The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Smith's central claim is that moral judgment originates in sympathy—the imaginative act of placing ourselves in another's situation and feeling a corresponding emotion. We approve of actions that we can sympathize with and disapprove of those we cannot. This rejects moral systems that ground ethics in rational self-interest, divine command, or utility calculation. Smith also explicitly criticizes Bernard Mandeville's claim that private vices produce public benefits, arguing that virtue is real and approbation genuine. The impartial spectator, not external reward or punishment, is the standard of moral judgment.

The impartial spectator is not an actual observer but an imagined one—a mental construct we create by asking what an informed, disinterested person would feel about our conduct. Smith argues we naturally seek the sympathy of others, and to obtain it we must moderate our passions to a pitch they can enter into. Over time, this external process becomes internalized: we judge ourselves as we imagine an impartial spectator would. Conscience is thus social in origin but individuated in operation. The device resolves the tension between self-love and social approval without appealing to a transcendent moral law.

Beyond the impartial spectator, Smith developed an original theory of sympathy that differs from David Hume's by making it a mechanism of imagination rather than mere emotional contagion. He analyzed the "pleasure of mutual sympathy"—the satisfaction we feel when our sentiments coincide with another's—as a fundamental social motive. He also articulated a detailed taxonomy of virtues: prudence, justice, beneficence, and self-command, each with distinct social functions. These concepts influenced nineteenth-century sociology and literature and remain central to moral psychology and experimental philosophy of moral judgment.

The so-called "Adam Smith Problem"—the apparent contradiction between sympathy in TMS and self-interest in WN—is now widely regarded by scholars as a misreading. Smith worked on editions of both books concurrently and regarded them as parts of one system. TMS analyzes the moral framework that makes commercial society possible; WN analyzes the economic mechanisms within that framework. The butcher and brewer passage in WN is descriptive, not normative: it explains how exchange coordinates interests in a society already held together by moral sentiments and legal institutions. The two books are complementary, not contradictory.

TMS was widely praised on publication and went through six editions in Smith's lifetime, but it gradually fell out of philosophy curricula, eclipsed by WN and judged by post-Kantian standards of argumentation. The revival began with the Glasgow Edition of Smith's works in the 1970s, which made the text accessible to scholars. Since then, philosophers have rediscovered Smith's sophisticated theory of sympathy, his critique of utilitarianism, and his account of conscience. The 2009 250th-anniversary conference at Balliol College marked the culmination of this renewed scholarly interest.

No. Smith explicitly distinguishes sympathy from mere emotional mirroring. We cannot literally feel another's pain, and Smith argues that we moderate our sympathetic responses to what is proportionate. The person suffering learns to dampen their expression to gain our sympathy; we, in turn, elevate our feeling to meet theirs. The result is a concord at a moderate pitch, not an identical emotion. This mutual adjustment is central to Smith's account of social harmony. He also acknowledges limits: our sympathy is strongest for those closest to us and weakest for distant strangers, a problem he addresses in his discussion of justice and beneficence.