The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith's first book — sympathy and the impartial spectator as the foundations of moral judgment
Tradition: Scottish Enlightenment / moral sentimentalism
How sympathy and the impartial spectator construct moral judgment — the moral-philosophical foundation underneath the economics of The Wealth of Nations
The Theory of Moral Sentiments is Adam Smith's first book and the moral-philosophical foundation underneath his more famous Wealth of Nations. Smith argues that moral judgment is rooted not in reason alone but in "sympathy" — the imaginative capacity to enter another person's situation and feel what they feel. Moral approval emerges when we, considering an action from the perspective of an "impartial spectator," find that the agent's sentiments and conduct are appropriate to the situation. The book develops this framework into a rich theory of virtue (prudence, justice, beneficence, self-command), of merit and demerit, of duty, and of the nature of conscience as the "man within the breast." Smith repeatedly revised the work, with the major 6th edition (1790) substantially expanding the analysis of self-command and adding a treatment of corrupt admiration of wealth and power. The Theory of Moral Sentiments has been central to recent virtue-ethical and capabilities-based revivals of moral theory.
Author
Editions cited
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments (D. D. Raphael & A. L. Macfie, Glasgow Edition, Oxford, 1976; Liberty Fund reprint)
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge, 2002)
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Ryan Patrick Hanley, Penguin, 2009)
School Embodiments
Smith's working philosophical realism about moral life — moral judgment as it actually functions in social practice rather than as a rationalist deduction — is paradigmatically pragmatic-realist.
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others." (TMS I.i.1.1)
Smith's method is empirical observation of moral phenomena — feelings, judgments, social reactions — as the data of moral philosophy. He stands in the Humean empiricist line.
"Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please." (TMS III.2.6)
Smith treats moral life as a natural human phenomenon arising from natural sentiments, not from supernatural commands or a-priori reason.
"All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud, perfidy, and injustice." (TMS II.ii.3.10)
Smith's reverent but undogmatic theism — the invisible hand, the moral order as ultimately authored by a beneficent Author of Nature — is liberal-theological in temperament.
"The Author of nature has not entrusted it to his reason to find out [the means]." (TMS II.i.5.10, on the natural sentiments)
Smith engages Stoicism extensively — self-command, the impartial spectator as an internalisation of the cosmic spectator, the proper subordination of passion to reason — though he qualifies Stoic apathy with sympathetic engagement.
"The Stoic philosophy was the philosophy that pleased him most." (TMS VII.ii.1, on the Stoics)
Smith's moral realism — there are real moral facts, knowable through sympathetic reflection — stands against pure subjectivism even while grounding moral judgment in sentiment.
"Virtue consists in conformity to what is right." (TMS, paraphrasing the general view)
The "man within the breast" — conscience as an internalised social process built through sympathetic exchange — has process-philosophical overtones in the construction of the self.
"We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it." (TMS III.1.2)
Smith's working Author-of-Nature theism, with minimal interventionism and a strong order-of-creation rationalism, is recognisably deistic.
"Nature has implanted in the human breast." (TMS, recurrent phrase)
Classical political-economic tradition.
Internal Tensions
The relation between the Theory of Moral Sentiments (grounded in sympathy and other-regard) and the Wealth of Nations (grounded in self-interest and the invisible hand) is the famous "Adam Smith Problem." Modern scholarship (Otteson, Hanley, Rasmussen) has largely shown the two works to be compatible parts of a single project, with moral sentiments providing the framework within which commercial self-interest can function properly. The 6th-edition additions on the corruption of moral sentiments by admiration of wealth and power make this compatibility clearer.
I. Time
Newtonian background time; moral life unfolds in ordinary uni-directional history.
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II. Space
Newtonian background space; the social space of sympathy and the impartial spectator is the relevant "space" of moral life.
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III. Matter
Embodied human life in a material world; passions and sentiments have a bodily basis.
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IV. Observer
The Smithian observer is the sympathetic-imaginative agent, capable of taking up the impartial spectator 's standpoint. Plural, embodied, both active and passive in moral life.
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V. Energy
The energies of moral life — the passions — are natural human capacities to be cultivated and governed.
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VI. Information
Moral information is preserved through the social transmission of approbation and disapprobation; personal information of conscience is preserved through self-examination.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How The Theory of Moral Sentiments resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.