The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Chapter
Of Those Systems Which Deduce the Principle of Approbation from Self-Love explained
Smith critiques systems that derive moral approbation from self-love, particularly those of Hobbes, Puffendorff, and Mandeville.
What happens
Smith critiques systems that derive moral approbation from self-love, particularly those of Hobbes, Puffendorff, and Mandeville. He argues that while virtue appears beautiful due to its utility in maintaining social order, this political view cannot be the original ground of moral approval. He clarifies that sympathy is not a selfish principle, as it involves an imaginary change of persons, not merely of circumstances, and is entirely occupied with the other person's situation.
Themes in this chapter
Self-Love and the Social Order
Smith critiques systems that reduce all moral sentiments to self-love, arguing that sympathy is not selfish and that the beauty of virtue arises from its utility to society, not from self-interest.
Sympathy as the Foundation of Moral Judgment
Smith distinguishes true sympathy from self-love, emphasizing that sympathy involves an imaginary change of persons and is entirely other-regarding.
Characters to notice
- Mr. Hobbes
Cited as a proponent of the system that derives approbation from self-love, arguing man enters society for self-preservation.
- Dr. Mandeville
Mentioned as a follower of Hobbes who also deduces moral approbation from self-love and the utility of social order.
- Cato
Used as an example of a virtuous character from a remote age, whose virtue is applauded without any direct benefit to the observer.
Key passages
“Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle. When I sympathize with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in self-love, because it arises from bringing your case home to myself, from putting myself in your situation, and thence conceiving what I should feel in the like circumstances. But though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympathize.”
Sympathy is not selfish: when I feel for you, I imagine being you, not myself in your situation, so my emotion is about you, not me.
Smith refutes the claim that sympathy is a form of self-love by clarifying the nature of the imaginative shift.
“When those authors, on the other hand, deduce from self-love the interest which we take in the welfare of society, and the esteem which upon that account we bestow upon virtue, they do not mean, that when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and detest the villany of Cataline, our sentiments are influenced by the notion of any benefit we receive from the one, or of any detriment we suffer from the other.”
These thinkers do not claim that our approval of ancient virtue is based on any actual benefit to us, but on an imagined benefit if we lived in that time.
Smith explains that the self-love theorists appeal to a hypothetical, not actual, self-interest.