Adam Smith - Moral Sentiments Flashcards
Enlightenment
the emancipation of human counciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error
Moral phenomenology
Phenomenology: the first-person study of the experiential aspect of mental life
Moral phenomelology: the first-person study of the experiential aspect of moral life.
A crucial part of it is the study of what it is like to make a moral judgment. This part of moral phenomenology seeks to delineate the introspectively accessible mental features that are essentially involved in judging that an act ought or ought not to be performed, and in judging that a person is virtuous or vicious.
Sentiment
n. an attitude / regard / opinion toward sth.
Sentiment to moral sensibility is as the taste of coffee to the sense of taste. It’s a moral reaction to a moral event.
Sympathy is a reaction.
Imagination is an important part of sentiment b/c it allows one to put oneself in another’s situation – bring it home
Of Sympathy
Sympathy is one of the original passions of human nature. Everyone has it.
Sympathy denotes our fellow-feeling with any passion (emotion). It does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it.
We sometimes feel emotions (sympathy) for people who themselves don’t feel in the situation. Eg. alzheimer’s
The dread of death is the great poison to happiness, but great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.
Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy
Nothing pleases us more than to observe in others a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearance of the contrary.
Sympathy enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction, and alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it is at that time capable of receiving.
The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the hearet without any auxiliary pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more stronly require the healing consolation of sympathy.
We’re pleased when we can sympathize, and are hurt when we can’t.
Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with our own - 1
To approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them; and not to approve of them as such, is the same thing as to observe that we do not entirely sympathize with the.
Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another.
Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with our own - 2
With regard to those objects which are considered without any peculiar relation to either ourselves or the person whose sentiments we judge of; wherever his sentiments entirely correspond with our won, we ascribe to him the qualities of taste and good judgment.
Approbation heightened by wonder and surprise constitutes the sentiment of admiration.
