Ethical intuitionism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism

Ethical intuitionism (also called moral intuitionism) is a view or family of views in moral epistemology (and, on some definitions, metaphysics). It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known non-inferentially (i.e., known without one needing to infer them from other truths one believes). Such an epistemological view is by definition committed to the existence of knowledge of moral truths; therefore, ethical intuitionism implies cognitivism.

As a foundationalist epistemological position, ethical intuitionism contrasts with coherentist positions in moral epistemology, such as those that depend on reflective equilibrium.

Despite the name "ethical intuitionism", ethical intuitionists need not (though often do) accept that intuitions of value (or of evaluative facts) form the foundation of ethical knowledge; the common commitment of ethical intuitionists is to a non-inferential foundation for ethical knowledge, regardless of whether such a non-inferential foundation consists in intuitions as such.

Throughout the philosophical literature, the term "ethical intuitionism" is frequently used with significant variation in its sense. This article's focus on foundationalism reflects the core commitments of contemporary self-identified ethical intuitionists.

Sufficiently broadly defined, ethical intuitionism can be taken to encompass cognitivist forms of moral sense theory.^[4] It is usually furthermore taken as essential to ethical intuitionism that there be self-evident or a priori moral knowledge; this counts against considering moral sense theory to be a species of intuitionism. (see the Rational intuition versus moral sense section of this article for further discussion).

History

Early intuitionism

While there were ethical intuitionists in a broad sense at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, the philosophical school usually labelled as ethical intuitionism developed in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Early intuitionists like John Balguy, Ralph Cudworth, and Samuel Clarke were principally concerned with defending moral objectivism against the theories of Thomas Hobbes. Later, their views would be revived and developed by Richard Price and pitted against the moral sense theory of Francis Hutcheson, himself sometimes considered a sentimentalist intuitionist. Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy would be received in Britain as a German analog to Price, though according to R. M. Hare it is questionable whether Kant is an intuitionist.

Henry Sidgwick

In the 19th century, ethical intuitionism was considered by most British philosophers to be a philosophical rival of utilitarianism, until Henry Sidgwick showed there to be several logically distinct theories, both normative and epistemological, sharing the same label. For Sidgwick, intuitionism is about intuitive, i.e. non-inferential, knowledge of moral principles, which are self-evident to the knower. The criteria for this type of knowledge include that they are expressed in clear terms, that the different principles are mutually consistent with each other and that there is expert consensus on them. According to Sidgwick, commonsense moral principles fail to pass this test, but there are some more abstract principles that pass it, like that "what is right for me must be right for all persons in precisely similar circumstances" or that "one should be equally concerned with all temporal parts of one’s life". The most general principles arrived at this way are all compatible with utilitarianism, which is why Sidgwick sees a harmony between intuitionism and utilitarianism. There are also less general intuitive principles, like the duty to keep one's promises or to be just, but these principles are not universal and there are cases where different duties stand in conflict with each other. Sidgwick suggests that we resolve such conflicts in a utilitarian fashion by considering the consequences of the conflicting actions. Inspired by Sidgwick, 20th century philosopher C.D. Broad would coin the term "deontological ethics" to refer to the normative doctrines associated with intuitionism, leaving the phrase "ethical intuitionism" free to refer to the epistemological doctrines.

Intuitionism in analytic philosophy

Ethical intuitionism was popular in the early twentieth century, particularly among British analytic philosophers. H.A. Prichard gave a defense of the view in his "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (1912), wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments starting from non-normative premises for the principles of obligation that we pre-philosophically accept, such as the principle that one ought to keep one's promises or that one ought not to steal. This is a mistake, Prichard argued, both because it is impossible to derive any statement about what one ought to do from statements not concerning obligation (even statements about what is good), and because there is no need to do so since common sense principles of moral obligation are self-evident.

Prichard was influenced by G.E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1903) argued famously that goodness was an indefinable, non-natural property of which we had intuitive awareness. Moore originated the term "the naturalistic fallacy" to refer to the (alleged) error of confusing goodness with some natural property, and he deployed the Open Question Argument to show why this was an error. Unlike Prichard, Moore thought that one could derive principles of obligation from propositions about what is good.

W. D. Ross's intuitionism was influenced both by Prichard and Moore. He holds that we can know moral truths through intuition, for example, that it is wrong to lie or that knowledge is intrinsically good. Intuitions involve a direct apprehension that is not mediated by inferences or deductions: they are self-evident and therefore not in need of any additional proof. This ability is not inborn but has to be developed on the way to reaching mental maturity. But in its fully developed form, we can know moral truths just as well as we can know mathematical truths like the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. This self-evident knowledge is limited to general principles: we can come to know the prima facie duties this way, e.g. that, generally speaking, one should keep one's promises and refrain from harming others. But intuition is unable to reveal one's absolute duty in a particular situation: what one should do all things considered. All we can do is consult perception to determine which prima facie duty has the highest normative weight in this particular case, even though this usually does not amount to knowledge proper due to the complexity involved in most specific cases.

Ethical intuitionism suffered a dramatic fall from favor by the middle of the century, due in part to the influence of logical positivism, in part to the rising popularity of naturalism in philosophy, and in part to philosophical objections based on the phenomenon of widespread moral disagreement. C. L. Stevenson's emotivism would prove especially attractive to Moorean intuitionists seeking to avoid ethical naturalism. In the later parts of the 20th century, intuitionism would have few adherents to speak of; in Bernard Williams' words: "This model of intuition in ethics has been demolished by a succession of critics, and the ruins of it that remain above ground are not impressive enough to invite much history of what happened to it."

Contemporary developments

Some recent work suggests the view may be enjoying a resurgence of interest in academic philosophy. Robert Audi is one of the main contemporary supporters of ethical intuitionism. His 2005 book The Good in the Right claims to update and strengthen Rossian intuitionism and to develop the epistemology of ethics. Michael Huemer's book Ethical Intuitionism (2005) also provides a recent defense of the view. Furthermore, authors writing on normative ethics often accept methodological intuitionism as they present allegedly obvious or intuitive examples or thought experiments as support for their theories.

Definitional issues

Because it was not until Sidgwick that it was clear there were several distinct theses sharing the label "ethical intuitionism", the term has developed many different connotations. This is liable to cause confusion; for example, G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica is often considered a locus classicus defense of ethical intuitionism, yet Moore explicitly refuses the label because of the large number of differences between his own views and traditional intuitionists.

Inessential connotations

Traditionally, intuitionism was often understood as having several other commitments:

1. Moral realism, the view that there are objective facts of morality (as held by Mark Platts).
2. Ethical non-naturalism, the view that these evaluative facts cannot be reduced to natural fact.
3. Classical foundationalism, i.e., the view that intuited moral beliefs are: infallible (indefeasible), indubitable (irresistibly compelling), incorrigible, certain, or understandable without reflection.
4. The view that moral properties are "simple" (as held by G.E. Moore).
5. The view that moral truths are knowable only by intuition.

However, none of these positions are essential to the view; most ethical intuitionists (such as G.E. Moore and W.D. Ross) simply happen to have held those views as well.

Furthermore, intuitionists are often understood to be essentially committed to the existence of a special psychological faculty that reliably produces true moral intuitions. Few intuitionists, however, have explicitly required such a faculty exist, and some, such as Richard Price, would have explicitly denied it exists.

Pluralism

Secondly, sometimes the term "ethical intuitionism" is associated with a pluralistic, deontological position in normative ethics, a position defended by most ethical intuitionists, with Henry Sidgwick and G.E. Moore being notable exceptions.

"Intuitivism"

Robert Audi (2004, Ch. 1) points out that in applied ethics, philosophers frequently appeal to intuitions to justify their claims, even though they do not call themselves intuitionists. Audi hence uses the label "intuitivists" to refer to people who are intuitionists without labeling themselves as such.

On this broad understanding of intuitionism, there are only a few ways someone doing moral philosophy might not count as an intuitionist. First, they might really refrain from relying on intuitions in moral philosophy altogether (say, by attempting to derive all moral claims from claims about what certain individuals desire). Second, they might deny foundationalism in favor of (say) coherentism. Third, they might be non-cognitivists, holding that moral "beliefs" aren't really beliefs at all.

Rational intuition versus moral sense

Some use the term "ethical intuitionism" in moral philosophy to refer to the general position that we have some non-inferential moral knowledge (see Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006a and 2006b)—that is, basic moral knowledge that is not inferred from or based on any proposition. However, it is important to distinguish between empiricist versus rationalist models of this. Some, thus, reserve the term "ethical intuitionism" for the rationalist model and the term "moral sense theory" for the empiricist model (see Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006b, pp. 184–186, especially fn. 4). However, the terminology is not ultimately important, so long as one keeps in mind the relevant differences between these two views.

Generally speaking, rationalist ethical intuitionism models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on a priori, non-empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of mathematical truths; whereas moral sense theory models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of the colors of objects (see moral sense theory).

Rational intuition

The rationalist version of ethical intuitionism models ethical intuitions on a priori, non-empirically-based intuitions of truths, such as basic truths of mathematics. Take for example the belief that two minus one is one. This piece of knowledge is often thought to be non-inferential in that it is not grounded in or justified by some other proposition or claim. Rather, one who understands the relevant concepts involved in the proposition that two minus one is one has what one might call an "intuition" of the truth of the proposition. One intuits the truth of the proposition, rather than inferring it. Likewise, the ethical intuitionist claims that basic moral truths—whether they are principles (such as don't kill people) or judgments (such as it is wrong to kill people)—are known without inference, and in particular they are known via one's rational intuition.

Some rationalist ethical intuitionists characterize moral "intuitions" as a species of belief (for example, Audi, 2005, pp. 33–6) that are self-evident in that they are justified simply by virtue of one's understanding of the proposition believed. Others characterize "intuitions" as a distinct kind of mental state, in which something seems to one to be the case (whether one believes it or not) as a result of intellectual reflection. Michael Huemer (2005), for example, defines "intuition" as a sort of seeming:

Reasoning sometimes changes how things seem to us. But there is also a way things seem to us prior to reasoning; otherwise, reasoning could not get started. The way things seem prior to reasoning we may call an 'initial appearance'. An initial, intellectual appearance is an 'intuition'. That is, an intuition that p is a state of its seeming to one that p that is not dependent on inference from other beliefs and that results from thinking about p, as opposed to perceiving, remembering, or introspecting. An ethical intuition is an intuition whose content is an evaluative proposition. (§5.2)

Regardless of one's definition of rational intuition, intuitionists all agree that rational intuitions are not justified by inference from a separate belief.

Moral sense

Main article: Moral sense theory

Another version—what one might call the empiricist version—of ethical intuitionism models non-inferential ethical knowledge on sense perception. This version involves what is often called a "moral sense". According to moral sense theorists, certain moral truths are known via this moral sense simply on the basis of experience, not inference.

One way to understand the moral sense is to draw an analogy between it and other kinds of senses. Beauty, for example, is something we see in some faces, artworks and landscapes. We can also hear it in some pieces of music. We clearly do not need an independent aesthetic sense faculty to perceive beauty in the world. Our ordinary five senses are quite enough to observe it, though merely observing something beautiful is no guarantee that we can observe its beauty. In the same way, a color-blind person is not necessarily able to perceive the green color of grass although he is capable of vision. Suppose we give a name to this ability to appreciate the beauty in things we see: one might call it the aesthetic sense. This aesthetic sense does not come automatically to all people with perfect vision and hearing, so it is fair to describe it as something extra, something not wholly reducible to vision and hearing. As the aesthetic sense informs us about what is beautiful, we can analogically understand the moral sense as informing us of what is good. People with a functioning moral sense get a clear impression of wrongness when they see puppies being kicked, for example.

Moral sense theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_sense_theory 

Moral sense theory (also known as moral sentimentalism) is a theory in moral epistemology and meta-ethics concerning the discovery of moral truths. Moral sense theory typically holds that distinctions between morality and immorality are discovered by emotional responses to experience. Some take it to be primarily a view about the nature of moral facts or moral beliefs (a primarily metaphysical view)—this form of the view more often goes by the name "sentimentalism". Others take the view to be primarily about the nature of justifying moral beliefs (a primarily epistemological view)—this form of the view more often goes by the name "moral sense theory". However, some theorists take the view to be one which claims that both moral facts and how one comes to be justified in believing them are necessarily bound up with human emotions.

Popular historical advocates of some version of the moral sense theory or sentimentalism include the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723–1790). Some contemporary advocates include Michael Slote, Justin D'Arms, Daniel Jacobson, Jesse Prinz, Jonathan Haidt, and perhaps John McDowell. Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard endorse a non-cognitivist form of sentimentalism.

Intuition versus moral sense

Some use the term "ethical intuitionism" in moral philosophy to refer to the general position that we have some non-inferential moral knowledge (that is, basic moral knowledge that is not inferred from or based on any proposition). On this definition, moral sense theory is a form of ethical intuitionism.

However, it is important to distinguish between empiricist versus rationalist models of this. One may thus distinguish between rationalist ethical intuitionism for the rationalist version and "moral sense theory" for the empiricist version. (This will be the use of the terms here. However, the terminology is not ultimately important, so long as one keeps in mind the relevant differences between these two models of non-inferential moral knowledge.)

History

The first prominent moral sense theory (especially using the term "sense") is found in Mencius (372–289 BCE). The eponymous text deals with an innate moral sense possessed by all human beings. All orthodox interpretations of Confucianism accept this view, several unorthodox groups make a point of refuting it (see: Xunzi). This line of thinking reached its most extreme iteration in xinxue, a form of Neo-Confucianism associated with the Ming Dynasty and Wang Yangming.

In the west, the first prominent moral sense theory is found in Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). His major work espousing a form of moral sense theory is An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (first published in an unauthorized edition in 1699).

Subsequently, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) developed a version of moral sense theory. The chief statements of his theory occur in An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good (1725; Treatise II of An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue) and An Essay On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, With Illustrations Upon the Moral Sense (1728).

Arguably the most prominent defender of moral sense theory in the history of philosophy is David Hume (1711–1776). While he discusses morality in Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume's most mature, positive account of the moral sense is found in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).

Adam Smith also advanced a form of moral sense theory in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Smith focused less on a single faculty of the moral sense and more on the various sentiments that make up the moral feelings that ground moral judgments.

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) defends moral sense theory in his Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind. He compares the moral sense to sight and hearing, and defends its veridicality on the same ground as those.

The introduction of Herbert Spencer's Social Statics argued on behalf of moral sense theory.

Overview

^{[citation needed]}The moral sense is often described as providing information in a way analogous to other sensory modalities, such as sight in the perception of colors. It is contrasted with the way in which one acquires a priori, non-empirical knowledge, such as mathematical knowledge for example.

One way to understand the moral sense is to draw an analogy between it and other kinds of senses. Beauty is something we see in some faces, artworks and landscapes. We can also hear it in some pieces of music. We clearly do not need an independent aesthetic sense faculty to perceive beauty in the world. Our ordinary five senses are quite enough to observe it, though merely observing something beautiful is not by itself enough to appreciate its beauty. Suppose we give a name to this ability to appreciate the beauty in things we see: let's call it the aesthetic sense.

This aesthetic sense does not come automatically to all people with perfect vision and hearing, so it is fair to describe it as something extra, something not wholly reducible to vision and hearing. As the aesthetic sense informs us about what is beautiful, we can analogically understand the moral sense as informing us of what is good. People with a functioning moral sense get a clear impression of wrongness when they see (or perhaps even imagine) someone being mugged, for example.

However, though the wrongness is obvious, we may find it very difficult to list the features of the scene which account for the wrongness. We discover wrongness through observing natural properties with our five senses. Can we list the necessary and sufficient conditions such that any action which satisfies these conditions is wrong?

The ethical naturalist thinks that in principle, we can. For naturalists, rightness and wrongness are nothing more than certain combinations of natural, non-evaluative properties. Since we can in principle build mechanical detectors for all these natural properties, the ethical naturalist thinks wrongness is something that a machine could eventually detect.

The ethical intuitionist typically disagrees (although, it is not essential to the view): they see a wide conceptual gap between natural facts and evaluations. There seem to be no valid arguments in which purely descriptive/factual premises entail a prescriptive/evaluative conclusion.

Ethical intuitionists claim that only an agent with a moral sense can observe natural properties and through them discover the moral properties of the situation. Without the moral sense, you might see and hear all the colors and yelps, but the moral properties would remain hidden, and there would be in principle no way to ever discover them (except, of course, via testimony from someone else with a moral sense).

Criticisms

The key opponents of moral sense theory (as a primarily epistemological view) are rationalist ethical intuitionists—such as G.E. Moore (1903), W.D. Ross (1930), and Michael Huemer (2005), and other moral rationalists, such as Immanuel Kant and Samuel Clarke.

For a recent criticism of sentimentalism (as a primarily metaphysical thesis), see François Schroeter (2006). D'Arms and Jacobson (2000) also provide a recent critique; however, they criticize "simple sentimentalism" and defend a more "sophisticated sentimentalism".

Joshua Greene criticizes the epistemic basis of moral sentimentalism because of beliefs formed in response to morally irrelevant factors. These factors change our moral decisions, but they should not because they do not have a bearing on the morality of the decision. The example he uses is the trolley problem and compares it to the fat man rendition of it. Empirical data shows that people chose differently between the two scenarios despite the consequences being the same; the only difference being pulling a switch in the former and pushing the man in the latter.^[1]

 

Sentimentality

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimentality

Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but in current usage the term commonly connotes a reliance on shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.

Sentimentalism in philosophy is a view in meta-ethics according to which morality is somehow grounded in moral sentiments or emotions. Sentimentalism in literature refers to techniques a writer employs to induce a tender emotional response disproportionate to the situation at hand (and thus to substitute heightened and generally uncritical feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgments). The term may also characterize the tendency of some readers to invest strong emotions in trite or conventional fictional situations.

"A sentimentalist", Oscar Wilde wrote, "is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sends Buck Mulligan a telegram that reads "The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done." James Baldwin considered that "Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel...the mask of cruelty". This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald contrasts sentimentalists and romantics, with Amory Blaine telling Rosalind, "I'm not sentimental—I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't."

18th-century origins

In the mid-18th century, a querulous lady had complained to Richardson: "What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue among the polite...Everything clever and agreeable is comprehended in that word...such a one is a sentimental man; we were a sentimental party". What she was observing was the way the term was becoming a European obsession—part of the Enlightenment drive to foster the individual's capacity to recognise virtue at a visceral level. Everywhere in the sentimental novel or the sentimental comedy, "lively and effusive emotion is celebrated as evidence of a good heart". Moral philosophers saw sentimentality as a cure for social isolation; and Adam Smith indeed considered that "the poets and romance writers, who best paint...domestic affections, Racine and Voltaire; Richardson, Maurivaux and Riccoboni; are, in such cases, much better instructors than Zeno" and the Stoics.

By the close of the century, however, a reaction had occurred against what had come to be considered sentimental excess, by then seen as false and self-indulgent—especially after Schiller's 1795 division of poets into two classes, the "naive" and the "sentimental"—regarded respectively as natural and as artificial.

Modern times

In modern times "sentimental" is a pejorative term that has been casually applied to works of art and literature that exceed the viewer or reader's sense of decorum—the extent of permissible emotion—and standards of taste: "excessiveness" is the criterion; "Meretricious" and "contrived" sham pathos are the hallmark of sentimentality, where the morality that underlies the work is both intrusive and pat.

"Sentimentality often involves situations which evoke very intense feelings: love affairs, childbirth, death", but where the feelings are expressed with "reduced intensity and duration of emotional experience...diluted to a safe strength by idealisation and simplification".

Nevertheless, as a social force sentimentality is a hardy perennial, appearing for example as "'Romantic sentimentality...in the 1960s slogans 'flower power' and 'make love not war'". The 1990s public outpouring of grief at the death of Diana, "when they go on about fake sentimentality in relation to Princess Diana", also raised issues about the "powerful streak of sentimentality in the British character"—the extent to which "sentimentality was a grand old national tradition".

Baudrillard has cynically attacked the sentimentality of Western humanitarianism, suggesting that "in the New Sentimental Order, the affluent become consumers of the 'ever more delightful spectacle of poverty and catastrophe, and of the moving spectacle of our own attempts to alleviate it'". There is also the issue of what has been called "indecent sentimentality...[in] pornographical pseudo-classics", so that one might say for example that "Fanny Hill is a very sentimental novel, a faked Eden".

However, in sociology it is possible to see the "sentimental tradition" as extending into the present-day—to see, for example, "Parsons as one of the great social philosophers in the sentimental tradition of Adam Smith, Burke, McLuhan, and Goffman...concerned with the relation between the rational and sentimental bases of social order raised by the market reorientation of motivation". Francis Fukuyama takes up the theme through the exploration of "society's stock of shared values as social capital".

In a "subjective confession" of 1932, Ulysses: a Monologue, the analytic psychologist Carl Jung anticipates Baudrillard when he writes: "Think of the lamentable role of popular sentiment in wartime! Think of our so-called humanitarianism! The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality. Unfeelingness is the counter-position and inevitably suffers from the same defects." [Carl Jung: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 143]

Dissensions

Complications enter into the ordinary view of sentimentality, however, when changes in fashion and setting— the "climate of thought"—intrude between the work and the reader. The view that sentimentality is relative is inherent in John Ciardi's "sympathetic contract", in which the reader agrees to join with the writer when approaching a poem. The example of the death of Little Nell in Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41), "a scene that for many readers today might represent a defining instance of sentimentality", brought tears to the eye of many highly critical readers of the day. The reader of Dickens, Richard Holt Hutton observed, "has the painful impression of pathos feasting upon itself."

"Recent feminist theory has clarified the use of the term as it applies to the genre" of the sentimental novel, stressing the way that 'different cultural assumptions arising from the oppression of women gave liberating significance to the works' piety and mythical power to the ideals of the heroines".

Sentimental fallacy

The sentimental fallacy is an ancient rhetorical device that attributes human emotions, such as grief or anger, to the forces of nature. This is also known as the pathetic fallacy, "a term coined by John Ruskin ... for the practice of attributing human emotions to the inanimate or unintelligent world"—as in "the sentimental poetic trope of the 'pathetic fallacy', beloved of Theocritus, Virgil and their successors" in the pastoral tradition.

The term is also used more indiscriminately to discredit any argument as being based on a misweighting of emotion: "sentimental fallacies...that men, that we, are better—nobler—than we know ourselves to be"; "the 'sentimental fallacy' of constructing novels or plays 'out of purely emotional patterns'".

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Author	Adam Smith
Country	Scotland
Subjects	Human nature, Morality
Publisher	"printed for Andrew Millar, in the Strand; and Alexander Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh"
Publication date	on or before 12 April 1759

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, economic, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including The Wealth of Nations (1776), Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795), and Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms (1763) (first published in 1896).

Sympathy

Smith departed from the "moral sense" tradition of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, as the principle of sympathy takes the place of that organ. "Sympathy" was the term Smith used for the feeling of these moral sentiments. It was the feeling with the passions of others. It operated through a logic of mirroring, in which a spectator imaginatively reconstructed the experience of the person he watches:

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 on 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 ...

However, Smith rejected the idea that Man was capable of forming moral judgements beyond a limited sphere of activity, again centered on his own self-interest:

The administration of the great system of the universe ... the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country.... But though we are ... endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.

The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

In a published lecture, Vernon L. Smith further argued that Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations together encompassed:

"one behavioral axiom, 'the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another,' where the objects of trade I will interpret to include not only goods, but also gifts, assistance, and favors out of sympathy ... whether it is goods or favors that are exchanged, they bestow gains from trade that humans seek relentlessly in all social transactions. Thus, Adam Smith's single axiom, broadly interpreted ... is sufficient to characterize a major portion of the human social and cultural enterprise. It explains why human nature appears to be simultaneously self-regarding and other-regarding."

The Theory of Moral Sentiments: Edition 6

Consists of 7 parts:

• Part I: Of the propriety of action
• Part II: Of merit and demerit; or of the objects of reward and punishment
• Part III: Of the foundations of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and conduct, and of the sense of duty.
• Part IV: Of the effect of utility upon the sentiments of approbation.
• Part V: Of the influence of custom and fashion upon the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation.
• Part VI: Of the character of virtue
• Part VII: Of systems of moral philosophy

Part I: Of the propriety of action

Part one of The Theory of Moral Sentiments consists of three sections:

• Section 1: Of the sense of propriety
• Section 2: Of the degrees of which different passions are consistent with propriety
• Section 3: 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 the other

Part I, Section I: Of the Sense of Propriety

Section 1 consists of 5 chapters:

• Chapter 1: Of sympathy
• Chapter 2: Of the pleasure of mutual sympathy
• Chapter 3: Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men by their concord or dissonance with our own
• Chapter 4: The same subject continued
• Chapter 5: Of the amiable and respectable virtues

Part I, Section I, Chapter I: Of Sympathy

According to Smith people have a natural tendency to care about the well-being of others for no other reason than the pleasure one gets from seeing them happy. He calls this sympathy, defining it "our fellow-feeling with any passion whatsoever" (p. 5). He argues that this occurs under either of two conditions:

• We see firsthand the fortune or misfortune of another person
• The fortune or misfortune is vividly depicted to us

Although this is apparently true, he follows to argue that this tendency lies even in "the greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society" (p. 2).

Smith also proposes several variables that can moderate the extent of sympathy, noting that the situation that is the cause of the passion is a large determinant of our response:

• The vividness of the account of the condition of another person

An important point put forth by Smith is that the degree to which we sympathize, or "tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels", is proportional to the degree of vividness in our observation or the description of the event.

• Knowledge of the causes of the emotions

When observing the anger of another person, for example, we are unlikely to sympathize with this person because we "are unacquainted with his provocation" and as a result cannot imagine what it is like to feel what he feels. Further, since we can see the "fear and resentment" of those who are the targets of the person's anger we are likely to sympathize and take side with them. Thus, sympathetic responses are often conditional on—or their magnitude is determined by—the causes of the emotion in the person being sympathized with.

• Whether other people are involved in the emotion

Specifically, emotions such as joy and grief tell us about the "good or bad fortune" of the person we are observing them in, whereas anger tells us about the bad fortune with respect to another person. It is the difference between intrapersonal emotions, such as joy and grief, and interpersonal emotions, such as anger, that causes the difference in sympathy, according to Smith. That is, intrapersonal emotions trigger at least some sympathy without the need for context whereas interpersonal emotions are dependent on context.

He also proposes a natural 'motor' response to seeing the actions of others: If we see a knife hacking off a person's leg we wince away, if we see someone dance we move in the same ways, we feel the injuries of others as if we had them ourselves.

Smith makes clear that we sympathize not only with the misery of others but also the joy; he states that observing an emotional state through the "looks and gestures" in another person is enough to initiate that emotional state in ourselves. Furthermore, we are generally insensitive to the real situation of the other person; we are instead sensitive to how we would feel ourselves if we were in the situation of the other person. For example, a mother with a suffering baby feels "the most complete image of misery and distress" while the child merely feels "the uneasiness of the present instant" (p. 8).

Part I, Section I, Chapter II: Of Pleasure and mutual sympathy

Smith continues by arguing that people feel pleasure from the presence of others with the same emotions as one's self, and displeasure in the presence of those with "contrary" emotions. Smith argues that this pleasure is not the result of self-interest: that others are more likely to assist oneself if they are in a similar emotional state. Smith also makes the case that pleasure from mutual sympathy is not derived merely from a heightening of the original felt emotion amplified by the other person. Smith further notes that people get more pleasure from the mutual sympathy of negative emotions than positive emotions; we feel "more anxious to communicate to our friends" (p. 13) our negative emotions.

Smith proposes that mutual sympathy heightens the original emotion and "disburdens" the person of sorrow. This is a 'relief' model of mutual sympathy, where mutual sympathy heightens the sorrow but also produces pleasure from relief "because the sweetness of his sympathy more than compensates the bitterness of that sorrow" (p. 14). In contrast, mocking or joking about their sorrow is the "cruelest insult" one can inflict on another person:

To seem to not be affected by the joy of our companions is but want of politeness; but to not wear a serious countentance when they tell us their afflictions, is real and gross inhumanity (p. 14).

He makes clear that mutual sympathy of negative emotions is a necessary condition for friendship, whereas mutual sympathy of positive emotions is desirable but not required. This is due to the "healing consolation of mutual sympathy" that a friend is 'required' to provide in response to "grief and resentment", as if not doing so would be akin to a failure to help the physically wounded.

Not only do we get pleasure from the sympathy of others, but we also obtain pleasure from being able to successfully sympathize with others, and discomfort from failing to do so. Sympathizing is pleasurable, failing to sympathize is aversive. Smith also makes the case that failing to sympathize with another person may not be aversive to ourselves but we may find the emotion of the other person unfounded and blame them, as when another person experiences great happiness or sadness in response to an event that we think should not warrant such a response.

Part I, Section I, Chapter III: Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men by their concord or dissonance with our own

Smith presents the argument that approval or disapproval of the feelings of others is completely determined by whether we sympathize or fail to sympathize with their emotions. Specifically, if we sympathize with the feelings of another we judge that their feelings are just, and if we do not sympathize we judge that their feelings are unjust.

This holds in matters of opinion also, as Smith flatly states that we judge the opinions of others as correct or incorrect merely by determining whether they agree with our own opinions. Smith also cites a few examples where our judgment is not in line with our emotions and sympathy, as when we judge the sorrow of a stranger who has lost her mother as being justified even though we know nothing about the stranger and do not sympathize ourselves. However, according to Smith these non-emotional judgments are not independent from sympathy in that although we do not feel sympathy we do recognize that sympathy would be appropriate and lead us to this judgment and thus deem the judgment as correct.

"Utopian" or Ideal Political Systems: "The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder."

— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759

Next, Smith puts forth that not only are the consequences of one's actions judged and used to determine whether one is just or unjust in committing them, but also whether one's sentiments justified the action that brought about the consequences. Thus, sympathy plays a role in determining judgments of the actions of others in that if we sympathize with the affections that brought about the action we are more likely to judge the action as just, and vice versa:

If upon bringing the case home to our own breast we find that the sentiments which it gives occasion to, coincide and tally with our own, we necessarily approve of them as proportioned and suitable to their objects; if otherwise, we necessarily disapprove of them, as extravagant and out of proportion (p. 20).

Part I, Section I, Chapter IV: The same subject continued

Smith delineates two conditions under which we judge the "propriety or impropriety of the sentiments of another person":

• 1 When the objects of the sentiments are considered alone
• 2 When the objects of the sentiments are considered in relation to the person or other persons

When one's sentiments coincide with another person's when the object is considered alone, then we judge that their sentiment is justified. Smith lists objects that are in one of two domains: science and taste. Smith argues that sympathy does not play a role in judgments of these objects; differences in judgment arise only due to difference in attention or mental acuity between people. When the judgment of another person agrees with us on these types of objects it is not notable; however, when another person's judgment differs from us, we assume that they have some special ability to discern characteristics of the object we have not already noticed, and thus view their judgment with special approbation called admiration.

Smith continues by noting that we assign value to judgments not based on usefulness (utility) but on similarity to our own judgment, and we attribute to those judgments which are in line with our own the qualities of correctness or truth in science, and justness or delicateness in taste. Thus, the utility of a judgment is "plainly an afterthought" and "not what first recommends them to our approbation" (p. 24).

Of objects that fall into the second category, such as the misfortune of oneself or another person, Smith argues that there is no common starting point for judgment but are vastly more important in maintaining social relations. Judgments of the first kind are irrelevant as long as one is able to share a sympathetic sentiment with another person; people may converse in total disagreement about objects of the first kind as long as each person appreciates the sentiments of the other to a reasonable degree. However, people become intolerable to each other when they have no feeling or sympathy for the misfortunes or resentment of the other: "You are confounded at my violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold insensibility and want of feelings" (p. 26).

Another important point Smith makes is that our sympathy will never reach the degree or "violence" of the person who experiences it, as our own "safety" and comfort as well as separation from the offending object constantly "intrude" on our efforts to induce a sympathetic state in ourselves. Thus, sympathy is never enough, as the "sole consolation" for the sufferer is "to see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions" (p. 28). Therefore, the original sufferer is likely to dampen his feelings to be in "concord" with the degree of sentiment expressible by the other person, who feels only due to the ability of one's imagination. It is this which is "sufficient for the harmony of society" (p. 28). Not only does the person dampen his expression of suffering for the purpose of sympathizing, but he also takes the perspective of the other person who is not suffering, thus slowly changing his perspective and allowing the calmness of the other person and reduction of violence of the sentiment to improve his spirits.

As a friend is likely to engage in more sympathy than a stranger, a friend actually slows the reduction in our sorrows because we do not temper our feelings out of sympathizing with the perspective of the friend to the degree that we reduce our sentiments in the presence of acquaintances, or a group of acquaintances. This gradual tempering of our sorrows from the repeated perspective-taking of someone in a more calm state make "society and conversation...the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquility" (p. 29).

Part I, Section I, Chapter V: Of the amiable and respectable virtues

Smith starts to use an important new distinction in this section and late in the previous section:

• The "person principally concerned": The person who has had emotions aroused by an object
• The spectator: The person observing and sympathizing with the emotionally aroused "person principally concerned"

These two people have two different sets of virtues. The person principally concerned, in "bring[ing] down emotions to what the spectator can go along with" (p. 30), demonstrates "self-denial" and "self-government" whereas the spectator displays "the candid condescension and indulgent humanity" of "enter[ing]into the sentiments of the person principally concerned."

Smith returns to anger and how we find "detestable...the insolence and brutality" of the person principally concerned but "admire...the indignation which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator" (p. 32). Smith concludes that the "perfection" of human nature is this mutual sympathy, or "love our neighbor as we love ourself" by "feeling much for others and little for ourself" and to indulge in "benevolent affections" (p. 32). Smith makes clear that it is this ability to "self-command" our "ungovernable passions" through sympathizing with others that is virtuous.

Smith further distinguishes between virtue and propriety:

Part I, Section II: Of the degrees of which different passions are consistent with propriety

Section 2 consists of 5 chapters:

• Chapter 1: Of the passions which take their origins from the body
• Chapter 2: Of the passions which take their origins from a particular turn or habit of the imagination
• Chapter 3: Of the unsocial passions
• Chapter 4: Of the social passions
• Chapter 5: Of the selfish passions

Smith starts off by noting that the spectator can sympathize only with passions of medium "pitch". However, this medium level at which the spectator can sympathize depends on what "passion" or emotion is being expressed; with some emotions even the most justified expression of cannot be tolerated at a high level of fervor, at others sympathy in the spectator is not bounded by magnitude of expression even though the emotion is not as well justified. Again, Smith emphasizes that specific passions will be considered appropriate or inappropriate to varying degrees depending on the degree to which the spectator is able to sympathize, and that it is the purpose of this section to specify which passions evoke sympathy and which do not and therefore which are deemed appropriate and not appropriate.

Part I, Section II, Chapter I: Of the passions which take their origins from the body

Since it is not possible to sympathize with bodily states or "appetites which take their origin in the body" it is improper to display them to others, according to Smith. One example is "eating voraciously" when hungry, as the impartial spectator can sympathize a little bit if there is a vivid description and good cause for this hunger, but not to a great extent as hunger itself cannot be induced from mere description. Smith also includes sex as a passion of the body that is considered indecent in the expression of others, although he does make note that to fail to treat a woman with more "gaiety, pleasantry, and attention" would also be improper of a man (p. 39). To express pain is also considered unbecoming.

Smith believes the cause of lack of sympathy for these bodily passions is that "we cannot enter into them" ourselves (p. 40). Temperance, by Smith's account, is to have control over bodily passions.

On the contrary, passions of the imagination, such as loss of love or ambition, are easy to sympathize with because our imagination can conform to the shape of the sufferer, whereas our body cannot do such a thing to the body of the sufferer. Pain is fleeting and the harm only lasts as long as the violence is inflicted, whereas an insult lasts to harm for longer duration because our imagination keeps mulling it over. Likewise, bodily pain that induces fear, such as a cut, wound or fracture, evoke sympathy because of the danger that they imply for ourselves; that is, sympathy is activated chiefly through imagining what it would be like for us.

Part I, Section II, Chapter II: Of the passions which take their origins from a particular turn or habit of the imagination

Passions which "take their origins from a particular turn or habit of the imagination" are "little sympathized with". These include love, as we are unlikely to enter into our own feeling of love in response to that of another person and thus unlikely to sympathize. He further states that love is "always laughed at, because we cannot enter into it" ourselves.

Instead of inspiring love in ourselves, and thus sympathy, love makes the impartial spectator sensitive to the situation and emotions that may arise from the gain or loss of love. Again this is because it is easy to imagine hoping for love or dreading loss of love but not the actual experience of it, and that the "happy passion, upon this account, interests us much less than the fearful and the melancholy" of losing happiness (p. 49). Thus, love inspires sympathy for not for love itself but for the anticipation of emotions from gaining or losing it.

Smith, however, finds love "ridiculous" but "not naturally odious" (p. 50). Thus, we sympathize with the "humaneness, generosity, kindness, friendship, and esteem" (p. 50) of love. However, as these secondary emotions are excessive in love, one should not express them but in moderate tones according to Smith, as:

All these are objects which we cannot expect should interest our companions in the same degree in which they interest us.

Failing to do so makes bad company, and therefore those with specific interests and "love" of hobbies should keep their passions to those with kindred spirits ("A philosopher is company to a philosopher only" (p. 51)) or to themselves.

Part I, Section II, Chapter III: Of the unsocial passions

Smith talks of hatred and resentment next, as "unsocial passions." According to Smith these are passions of imagination, but sympathy is only likely to be evoked in the impartial spectator when they are expressed in moderate tones. Because these passions regard two people, namely the offended (resentful or angry person) and the offender, our sympathies are naturally drawn between these two. Specifically, although we sympathize with the offended person, we fear that the offended person may do harm to the offender, and thus also fear for and sympathize with the danger that faces the offender.

The impartial spectator sympathizes with the offended person in a manner, as emphasized previously, such that the greatest sympathy occurs when the offended person expresses anger or resentment in a temperate manner. Specifically, if the offended person seems just and temperate in coping with the offense, then this magnifies the misdeed done to the offended in the mind of the spectator, increasing sympathy. Although excess anger does not beget sympathy, neither does too little anger, as this may signal fear or uncaring on the part of the offended. This lack of response is just as despicable to the impartial spectator as is the excesses of anger.

However, in general, any expression of anger is improper in the presence of others. This is because the "immediate effects [of anger] are disagreeable" just as the knives of surgery are disagreeable for art, as the immediate effect of surgery is unpleasant even though long-term effect is justified. Likewise, even when anger is justly provoked, it is disagreeable. According to Smith, this explains why we reserve sympathy until we know the cause of the anger or resentment, since, if the emotion is not justified by the action of another person, then the immediate disagreeableness and threat to the other person (and by sympathy to ourselves) overwhelm any sympathy that the spectator may have for the offended. In response to expressions of anger, hatred, or resentment, it is likely that the impartial spectator will not feel anger in sympathy with the offended but instead anger toward the offended for expressing such an aversive. Smith believes that there is some form of natural optimality to the aversiveness of these emotions, as it reduces the propagation of ill will among people, and thus increases the probability of functional societies.

Smith also puts forth that anger, hatred, and resentment are disagreeable to the offended mostly because of the idea of being offended rather than the actual offense itself. He remarks that we are likely able to do without what was taken from us, but it is the imagination which angers us at the thought of having something taken. Smith closes this section by remarking that the impartial spectator will not sympathize with us unless we are willing to endure harms, with the goal of maintaining positive social relations and humanity, with equanimity, as long as it does not put us in a situation of being "exposed to perpetual insults" (p. 59). It is only "with reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence of great and repeated provocations" (p. 60) that we should take revenge on others. Smith makes clear that we should take very good care to not act on the passions of anger, hatred, resentment, for purely social reasons, and instead imagine what the impartial spectator would deem appropriate, and base our action solely on a cold calculation.

Part I, Section II, Chapter IV: Of the social passions

The social emotions such as "generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem" are considered overwhelmingly with approbation by the impartial spectator. The agreeableness of the "benevolent" sentiments leads to full sympathy on the part of the spectator with both the person concerned and the object of these emotions and are not felt as aversive to the spectator if they are in excess.

Part I, Section II, Chapter V: Of the selfish passions

The final set of passions, or "selfish passions", are grief and joy, which Smith considers to be not so aversive as the unsocial passions of anger and resentment, but not so benevolent as the social passions such as generosity and humanity. Smith makes clear in this passage that the impartial spectator is unsympathetic to the unsocial emotions because they put the offended and the offender in opposition to each other, sympathetic to the social emotions because they join the lover and beloved in unison, and feels somewhere in between with the selfish passions as they are either good or bad for only one person and are not disagreeable but not so magnificent as the social emotions.

Of grief and joy, Smith notes that small joys and great grief are assured to be returned with sympathy from the impartial spectator, but not other degrees of these emotions. Great joy is likely to be met with envy, so modesty is prudent for someone who has come upon great fortune or else suffer the consequences of envy and disapprobation. This is appropriate as the spectator appreciates the lucky individual's "sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness" especially because this shows concern for the inability of the spectator to reciprocate the sympathy toward the happiness of the lucky individual. According to Smith, this modesty wears on the sympathy of both the lucky individual and the old friends of the lucky individual and they soon part ways; likewise, the lucky individual may acquire new friends of higher rank to whom he must also be modest, apologizing for the "mortification" of now being their equal:

He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked, by the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by the saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first with neglect, and the second with petulance, till at last he grows habitually insolent, and forfeits the esteem of them all... those sudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness (p. 66).

The solution is to ascend social rank by gradual steps, with the path cleared for one by approbation before one takes the next step, giving people time to adjust, and thus avoiding any "jealousy in those he overtakes, or any envy in those he leaves behind" (p. 66).

Small joys of everyday life are met with sympathy and approbation according to Smith. These "frivolous nothings which fill up the void of human life" (p. 67) divert attention and help us forget problems, reconciling us as with a lost friend.

The opposite is true for grief, with small grief triggering no sympathy in the impartial spectator, but large grief with much sympathy. Small griefs are likely, and appropriately, turned into joke and mockery by the sufferer, as the sufferer knows how complaining about small grievances to the impartial spectator will evoke ridicule in the heart of the spectator, and thus the sufferer sympathizes with this, mocking himself to some degree.

Part I, Section 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

Section 3 consists of 3 chapters:

• Chapter 1: That though our Sympathy with Sorrow is generally a more lively Sensation than our Sympathy with Joy, it commonly falls much more short of the Violence of what is naturally felt by the Person principally concerned
• Chapter 2: Of the Origin of Ambition, and of the Distinction of Ranks
• Chapter 3: Of the Corruption of our Moral Sentiments, which is occasioned by this Disposition to admire the Rich and the Great, and to despise or neglect Persons of poor and mean Condition

Part I, Section III, Chapter I: That though our Sympathy with Sorrow is generally a more lively Sensation than our Sympathy with Joy, it commonly falls much more short of the Violence of what is naturally felt by the Person principally concerned

Part I, Section III, Chapter II: Of the Origin of Ambition, and of the Distinction of Ranks

The rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world, and that mankind are disposed to go along with him in all those agreeable emotions with which the advantages of his situation so readily inspire him. At the thought of this, his heart seems to swell and dilate itself within him, and he is fonder of his wealth, upon this account, than for all the other advantages it procures him. The poor man, on the contrary, is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the sight of mankind, or, that if they take any notice of him, they have, however, scarce any fellow-feeling with the misery and distress which he suffers. Great King, live for ever! is the compliment, which, after the manner of eastern adulation, we should readily make them, if experience did not teach us its absurdity. Every calamity that befalls them, every injury that is done them, excites in the breast of the spectator ten times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt, had the same things happened to other men. A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine, that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations.

Upon this disposition of mankind, to go along with all the passions of the rich and the powerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the order of society. Even when the people have been brought this length, they are apt to relent every moment, and easily relapse into their habitual state of deference to those whom they have been accustomed to look upon as their natural superiors. They cannot stand the mortification of their monarch. Compassion soon takes the place of resentment, they forget all past provocations, their old principles of loyalty revive, and they run to re-establish the ruined authority of their old masters, with the same violence with which they had opposed it. The death of Charles I brought about the Restoration of the royal family. Compassion for James II when he was seized by the populace in making his escape on ship-board, had almost prevented the Revolution, and made it go on more heavily than before.

Part I, Section III, Chapter III: Of the Corruption of our Moral Sentiments, which is occasioned by this Disposition to admire the Rich and the Great, and to despise or neglect Persons of poor and mean Condition

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages. We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity. the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness. n the superior stations of life the case is unhappily not always the same. In the courts of princes, in the drawing-rooms of the great, where success and preferment depend, not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities. In such societies the abilities to please, are more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince, or great man, wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awful virtues, all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant flatterers, who commonly figure the most in such corrupted societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision. When the duke of Sully was called upon by Lewis the Thirteenth, to give his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favourites and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his unfashionable appearance. 'Whenever your majesty's father,' said the old warrior and statesman, 'did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the antechamber.'

It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to imitate, the rich and the great, that they are enabled to set, or to lead what is called the fashion. Their dress is the fashionable dress; the language of their conversation, the fashionable style; their air and deportment, the fashionable behaviour. Even their vices and follies are fashionable; and the greater part of men are proud to imitate and resemble them in the very qualities which dishonour and degrade them. Vain men often give themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which, in their hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they themselves do not think praise-worthy, and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practise in secret, and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration. There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is as apt to pretend to be what he is not, in the one way, as a cunning man is in the other. He assumes the equipage and splendid way of living of his superiors, without considering that whatever may be praise-worthy in any of these, derives its whole merit and propriety from its suitableness to that situation and fortune which both require and can easily support the expence. Many a poor man places his glory in being thought rich, without considering that the duties (if one may call such follies by so very venerable a name) which that reputation imposes upon him, must soon reduce him to beggary, and render his situation still more unlike that of those whom he admires and imitates, than it had been originally.

Part II. Of Merit and Demerit; or, of the Objects of Reward and Punishment

Section I. Of the Sense of Merit and Demerit

Chap. I. That whatever appears to be the proper Object of Gratitude, appears to deserve Reward; and that, in the same Manner, whatever appears to be the proper Object of Resentment, appears to deserve Punishment

Chap. II. Of the proper Objects of Gratitude and Resentment

Chap. III. That where there is no Approbation of the Conduct of the Person who confers the Benefit, there is little Sympathy with the Gratitude of him who receives it: and that, on the contrary, where there is no Disapprobation of the Motives of the Person who does the Mischief, there is no sort of Sympathy with the Resentment of him who suffers it

Chap. V. The analysis of the sense of Merit and Demerit

Section II. Of Justice and Beneficence

Chap. I. Comparison of those two virtues

Chap. II. Of the sense of Justice, of Remorse, and of the consciousness of Merit

Chap. III. Of the utility of this constitution of Nature

Chap. IV. Recapitulation of the foregoing chapters

Section III. Of the Influence of Fortune upon the Sentiments of Mankind, with regard to the Merit or Demerit of Actions

Chap. I. Of the causes of this Influence of Fortune

Chap. II. Of the extent of this influence of fortune

Chap. III. Of the final cause of this Irregularity of Sentiments

Part V, Chapter I: Of the influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiments of Approbation and Disapprobation

Smith argues that two principles, custom and fashion, pervasively influence judgment. These are based on the modern psychological concept of associativity: Stimuli presented closely in time or space become mentally linked over time and repeated exposure. In Smith's own words:

When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination requires a habit of passing easily from one to the other. If the first is to appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. (p. 1)

Regarding custom, Smith argues that approbation occurs when stimuli are presented according to how one is accustomed to viewing them and disapprobation occurs when they are presented in a way that one is not accustomed to. Thus, Smith argues for social relativity of judgment meaning that beauty and correctness are determined more by what one has previously been exposed to rather than an absolute principle. Although Smith places greater weight on this social determination he does not discount absolute principles completely, instead he argues that evaluations are rarely inconsistent with custom, therefore giving greater weight to customs than absolutes:

I cannot, however, be induced to believe that our sense of external beauty is founded altogether on custom...But though I cannot admit that custom is the sole principle of beauty, yet I can so far allow the truth of this ingenious system as to grant, that there is scarce any one external form to please, if quite contrary to custom...(pp. 14–15).

Smith continues by arguing that fashion is a particular "species" of custom. Fashion is specifically the association of stimuli with people of high rank, for example, a certain type of clothes with a notable person such as a king or a renowned artist. This is because the "graceful, easy, and commanding manners of the great" (p. 3) person are frequently associated with the other aspects of the person of high rank (e.g., clothes, manners), thus bestowing upon the other aspects the "graceful" quality of the person. In this way objects become fashionable. Smith includes not only clothes and furniture in the sphere of fashion, but also taste, music, poetry, architecture, and physical beauty.

Smith also points out that people should be relatively reluctant to change styles from what they are accustomed to even if a new style is equal to or slightly better than current fashion: "A man would be ridiculous who should appear in public with a suit of clothes quite different from those which are commonly worn, though the new dress be ever so graceful or convenient" (p. 7).

Physical beauty, according to Smith, is also determined by the principle of custom. He argues that each "class" of things has a "peculiar conformation which is approved of" and that the beauty of each member of a class is determined by the extent to which it has the most "usual" manifestation of that "conformation":

Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each feature lies in a certain middle, equally removed from a variety of other forms that are ugly. (pp. 10–11).

Part V, Chapter II: Of the influence of Custom and Fashion upon Moral Sentiments

Smith argues that the influence of custom is reduced in the sphere of moral judgment. Specifically, he argues that there are bad things that no custom can bring approbation to:

But the characters and conduct of a Nero, or a Claudius, are what no custom will ever reconcile us to, what no fashion will ever render agreeable; but the one will always be the object of dread and hatred; the other of scorn and derision. (pp. 15–16).

Smith further argues for a "natural" right and wrong, and that custom amplifies the moral sentiments when one's customs are consistent with nature, but dampens moral sentiments when one's customs are inconsistent with nature.

Fashion also has an effect on moral sentiment. The vices of people of high rank, such as the licentiousness of Charles VIII, are associated with the "freedom and independency, with frankness, generosity, humanity, and politeness" of the "superiors" and thus the vices are endued with these characteristics.