scholarly journals SOBRE A FILOSOFIA MORAL DE ADAM SMITH

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (111) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo E. A. da Gama Cerqueira
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Este artigo discute a Teoria dos sentimentos morais de Adam Smith. O argumento central do texto é apresentado, tomando por base o contexto proporcionado pela filosofia moral do Iluminismo escocês. Os conceitos de simpatia e espectador imparcial são discutidos, apontando-se a maneira original como Smith concebe a relação entre a moralidade e a sociabilidade.Abstract: This article examines Adam Smith’s Theory of moral sentiments. The moral philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment is central to the argumentation developed in this paper which analyses the concepts of “sympathy” and of “impartial spectator” and points to the originality of Smith’s argument regarding the relationship between morality and sociality.

3. Sympathetic spectators

2018 ◽  
pp. 28-45
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. What the book sets out to do is investigate or analyse how, in practice, judgments and decisions about what is right or wrong are made. ‘Sympathetic spectators’ first discusses empiricism, a particular tradition of moral philosophy that was especially strong in Scotland. It goes on to consider the views of Francis Hutcheson and David Hume on moral sense and sympathy. It then examines Smith’s thoughts on sociality, morality, negotiated discord, self-interest, the impartial spectator and conscience (an internalized standard or benchmark of what is right or wrong), relativism, and moral judgment.

The Progress of Feeling: The Ossian Poems and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
JoEllen DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

This chapter examines the relationship between time, feeling, and gender in two foundational texts of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Ossian poems and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. It contends that Macpherson and Smith created a temporal map of emotion that gauged social development from “primitive” to “developed” cultures and offered women writers and Scottish philosophers a new field upon which they could experiment with the relationship between gender and historical progress. Despite their obvious differences, Macpherson and Smith used women’s social status and the feminine values they were thought to impart to their male counterparts as tools for charting, evaluating, and questioning emerging theories of historical change. The ambiguity surrounding feminine sentiments’ placement in these Scottish Enlightenment narratives of historical progress creates the foundation for the following chapters, which trace women writers’ engagement with the theories of feeling and historical progress articulated by these two influential writers.

scholarly journals What’s the problem, Mr. Smith? Shedding more light (than Heat) on Adam Smith’s view of man *

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Emmanoel de Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Abstract Why has the “Adam Smith Problem” recently been discussed in the literature? Although most historians of economic thought regard the problem solved, these discussions cast doubt on this apparent solution. This article suggests that the “Adam Smith Problem” may originate from the concept of the human being developed by Smith in the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”: in this book, human beings can be understood as composed of an empirical and a (quasi) transcendental side, in the form of the impartial spectator. It is argued that it is the tension between these two parts which creates supposed inconsistencies between aspects of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Wealth of Nations” like, for example, the role of sympathy and self-interest in each of these books.

II—Ambition, Love, And Happiness

2020 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45
Author(s):  
Glen Pettigrove
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Abstract What is the relationship between ambition and love? While discussions of happiness often mention romances, friendships, aspirations, and achievements, the relationship between these features is seldom discussed. This paper aims to fill that gap. It begins with a suggestive remark made by La Rochefoucauld and repeated by Adam Smith: ‘Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.’ To explain what accounts for such a pattern, I introduce a distinction between stage-setting emotions and master emotions, which is useful for illuminating relationships between a number of emotions, including ambition and love. Drawing on things Smith says elsewhere in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, I conclude by highlighting one way the pattern might be reversed and ambition might lead to love.

Julie’s Garden and the Impartial Spectator: An Examination of Smithian Themes in Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tabitha Baker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

This chapter explores the similarities between Smith and Rousseau’s moral philosophy through a discussion of the Smithean aspects of Rousseau’s 1761 novel La Nouvelle Héloïse. Focussing the analysis on the motif of the eighteenth-century English landscape garden, this chapter reveals the extent to which Rousseau’s novel reflects Smith’s principles of arriving at moral behaviour and true virtue. The author argues that it is within the space of Julie’s garden that Rousseau and Smith’s theories are reconciled in order to produce a blended social model in which Smith provides responses to Rousseau’s failed utopia. An examination of La Nouvelle Héloïse alongside Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments demonstrates that the symbol of the landscape garden in Rousseau’s novel is an experimental setting in which Rousseau and Smith’s theories are merged, and it is through Rousseau’s fiction that the complicated relationship between the two thinkers’ thought can be most evidently sourced.

‘The Man Within’: Adam Smith on Moral Autonomy and Religious Sentiments

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeng-Guo S. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Religious View ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The Mind

This essay analyses the ethical importance and religious implications of ‘the man within’ in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. Not introduced until the second edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, ‘the man within’ appears as the internalization of the impartial spectator. With the invention of the man within, Smith was able to explain how moral agents pursue virtues and behave morally beyond immediate and quotidian concerns with either praises or blames from society. Having complied with the general dictates of the impartial spectator with conscience, humans become morally autonomous individuals whose moral judgements are derived from constant dialogues with the man within in an ethical microcosm within their breasts. The man within possesses a transcendent nature that preempts social judgements. Because of that transcendent nature, Smith also denominated the man within as ‘the substitute of Deity’. This essay also argues that even conscientious and virtuous individuals can be wronged and misjudged by society. To Smith, religious sentiments were most likely generated among the morally autonomous, innocent people. Afflicted with devastating distranquility of the mind caused by misjudgments of society, the innocent can only find comfort in the hope for the afterlife. The essay concludes that Smith's religious view in this particular regard goes hand in hand with his great concern with justice prevailing in his writings of political economy, government and ethics.

scholarly journals Adam Smith on governance and regulation. An account of his lectures on jurisprudence

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pilar Piqué
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

The present study analyzes a little explored work of Adam Smith: his Lectures on Jurisprudence, understanding it as a "bridge" between his Moral Philosophy and his Political Economy. We show that Smith states in Theory of Moral Sentiments some tensions facing the sympathy once the bonds of affection between members of the same society began to reveal weak. This lead Smith into the study of Jurisprudence, the study of a society of strangers that need a common identification under a State that imposes rules of justice unveiled by science. In his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith finds that the division of labor was the result and the ultimate expression of opulence and freedom of humanity. These conduct him to answer why does the division of labor contribute to opulence and why does the division of labor brings about man’s freedom and these two questions ended in the creation of The Wealth of Nations.

The Logic of Electoral Preference: Response to Saraydar and Hudelson

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Brennan ◽  
Loren E. Lomasky
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Motivational Structure ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

How may we best understand the motivational structure that stands behind individuals' acts of voting? In “The Impartial Spectator Goes to Washington” we suggested that expressive concerns swamp narrowly consequential motivations, in contradistinction to normal market transactions in which the priority is reversed. A striking consequence of this fact is that individuals will be led to vote for outcomes that they would reject were they in a position to act decisively. In this regard we found the moral psychology Adam Smith develops in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) (and, to a lesser extent, in The Wealth of Nations) remarkably fecund in suggesting alternatives to what we call the standard theory of electoral behavior.

Du «spectateur impartial» au «travailleur impartial», un commentaire sur la relation entre philosophie morale et économie politique chez Adam Smith selon Jean Mathiot

Dialogue ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Campagnolo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
History Of ◽  
Économie Politique ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACT: As Smith freed moral philosophy from former control bodies (the Church, the state), the Scottish philosopher opened the field for a scientific political economy. In hisAdam Smith. Philosophie et économie(Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1990, p. 45), Jean Mathiot asked :«Should then one wonder that his [Smith’s] audacious stand became the historical grounding stone for political economy, then bringing recognition as an objectively-grounded field of knowledge?»Mathiot’s text and thought have been little debated to this day; this essay is meant to fill that gap, in particular with regard to the history of Smith’s reception in France. Mathiot sought to understand better the “impartial spectator” using a new character whom he claimed Smith was implicitly sketching, and whom he called “the impartial laborer”. To Mathiot’s mind, from theTheory of moral sentiments(1759) to theWealth of Nations(1776), the link is nothing else than Smith’s own philosophy.

Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.

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