The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Overview

About four hundred pages, Adam Smith’s first book, published in 1759 and revised until his death, a theory of how moral judgment actually works. Its foundation is sympathy, our capacity to imagine ourselves in another’s situation and to feel a version of what they feel. We approve of conduct when we can go along with it, and we judge ourselves by imagining an impartial spectator looking on.

From this Smith derives accounts of propriety, merit, justice, the sense of duty, the corrupting admiration of the rich and the great, and the character of the virtuous person, and surveys the systems of moral philosophy before him.

What happens

Sympathy as moral foundation. Smith establishes sympathy, our capacity to imagine ourselves in another’s situation and feel a version of what they feel, as the actual psychological foundation underlying all moral judgment.

Approving conduct we can go along with. Smith argues we approve of conduct specifically when we can go along with it through sympathetic imagination, moral approval grounded in this felt capacity to share another’s perspective.

The impartial spectator. Smith introduces the impartial spectator, an imagined uninvolved observer whose perspective we use to judge our own conduct, disciplining sympathy into rigorous self-assessment rather than mere unmediated feeling.

Deriving propriety and merit. From sympathy and the impartial spectator, Smith derives accounts of propriety and merit, extending his foundational psychological mechanism into a systematic treatment of these related moral concepts.

The corrupting admiration of wealth. Smith examines the corrupting admiration of the rich and the great, identifying how sympathy itself can distort moral judgment by naturally gravitating toward status and worldly success.

Surveying prior moral philosophy. Smith concludes by surveying the systems of moral philosophy before him, situating his own sympathy-based account within and against this broader inherited philosophical tradition.

How to read it

Read Smith’s grounding of moral judgment in sympathy as locating ethics in genuinely psychological and social capacity rather than pure abstract reasoning, moral knowledge emerging from imaginative fellow-feeling rather than deduced from first principles.

Pay close attention to the impartial spectator device; judging ourselves by imagining how an uninvolved observer would view our conduct gives Smith’s theory a genuinely rigorous internal check against mere self-serving bias.

Notice how the account of the corrupting admiration of the rich and the great exposes a specific moral failure mode built into sympathy itself, our fellow-feeling naturally gravitating toward status in ways that can distort genuine ethical judgment.

Consider that Smith, the same author who would later produce the Wealth of Nations, reveals here a considerably broader intellectual project, economic behavior understood as continuous with his more general theory of how humans actually judge conduct.

Read this treatise alongside Smith’s own later Wealth of Nations to see how the sympathy-grounded moral psychology developed here relates to and complicates the more purely self-interested economic actor that later, more famous work is sometimes assumed to describe.

Questions it raises

• Does grounding moral judgment in sympathy successfully explain how we actually form ethical evaluations, or does this psychological account leave unresolved questions about whether sympathy reliably tracks genuine moral truth rather than merely shared feeling?
• How persuasive is the impartial spectator device as a check on self-serving bias? Does imagining an uninvolved observer’s perspective actually discipline moral judgment effectively, or does this imagined spectator remain too easily shaped by our own existing preferences and assumptions?
• What does the account of the corrupting admiration of the rich and the great suggest about sympathy’s own reliability as moral foundation? Does this acknowledged distortion undermine Smith’s broader claim that sympathy generally produces sound ethical judgment?
• How should readers reconcile this treatise’s emphasis on sympathy and fellow-feeling with the Wealth of Nations’ apparent emphasis on self-interest as economic motivation? Does Smith’s broader intellectual project successfully integrate these seemingly different accounts of human motivation?
• Given that Smith revised this treatise across his entire career, what does this sustained attention suggest about how central he considered this moral psychology to his overall intellectual project, compared to his more famous economic writing?
• What does this treatise’s continued relevance to moral psychology and philosophy suggest about the durability of Smith’s specific sympathy-based framework? Do contemporary theories of moral judgment still engage productively with his foundational insights about imaginative fellow-feeling?