The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [256]
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778), French philosopher, playwright, poet, historian, and essayist who championed the liberal values of the Enlightenment in his Philosophical Letters (1734), his Age of Louis XIV (1752), and his Treatise on Toleration (1763); Smith was a particular admirer of Voltaire’s dramatic works, and sought him out for a personal visit at his estate in Ferney outside of Geneva during his travels in France.
William III (1650-1702), Prince of Orange and King of England from 1689 until his death; on the invitation of leading English politicians he left Holland to assume the throne abdicated by James II.
Wollaston, William (1659-1724), English moral philosopher and author of a single but influential treatise on natural religion, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1724).
Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC), Greek philosopher who traveled to Athens and founded the Stoic school and set forth initial statements of Stoic logic, ethics, and metaphysics.
Textual Notes
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1 Smith’s “various occupations” over his career included professor of logic and then moral philosophy at Glasgow (1751-64); tutor to the third Duke of Buccleuch (1764- 66); and Commissioner of Customs for Scotland (1778-90).
2 The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Smith lectured on jurisprudence at Glasgow, and while he did not live to complete the work here mentioned, student transcriptions of his lectures have been published as part of the Glasgow Edition as the Lectures on Jurisprudence.
3 The “Advertisement” was new to the sixth edition of 1790; the final paragraph here mentioned was original to the first edition of 1759.
PART I , SECTION I
1 Smith introduces his work as an intervention in the debate over the relative degrees of selfishness and benevolence in human nature. The classical debate was defined by the contest of Stoicism with Epicureanism; Smith’s more immediate interlocutors include those who sought to defend pity and compassion and similar other-directed sentiments against the egoism of Hobbes and Mandeville, esp. Shaftesbury, Inquiry Concerning Virtue 2; Hutcheson, Essay with Illustrations 1.3-4 and 2 Preface and System 1.1.5-6; Butler, Fifteen Sermons, esp. 1 and 5; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Morals App. 2; Kames, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion 1.1 and 1.2.5; and Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, passim.
2 rack: “an engine to torture” (Johnson).
3 Smith here draws on the terms of Hume’s epistemology. For Hume’s account of the copy mechanism, see A Treatise of Human Nature 1.1.1, 1.2.3.2-3; on the productive capacities of the imagination, see Treatise 1.1.3, 1.4.2.31-37. For commentary on Smith’s debts to Hume’s conception of the imagination, see esp. Skinner, Griswold, and Raphael.
4 The spectator is one of Smith’s principal categories. Here he uses the term in the sense of an audience member at a theatrical spectacle; elsewhere he uses it to describe a range of ethical acts, from the spectatorship of the actions and character of others that provides the principal data that we use to construct ethical norms, to the idea of the “impartial spectator” whose apprehension of and judgments upon the self are the main agents of moral reform. Though Smith is the first to build a theory around spectatorship, the concept was central to several texts with which Smith engaged, including Addison’s Spectator; Hutcheson’s Essay with Illustrations ; Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Morals; and Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert.
5 perfidious: “treacherous; false to trust; guilty of violated faith” (Johnson).
6 Sympathy is a central concept of Smith’s ethics. Prior to Smith it played an important role in several ethical systems; see Hutcheson, Short Introduction 1.1.9; Kames, Essays on Morality and Religion 1.1; Burke, Philosophical Enquiry 1.13-15; and esp. Hume, Treatise 2.1.11, 2.2.5-9 and 3.3.1-3. Smith’s use of the term is anticipated and clarified by Johnson,