Of the Causes of This Influence of Fortune explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Sympathy as the Foundation of Moral Judgment

  Smith explores how gratitude and resentment depend on our ability to sympathize with the intentions and sentiments of the agent, not merely the outcomes.

• Justice as the Pillar of Society vs. Beneficence as Ornament

  The chapter distinguishes between proper objects of gratitude (beneficence) and resentment (injustice), emphasizing the role of intentional design.

Characters to notice

• Mr. John Smith

  Referenced in the excerpt as the author of 'The Turkish Spy', which recounts an officer's brutal treatment of a horse.

Key passages

• “Before anything, therefore, can be the complete and proper object, either of gratitude or resentment, it must possess three different qualifications. First, it must be the cause of pleasure in the one case, and of pain in the other. Secondly, it must be capable of feeling those sensations. And, thirdly, it must not only have produced those sensations, but it must have produced them from design, and from a design that is approved of in the one case, and disapproved of in the other.”

  For an action to fully deserve gratitude or resentment, it must (1) cause pleasure or pain, (2) be performed by a being capable of feeling, and (3) be done with an intention that we approve or disapprove.

  This passage lays out Smith's three criteria for moral judgment of merit and demerit.

• “As the consequences of actions are altogether under the empire of Fortune, hence arises her influence upon the sentiments of mankind with regard to merit and demerit.”

  Because outcomes are largely determined by luck, fortune shapes how we perceive the merit or demerit of actions.

  Smith summarizes the central thesis of the chapter: fortune's role in moral evaluation.