Adam Smith on Moral Sentiments

Quote

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, Section I, Chapter I (1759)

Historical Context

Adam Smith is best remembered for The Wealth of Nations (1776) and its account of self-interest as the engine of economic life, but his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), begins with the opposite observation: human beings are not merely self-interested; they are constitutively interested in the fortunes of others. The book was written within the tradition of British moral sentimentalism, the school of Hutcheson, Hume, and Shaftesbury, which held that morality is grounded in human feeling rather than in reason or divine command. Smith's teacher Francis Hutcheson and his close friend David Hume had both argued that moral judgment rests on sentiment; Smith's contribution was to give the sentimentalist position its most detailed psychology.

The book went through six editions in Smith's lifetime, and it grew in tandem with his economics. Far from being in tension, the two books were designed as two halves of a single moral science: Moral Sentiments explains the moral order that arises from human sympathy, and Wealth of Nations explains the economic order that arises from self-interest — both being orders that no one designed. The opening sentence of Moral Sentiments is therefore a programmatic statement: however selfish humans may be in their pursuit of wealth, they are not only selfish, and any adequate account of human conduct must begin from the fact that we care about others.

Philosophical Interpretation

The passage makes a claim about human nature: we are so constituted that we take an interest in the fortunes of others, and their happiness becomes necessary to us — we cannot be indifferent to it. Smith's explanation of this fact is sympathy. By sympathy he does not mean pity or compassion in the narrow sense, but a general capacity to enter into the feelings of others, to place ourselves in their situation and share their emotions. The child of a mother's distress, the spectator of a stranger's good fortune — these responses reveal a nature that is not closed in on itself. Even the most selfish person, Smith observes, feels something when he sees another suffer; and the fact that we derive "nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it" shows that the interest is not instrumental.

The deeper claim of the book is that this capacity for sympathy is the foundation of morality. Moral judgment, on Smith's account, is the work of the "impartial spectator" — the internalized standpoint from which we view our own conduct as others would view it. We learn to approve and disapprove by sympathizing with the feelings of others toward ourselves, and this discipline produces the conscience: the man within the breast who judges our actions. The sympathetic capacity described in the opening passage is thus the raw material from which the entire moral order is constructed. Smith's ethics is naturalistic in the best sense: it explains the authority of morality without appealing to anything beyond human nature, and it locates virtue in the well-ordered sentiments rather than in obedience to abstract rules.

The passage also corrects a one-sided picture of human motivation. The self-interested actor of economic theory is an abstraction; real human beings are moved by sympathy as much as by self-love, and Smith argues that it is precisely the interplay of these motives that produces both moral and economic order. The "invisible hand" of economics has a counterpart in the moral sphere: our natural sympathy, refined by the impartial spectator, produces a social order that no one designed. The opening sentence is thus the key to Smith's entire moral science — a reminder that the question "what are human beings like?" comes before every theory of ethics and economics.

Related Concepts

The passage states the foundation of Smith's moral sentimentalism: morality is grounded in the sentiments rather than in reason alone. Its key concept is sympathy, the capacity to enter into the feelings of others, which Smith develops into the theory of the impartial spectator. The account connects to human nature and to the virtues — self-command, beneficence, justice — which Smith analyzes in the later parts of the book. It stands in the tradition of Hume's ethics of feeling, in contrast to the rationalism of Kant, and it anticipates the modern study of moral psychology and the social emotions.

Learning Path

Begin with the site's answers on what ethics is and what morality is, to locate Smith in the map of moral theory. Then read the companion book page on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and the quote page on Hume's account of morality, to see the sentimentalist tradition of which Smith is the culmination. Compare Smith's sympathy-based ethics with the rationalist ethics of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and with the virtue-ethical tradition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. For the contemporary relevance, explore the modern psychology of empathy and the moral emotions.