to a limited set of cognitive processes. Individuals in commercial democracies are not merely calculators of preferences and advantages. They still experience pride, envy, vanity, and other passions associated with self-love. They still ask themselves existential questions of self-worth. While there is no denying the relevance and usefulness of utilitarian language in commercial democracies, there are numerous behaviors in such societies that cannot be understood exclusively through its terms. Indeed, political, economic, and social analysis is complicated business. It is doubtful whether one vocabulary or methodological approach could ever get to the bottom of it.16 Simply because utilitarianism is helpful for understanding democratic behavior and moral psychology does not mean that other ethical vocabularies have nothing to contribute.
It is noteworthy that at the dawn of commercial democracy a few generations of liberal theorists (as well as Rousseau) thought the psychology of amour-propre adequate for explaining some of the workings and rhythms of the economic and political changes developing right before their eyes. There was not an immediate felt need to revamp the moral and psychological language to accommodate such changes. The old moral language, which included both self-interest and glory, seemed up to the task. Even Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, relies on amour-propre to explain economic motivations in his earlier works. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments he reduces the desire for wealth to vanity: “It is vanity, not the ease or pleasure, which interests us … the rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the work.”17
Moreover, from time to time, contemporary social scientists make use of explanations and language reminiscent of the psychology of amour-propre to fully understand political, social, and economic behavior they observe in the United States, the quintessential commercial democracy. For example, since the Great Depression, psychologists have argued that individuals who lose their job experience feelings of worthlessness and a loss of a sense of self, which may hinder their attempts to reenter the labor force.18 Their reflective evaluation of their social value, in other words, undermines their strategic calculations to improve their financial condition. A similar dynamic plays out in social and economic inequality. It has long been speculated that the American poor often lack a sense of self-worth. As Michael Harrington once argued, they “are pessimistic and defeated … and … are victimized by mental suffering to a degree unknown in Suburbia.”19 The mind-set of a poor person, simply put, contains much more than a series of calculations for climbing the economic ladder. They, like all people, possess a “reflective reasoning” that asks existential questions inspired by amour-propre, such as “Do I have value?” These considerations undoubtedly affect their economic behavior. In addition, sociologists and psychologists have successfully proved that racial or gender identity can affect academic performance. Individuals who think they will perform poorly because they are members of a historically