The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Contents

1. Advertisement 3 min 3

   Smith’s note to the 1790 edition lists his main changes since 1759: a new chapter in Part I, a revised Part III, an entirely new Part VI, and a fuller Part VII. He also explains why he leaves standing his old promise of a work on law and government, only partly kept by The Wealth of Nations.

2. I.i Of the Sense of Propriety 55 min 11

   Smith founds morality on sympathy: because we cannot feel what others feel, we imagine ourselves in their situation, and so share, more weakly, any passion they have. Mutual sympathy pleases for its own sake, which refutes systems deriving everything from self-love. To approve another’s feelings is to find that we, in his place, would feel the same. Since spectators always feel less than the person concerned, he lowers his passion and they strive to enter into it; from these two efforts spring the amiable virtues of humanity and the respectable virtues of self-command, judged by an impartial spectator.

3. I.ii Of the Degrees of the Different Passions Which Are Consistent with Propriety 53 min 5

   Propriety lies in a mean that differs from passion to passion according to how far spectators can sympathise. Bodily appetites and pain win little sympathy, so restraint in them is admired; passions of the imagination, like love or disappointed ambition, win more. Hatred and resentment divide our sympathy between the angry man and his object and must be heavily moderated. The social passions, generosity and kindness, enjoy a double sympathy and please even in excess. Private joys and griefs lie between: we share small joys and great sorrows, but envy the suddenly risen upstart.

4. I.iii Of the Effects of Prosperity and Adversity Upon the Judgment of Mankind with Regard to the Propriety of Action; and Why It Is More Easy to Obtain Their Approbation in the One State Than in the Other 1 h 4 min 17

   Because we sympathise more readily with joy than with sorrow, we parade wealth and hide poverty; ambition and the desire to better our condition aim at being noticed and approved, not at ease. This admiration of the rich founds the distinction of ranks and the obedience of subjects, and lets the great rule by deportment while the middling ranks rise by real ability. In a chapter added in 1790 Smith calls it the chief cause of the corruption of moral sentiments, since wealth draws the respect due to virtue, though in the middling stations honesty still proves the best policy.

5. II.i Of the Sense of Merit and Demerit 29 min 4

   Part II turns from propriety to merit and demerit, the qualities of deserving reward and punishment. Gratitude prompts reward and resentment prompts punishment, so actions seem to deserve these when an impartial spectator shares the gratitude or resentment they provoke. That sympathy requires approving or disapproving the agent’s motives as well. The sense of merit is therefore compound: a direct sympathy with the agent and an indirect sympathy with those he benefits or injures, as when we read of a Scipio or a Nero.

6. II.ii Of Justice and Beneficence 41 min 10

   Beneficence is free and cannot be compelled; justice, which forbids real harm to others’ persons, property and contracts, may be enforced because its violation provokes shared resentment. Justice is a negative virtue, often fulfilled by doing nothing, yet it is the main pillar of society, while beneficence is only its ornament. Self-love is allowed in the race for wealth, but not foul play. Remorse and the consciousness of merit follow from imagining how others see us. Our sense of justice arises from resentment, not from reflection on the utility of punishment to society.

7. II.iii Of the Influence of Fortune Upon the Sentiments of Mankind, with Regard to the Merit or Demerit of Actions 49 min 10

   Praise and blame ought to depend only on intentions, yet fortune shapes our sentiments: unsuccessful good or evil designs seem less meritorious or culpable, and accidental consequences add a shadow of merit or demerit, even to messengers of news or careless agents. Smith traces this to the way gratitude and resentment respond to pleasure and pain, surveys its effect on law, from treason and attempted murder to negligence and the Aquilian law, and argues that nature intends it: it keeps thoughts beyond human punishment, spurs men to action, and makes us careful of one another’s happiness.

8. III Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty (Chapters I–III) 2 h 9 min 28

   Smith turns from judging others to judging ourselves. We see our own conduct only through the eyes of an imagined “fair and impartial spectator”, a standpoint learned in society, as a face is seen only in a mirror. Chapter II, largely new in 1790, separates the love of praise from the love of praise-worthiness and treats conscience as a court of appeal from public opinion, with Calas, Massillon and the quarrels of poets as examples. Chapter III sets conscience against self-love (the earthquake in China), criticises both whining moralists and Stoic apathy, and gives a long account of self-command, adaptation to misfortune, and the corruption of judgment by faction.

9. III Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty (Chapters IV–VI) 1 h 10 min 10

   Self-deceit, the source of “half the disorders of human life”, is corrected by general rules of morality, which are generalised from particular feelings of approval and disapproval rather than being prior to them. Regard for these rules is the sense of duty, by which most people act. Religion, arising naturally as people ascribe their own sentiments to the gods, adds the sanction of divine law and the hope of a future state where injustice is righted. Chapter VI asks when duty alone should move us: benevolent affections should act of themselves, while the precise rules of justice, like grammar, demand strict obedience.

10. IV Of the Effect of Utility Upon the Sentiment of Approbation 43 min 11

    Utility is a source of beauty, as Hume showed, but Smith adds that we often value the fitness of the means more than the end. This explains the lover of trinkets and the ambitious poor man’s son, who toils for wealth that brings no real happiness. The “deception” drives the industry of mankind, and the rich, “led by an invisible hand”, share the necessaries with the poor. The same love of system inspires public spirit. Chapter II denies Hume’s claim that utility is the first ground of moral approval: we approve propriety first, as with prudence, generosity and public spirit.

11. V Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation 53 min 9

    Custom and fashion govern taste in dress, furniture, architecture, poetry and even natural beauty, where Smith partly accepts Buffier’s theory that the average form is the most beautiful. Their influence on morals is smaller: no custom can make Nero admirable. But custom shapes the characters expected of each profession, age and nation. Savage peoples, living in hardship, cultivate heroic self-command; civilised peoples cultivate humanity, and Smith condemns the slave trade for subjecting “nations of heroes” to European masters. Custom’s worst effect is to sanction particular practices, such as the exposure of infants in ancient Greece.

12. VI.i Of the Character of the Individual, So Far As It Affects His Own Happiness; or of Prudence 19 min 8

    Part VI, new in the 1790 edition, turns from the origin of moral judgement to the virtues themselves. This section treats prudence: care of one’s health, fortune, rank and reputation. Smith argues that the pursuit of fortune is driven above all by the wish for the respect of our equals. He portrays the prudent man as sincere, cautious, frugal, reserved and wary of faction, approved by the impartial spectator for sacrificing present ease to future security, yet earning only “cold esteem”. He distinguishes this inferior prudence from the superior prudence of the great statesman, and shows how imprudence aggravates crime, with Cesare Borgia’s murders at Senigallia as his example.

13. VI.ii Of the Character of the Individual, So Far As It Can Affect the Happiness of Other People 1 h 0 min 13

    How our character affects other people. Justice, the duty not to hurt, belongs to natural jurisprudence; this section explains the order in which nature directs our beneficence. Among individuals it runs from self to family, kin, friends, benefactors, and the great and the wretched. Affection is “habitual sympathy”, shaped by living together, so kinship ties are strong in pastoral clans and weak in commercial societies. Among societies, love of country comes first, but national envy is condemned. Smith analyses the orders that make up a constitution, contrasts the humane reformer with the “man of system” who moves people like chess pieces, and ends with universal benevolence and trust in Providence.

14. VI.iii Of Self-Command 1 h 18 min 9

    Self-command, the virtue that gives lustre to all others. Smith distinguishes command of the violent passions (fear and anger: fortitude) from command of the seductive ones (ease and pleasure: temperance), and notes that courage can serve injustice. He states a general rule: where a passion is agreeable to feel, the point of propriety lies nearer excess; where it is painful, nearer defect. Self-estimation is judged by two standards, ideal perfection and ordinary attainment. Smith examines the self-admiration of great men, the admiration of success that reconciles people to conquest, and the contrasting characters of the proud man and the vain man.

15. VI Conclusion of the Sixth Part 8 min 2

    A short summary of Part VI. Prudence is first recommended by self-love, justice and beneficence by benevolence, but all are directed by regard for the impartial spectator, the “inmate” who calls us to account each evening. Self-command depends almost entirely on the sense of propriety. Passion restrained by fear is only postponed, while passion moderated by sympathy is actually reduced. The virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence are approved partly for their utility; self-command is admired for the greatness of the exertion even when its effects are bad.

16. VII.i Of the Questions Which Ought to Be Examined in a Theory of Moral Sentiments 3 min

    Part VII opens a review of moral philosophy. Smith claims that every celebrated system has grasped part of the truth his own theory contains. He poses two questions: what virtue consists in (benevolence, fitness to relations, or prudent pursuit of happiness), and by what faculty we approve it (self-love, reason, a moral sense, or sympathy).

17. VII.ii Of the Different Accounts Which Have Been Given of the Nature of Virtue 2 h 21 min 33

    Theories of what virtue consists in, sorted into three classes. Propriety: Plato’s harmony of the soul, Aristotle’s habitual mean, and the Stoics, whose resignation to Providence, contempt of death and teaching on suicide Smith examines at length, explaining them by the insecurity of Greek political life. He then sets nature against Stoic apathy and criticises Clarke, Wollaston and Shaftesbury. Prudence: Epicurus, who reduced all virtue to the pursuit of bodily ease. Benevolence: the later Platonists and Hutcheson, whom Smith praises but faults for ignoring the self-regarding virtues. Last come the “licentious system” of Mandeville, and Smith’s reply distinguishing the love of praiseworthiness from vanity.

18. VII.iii Of the Different Systems Which Have Been Formed Concerning the Principle of Approbation 39 min 18

    Smith asks by what faculty we approve or disapprove, and sorts the answers into self-love, reason and sentiment, while insisting the question matters only to speculation. The selfish system of Hobbes and his followers mistakes sympathy, which imagines another’s situation as theirs, for self-interest. Reason, invoked by Cudworth against Hobbes, forms the general rules of morality but cannot supply the first perceptions of right and wrong, which come from feeling. Hutcheson’s moral sense is rejected: approval varies with what it approves, and our four sources of approval leave nothing over. Hume’s system of utility is noted as a cousin of Smith’s own.

19. VII.iv Of the Manner in Which Different Authors Have Treated of the Practical Rules of Morality 46 min 14

    Moralists have written either like critics, describing virtues in general (the ancients), or like grammarians, laying down exact rules (the casuists and natural lawyers). Jurisprudence asks what may be enforced; casuistry what conscience binds. The highwayman’s extorted promise shows the difference. Smith traces casuistry to auricular confession and clerical influence, analyses the casuists’ themes, including veracity and the desire to be believed that may underlie speech itself, and rejects casuistry as useless. Positive law imperfectly approximates natural justice; Grotius began natural jurisprudence, and Smith promises another discourse on law and government.

20. Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages, and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages 1 h 9 min 15

    Smith’s conjectural history of language. Names begin as proper names and become general through resemblance, answering Rousseau’s puzzle about species. Adjectives, prepositions, number words and pronouns require abstraction, so early languages expressed quality, relation, number and person by varying nouns and verbs: hence genders, cases and conjugations. The first verbs were impersonal. When nations mixed through conquest, adult learners replaced inflections with prepositions and auxiliary verbs, as in Italian, French and English. Such languages are simpler in principle but, unlike simplified machines, more prolix, less musical and more fixed in word order.