Love of Dominion in Mandeville and Smith

In explaining why slavery persists despite its economic inefficiency in The Wealth of Nations , Adam Smith claimed that the “pride of man makes him love to domineer.” In this article, I argue that we can better understand Smith’s views on the love of dominion through, first, comparison with Bernard Mandeville’s account of the passion and, second, consideration of Smith’s distinction between vanity and pride. I show that where Mandeville thought our love of dominion could be satisfied by persuading others to do as we wish, Smith precludes this possibility by drawing a much sharper contrast between domineering over and persuading others, from which it follows that finding ways to assuage our love of dominion is a more challenging problem for Smith than it is for Mandeville. I then turn to Smith’s (largely neglected) distinction between vanity and pride to contend that the most plausible way of explaining the love of dominion, in accordance with the moral psychology of The Theory of Moral Sentiments , is as a manifestation of pride rather than vanity. In doing so, I distil two distinct models of why we seek to exercise power over others from Smith’s thought: one based on vanity and persuasion, the other on pride and domineering.