The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith's 1759 account of how moral judgement grows out of sympathy between people.
At a glance
Key ideas
Sympathy, The impartial spectator, Conscience from feedback …
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Adam Smith and David Hume
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- Smith asks how people, who begin life with no moral sentiments, come to judge right and wrong.
- His answer is sympathy: by imagining ourselves in another's place, we feel with them and seek their fellow-feeling in return.
- Watching others judge us makes us aware of how we look, and this habit becomes conscience.
- He also argues that admiring the rich and neglecting the poor is the great cause of the corruption of moral sentiments.
Why it matters
- It is the ethical foundation of Smith's later work, including The Wealth of Nations, and Smith himself is believed to have thought it the better book.
Key facts
- Author
- Adam Smith1
- Published
- 1759, by Andrew Millar of London and Alexander Kincaid of Edinburgh2
- Origin
- Drew on his moral philosophy lectures at the University of Glasgow2
- Revisions
- Smith kept revising it until his death in 1790; the sixth edition has seven parts2
- Departs from
- The "moral sense" of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and the utility of Hume, putting sympathy in their place2
Key ideas
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Sympathy1
"Our fellow-feeling with any passion whatsoever", formed by imagining what we would feel in another's situation.
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The impartial spectator2
People seek the approval of an imagined impartial observer, and that desire shapes their conduct.
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Conscience from feedback2
Perceiving others' judgements of us builds habits, then principles, which come to constitute conscience.
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Admiring the rich corrupts1
Deference to wealth keeps social order but is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of moral sentiments.
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Custom and fashion1
What people find beautiful or proper leans on what they are used to, though no custom can make a Nero admirable.
Connections
Links
Sources
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