The Nexus Archive
Political Economy · Treatise
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
by Adam Smith · The Philosopher of Exchange · Scottish Enlightenment, 1723-1790
Smith's moral philosophy of sympathy, judgment, conscience, and social approval.
- Advanced
- ~8 hr 30 min read
- 18 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Of Sympathy guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Spectator Within
Adam Smith begins moral philosophy at the instant one person tries to enter another's situation. We never feel a neighbor's pain directly; imagination carries us across the distance. From that ordinary act of fellow-feeling, Smith builds an account of praise, resentment, conscience, justice, ambition, and virtue.
The argument keeps changing vantage point. The view shifts from the person moved by a passion to the spectator judging whether that passion fits its cause; eventually the two positions meet in an actor learning to judge a private feeling from an impartial standpoint. Moral self-command emerges not from isolation but from a lifetime of seeing and being seen.
Smith's inquiry into language returns to the effort to make private experience intelligible in a shared world. Repeated attempts to communicate produce patterns of speech, while the mixture of peoples changes the rules they inherit. Easier grammar, he argues, can come at the cost of concision, musical variety, and freedom of arrangement.
The opening pages
Of Sympathy
PART I. Of the PROPRIETY of ACTION.
Consisting of three Sections.
SECTION I. Of the Sense of Propriety.
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some measure him, and thence form some idea of his sensations and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dullness of the conception.
Chapter guides · 18
Of Sympathy
Sympathy Begins With An Act Of Imagination
Smith's spectator cannot feel another person's passion directly; fellow-feeling begins by changing places in fancy.
What changed
Smith starts from distance, not emotional fusion. We infer another person's experience by imagining ourselves in the situation, and the feeling produced in us can differ sharply from what that person actually feels.
Why it matters
This makes sympathy a mechanism of moral judgment rather than a synonym for kindness. It can reach pain, joy, anger, madness, infancy, and even the dead, but it always contains the spectator's projection.
Where it ends
Smith ends with sympathy for the dead: imagination places a living consciousness inside the grave and makes death terrifying. That dread poisons individual happiness, yet also restrains injustice and helps protect society.
The Amiable and Respectable Virtues
Moral Harmony Requires Work From Both Sides
The spectator reaches outward through humanity while the sufferer restrains emotion through self-command.
What changed
Smith turns a theory of judgment into a theory of virtue. The spectator must make a generous effort to enter another's case, while the person principally concerned must lower passion to a pitch others can share.
Why it matters
The amiable virtues and the respectable virtues answer opposite failures. A cold spectator needs sensibility; an engulfed sufferer needs command of self. Moral life is the difficult meeting of those motions.
Where it ends
Virtue is judged against two standards: an ideal of perfect conduct and the level people commonly attain. A poet or painter can fall short of imagined perfection while still earning the highest praise beside other artists; exceptional moral effort deserves the same distinction.
The Unsocial Passions
Resentment Needs A Publicly Intelligible Cause
An unsocial passion can support justice only after the spectator judges its object, measure, and expression.
Ambition and the Distinction of Ranks
We Pursue Rank To Be Seen
Wealth commands notice and poverty conceals it; the desire for distinction can outweigh both comfort and sound judgment.
The Stoical Philosophy
Fortune Is Bearable; Contempt Is Harder
The Stoic ideal locates happiness in worthy conduct, while public humiliation exposes the need for sympathetic recognition.
The Sense of Merit and Demerit
Desert Joins Motive, Effect, And Fellow-Feeling
Reward and punishment feel fitting when spectators can enter both the agent's motive and the recipient's gratitude or resentment.
The Utility of This Constitution
Justice Is A Pillar, Not An Ornament
Society can survive without universal generosity, but repeated injury destroys the security on which social life depends.
The Final Cause of Fortune's Influence
Moral Luck Makes Action Possible
Our irregular attention to actual results distorts desert, yet Smith argues that the same distortion restrains fantasy and drives real achievement.
Self-Deceit and General Rules
General Rules Check The Self-Deceiving Judge
Conscience grows from social judgment but becomes capable of reversing applause, condemnation, and our own self-serving view.
Duty as Sole or Concurrent Motive
Rules Govern Justice More Exactly Than Other Virtues
Duty can steady conduct, but Smith refuses to make every virtue a mechanical obedience to maxims.
Utility in Character and Action
Utility Adds To Approval Without Explaining It All
Useful results lend beauty to character, while sympathy explains the distinct feelings involved in moral judgment.
Custom at the Edge of Humanity
Custom Can Make Cruelty Seem Blameless
Habits shape manners, but Smith's strongest example is the acceptance of infant exposure even among humane philosophers.
Questions for a Theory of Moral Sentiments
Every Moral System Must Answer Two Different Questions
What makes a character virtuous is not the same inquiry as what enables us to recognize and approve it.
Stoic and Modern Propriety
Propriety Is Broad Enough To Unite Rival Ancient Systems
Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno disagree, but each makes virtue a fitting order of passions, judgment, and conduct.
Licentious Systems
A Corrupt Theory Flatters The Vice It Should Judge
Mandeville turns every polished virtue into disguised vanity, and Smith answers by distinguishing disciplined passion from the absence of passion.
Approbation from Sentiment
Sentiment Explains Approval, But Not As A Mysterious Extra Sense
Smith accepts that moral judgment is felt while resisting the claim that it requires a unique faculty detached from ordinary sympathy.
Casuistry and Natural Jurisprudence
Rules Cannot Replace The Judgment Of A Good Person
Smith preserves exact rules for justice while rejecting casuistry's attempt to legislate every circumstance of conscience.
Simple and Compounded Languages
Simpler Grammar Can Restrict Expression
Smith proposes that contact between peoples simplifies inflections, then weighs the expressive costs of that change.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments?
- About 8 hr 30 min in total.
- How difficult is The Theory of Moral Sentiments?
- Advanced. A long treatise; about 9 hours of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1759. The text follows The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Dublin issue styled ‘The Sixth Edition’ (1777).
- Can I read The Theory of Moral Sentiments for free?
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 18 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. His Wealth of Nations helped found modern economics, while his broader thought links markets, moral sentiments, labor, incentives, and institutions.
“How does self-interest become social order, and when does it fail?”
Smith lets Nexus build a serious economics shelf without losing the moral and institutional questions behind commerce.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.