The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [258]
7 The afterlife paradise of the ancients; see, e.g., Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.8.
8 Thomas Otway’s play The Orphan.
9 Racine’s Phèdre was a retelling of Euripides’ Hippolytus, referenced by Smith throughout called “the finest tragedy, perhaps, that is extant in any language.”
10 See 2.2.3 (p. 103).
11 For the Stoic conception of providentialism, see 7.2.1 below and accompanying notes.
12 Smith elaborates on the “musical passions” in his essay “The Imitative Arts” (esp. 2.13); see also his discussions of musical education in Wealth of Nations 5.1.f and Rhetoric 2.117.
13 perfidy: “treachery; want of faith; breach of faith” (Johnson).
PART I , SECTION III
1 Smith here refers to Hutcheson, who argues for the existence of a “natural disposition to congratulation with others in their joys” in System 1.2.3 and 1.4.10; see also Short Introduction 1.1.15; and Essay with Illustrations 1.3.4.
2 After reading the first edition, Hume wrote Smith to suggest that he clarify his account of sympathy (Correspondence 36). Smith wrote a draft of this note later that year in response and included it in the second and all subsequent editions of TMS.
3 Cato’s character and suicide were important themes across the eighteenth century owing in part to their depiction in Addison’s play. For Seneca’s portrait, see De providentia 2.9-12.
4 See Plato, Phaedo 117a-e.
5 Contemporary accounts of the execution describe Biron’s last moments as frantic and furious, emphasizing his threat to strangle the executioner rather than his tears of remorse or regret for lost greatness. Other accounts known to Smith, including that in the Mémoires of the Duc de Sully, do note Biron’s tears (see Bk. 13, for the year 1602); of these, Smith’s account is perhaps most similar to that of Helvétius in De l’esprit (see 3.28), published in 1758, a year before TMS—a work Hume recommended to Smith in 1759, but which Smith, in a 1763 letter to Hume, claimed not to have read prior to the publication of the first edition of TMS.
6 Smith’s locution may be inspired by La Rochefoucauld, who writes of “un désir de rendre notre condition meilleure” (Maxims 82), or Mandeville, who writes of our “indefatigable desire of meliorating our condition” (Fable, Remark V) and of man’s “restless desire of mending their condition” (Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, Dialogue 1). The idea would play a principal role in Smith’s political economy; see, e.g., Wealth of Nations 2.3, 3.3.
7 Smith’s discussion of vanity is an intervention in a contemporary debate over the moral status of luxury and the love of esteem. The roots of that debate lie in the writings of the principal seventeenth-century French moralists (e.g., La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, La Fontaine, and Fénelon); important eighteenth-century interventions include, among others, those by Hume (“Of Refinement in the Arts”) and Voltaire (e.g., “The Worldling”). Particularly relevant in the present context are Mandeville’s theory of “self-liking” (esp. Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, Dialogue 1), Rousseau’s conception of amour-propre (esp. Discourse on Inequality 2 and n15), and Hume’s conception of “our esteem for the rich and powerful” (esp. Treatise 2.2.5).
8 Charles’s indignation at his trial, together with the posthumous circulation of the Eikon Basilike (purportedly his final statement), generated a popular sympathy that grew during the Interregnum and culminated in the restoration of the monarchy and the proclamation of his martyrdom; Hume describes his trial as exciting “contagious sympathy,” his execution as a scene of “grief, indignation, and astonishment,” and the Eikon as exciting a “general compassion” (History 59).
9 On obsequiousness, see also 4.1 (p. 209) and the accompanying note on Rousseau.
10 James’s first flight attempt ended in failure when his escape boat was captured. Returned to London under guard, he was welcomed by the crowds. Hume remarks that “the populace, moved by compassion