The theory of moral sentiments and whole person education

Author(s):  
Zhaohui Hong
Author(s):  
Adam Schoene

Where Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) extends the domain of spectatorship beyond the ocular realm and claims that we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Dialogues (1776) also attempts to probe beyond the visual surface to examine through careful study the constitution of another, who is actually himself. This chapter traces a Smithian sentiment in the radical division of the self dramatized in Rousseau’s fictional autobiographical Dialogues, emphasizing Rousseau’s attempt to liberate his own gaze and render an unbiased judgment upon himself. Although Rousseau does not write in direct discourse with Smith, he applies a strikingly similar rhetorical device to the spectator within the dialogic structure of his apologia. Reading Rousseau alongside Smith resituates the Dialogues not as a work of madness, as it has frequently been interpreted, but rather as an unrelenting struggle for justice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Christos Grigoriou

The purpose of this paper is to build a parallelism between Aristotle's debate with Plato on the merits of poetry and the debate of Hume with Smith on the nature of sympathy. My arguments is that the Aristotelian concept of pity, as presented in the Poetics, presupposes a mechanism of sympathy which is akin to the Smithian one, as articulated in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Accordingly, I reconstruct Aristotle's debate with Plato on poetry as a debate on the operation and value of sympathy, and I trace an intriguing contiguity on the way Plato and Hume understood the mechanism of sympathy.


Author(s):  
Tetsuo Taka

AbstractThis paper aims to extend and provide a new understanding of Adam Smith’s thoughts by focusing on some revisions in the 4th edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith 1774), “the nutritional value theory of corn” in the Wealth of Nations, and then comparing Smith’s discourses on the formation of morality with C. Darwin’s. Smith’s understanding of human nature extended and deepened with the study of botany and other sciences at Kirkcaldy after spending 2 years in France as Duke Buccleugh’s tutor. He began to understand human nature not only as a composite of self-love and benevolence, but also of instinctual and experiential knowledge. Thus, Smith’s system transitioned to an evolutionary one, and he became an unconscious forerunner of the Darwinian theory of morality formation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5769
Author(s):  
Yi Lian ◽  
Kwok-Kuen Tsang ◽  
Ying Zhang

STEM education is an important approach for preparing students for a competitive workforce with essential skills in the 21st century. However, successfully implementing STEM education in primary and secondary schools presents a variety of challenges. The study suggests that a neglected challenge in the literature is how to sustain teachers’ positive emotions toward STEM educational work, which may cause teachers to be more engaged in, motived by, and committed to STEM education. Therefore, the study aims to contribute to the literature by investigating the mechanism of the construction and suitability of teachers’ emotions toward STEM educational work based on a single case study conducted in Hong Kong from the social constructionist perspective. The major findings of the study indicate that (1) positive emotions toward STEM educational work may be constructed by the teacher’s positive interpretation of the work, i.e., STEM educational work as the facilitator of students’ overall development and that (2) positive emotions toward STEM educational work may be sustained by enabling school institutions to have the elements of shared power, administrative support, and the value of a whole-person education.


1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Noordegraaf

Summary In 1761 Adam Smith (1723–90) published his Dissertation on the Origin of Languages. Erroneously scholars have thought that this essay appeared as a supplement to the second edition of Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiments of the same year; in fact it was only added to the third edition of that work (1767). Against Coseriu’s opinion that Adam Smith must be considered as a pioneer of the typology of language, one can put forward that Smith’s ideas on the typology of language are very similar to those of the French Abbé Gabriel Girard (1677–1748), whose influence is admitted by Smith himself. On another point, it turns out that before 1809, the year in which J. Manget published a French translation of Smith’s Dissertation, already three other translations into French of the same work had appeared. First-hand inspection of texts appears desirable in the writing of the history of linguistics.


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