Knowra The Theory of Moral Sentiments The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith’s 1759 book explains moral judgment through sympathy and the imagined perspective of an impartial spectator, connecting ethical approval to how people assess one another’s conduct.
Sympathy : The capacity to imaginatively share another person’s feelings or situation. Smith uses sympathetic imagination to explain how observers assess another person’s passions.
Moral psychology : The study of psychological processes involved in moral thought, judgment, and behavior. Smith’s theory is an early systematic account of how social feelings shape moral judgment.
Adam Smith : A Scottish philosopher and political economist whose works include The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Smith developed the book’s account of sympathy, virtue, and social judgment.
Thomas Hobbes : An English philosopher whose political theory emphasizes self-preservation, conflict, and sovereign authority. Smith’s account of social sympathy differs from Hobbes’s stronger emphasis on self-interest and conflict.
Charles Darwin : An English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin discussed sympathy and moral development in relation to human social evolution.
Impartial spectator : An imagined, disinterested observer whose perspective helps a person judge conduct and emotion. This imagined standpoint supplies Smith’s standard for judging whether passions are proportionate.
Moral sense theory : The view that people possess a capacity for perceiving or judging moral qualities. Smith explains moral approval through social sympathy rather than a separate, self-sufficient moral faculty.
Scottish Enlightenment : An eighteenth-century intellectual movement in Scotland spanning philosophy, science, history, and political economy. The book belongs to a period of Scottish inquiry into human nature and social order.
Rationalism : The philosophical view that reason is the primary source of knowledge or justification. Smith gives moral sentiments a constitutive role that rationalist ethics often assigns to reason.
Moral sentimentalism : The family of ethical views that grounds moral distinctions in human sentiments or emotional responses. Smith’s account became a major reference point for explaining morality through sentiment.
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