The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Chapter
Conclusion of the Sixth Part explained
The conclusion of Part VI recapitulates the three principal virtues—prudence, justice, and beneficence—as recommended by self-love and benevolence, respectively, and emphasizes that all are ultimately directed and enforced by regard for the
What happens
The conclusion of Part VI recapitulates the three principal virtues—prudence, justice, and beneficence—as recommended by self-love and benevolence, respectively, and emphasizes that all are ultimately directed and enforced by regard for the impartial spectator. It contrasts these with the virtues of self-command, which are primarily motivated by the sense of propriety and the desire to align one's passions with the sentiments of the impartial spectator. The text distinguishes between restraint based on prudential considerations (which may leave passions smoldering) and restraint based on a sense of propriety (which truly moderates and subdues the passions).
Themes in this chapter
The Impartial Spectator
The impartial spectator is repeatedly invoked as the 'great judge and arbiter of conduct' who enforces the practice of prudence, justice, and beneficence, and who alone can truly moderate the passions through a sense of propriety.
Virtue as Propriety and Self-Command
The chapter distinguishes between virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence (recommended by selfish and benevolent affections) and the virtues of self-command, which are principally recommended by the sense of propriety and the regard for the impartial spectator.
Self-Love and the Social Order
Concern for our own happiness recommends prudence, while concern for others recommends justice and beneficence; the text shows how self-love and benevolence jointly underpin moral conduct, with the impartial spectator harmonizing them.
Key passages
“Concern for our own happiness recommends to us the virtue of prudence: concern for that of other people, the virtues of justice and beneficence; of which, the one restrains us from hurting, the other prompts us to promote that happiness.”
Self-interest leads us to prudence, while care for others leads to justice and beneficence—justice stops us from harming, beneficence encourages us to help.
Summarizes the motivational basis of the three cardinal virtues.
“Regard to the sentiments of other people, however, comes afterwards both to enforce and to direct the practice of all those virtues; and no man during, either the whole course of his life, or that of any considerable part of it, ever trod steadily and uniformly in the paths of prudence, of justice, or of proper beneficence, whose conduct was not principally directed by a regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator, of the great inmate of the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct.”
Yet it is the imagined perspective of an impartial observer—the inner judge—that ultimately guides and strengthens our practice of prudence, justice, and beneficence; no one consistently follows these virtues without that inner compass.
Highlights the central role of the impartial spectator in moral life.
“But those which are restrained only by prudential considerations of any kind, are, on the contrary, frequently inflamed by the restraint, and sometimes (long after the provocation given, and when nobody is thinking about it) burst out absurdly and unexpectedly, and that with tenfold fury and violence.”
Passions held back merely by fear of consequences often grow stronger and later explode with greater force, unlike passions moderated by a sense of propriety.
Contrasts prudential restraint with genuine moral self-command.