The Theory of Moral Sentiments

First published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is Adam Smith’s profound enquiry into the origins of human morality and the nature of our relations with one another. At its heart is the idea of sympathy: our ability to imagine ourselves in another person’s position and to share, however imperfectly, in their feelings. Smith introduces the figure of the impartial spectator, an imagined observer through whose eyes we learn to judge our own conduct, exploring how conscience, virtue and moral judgement emerge from our social nature.

Moving between philosophical argument and finely observed examples of everyday life, Smith considers ambition, vanity, justice, benevolence, self-command and the desire for the approval of others. The book reveals a thinker deeply interested in the tensions between self-interest and fellow feeling, and in the social bonds that make moral life possible. Published seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations, it offers an essential counterpart to Smith’s economic thought: a richly humane work of the Scottish Enlightenment that places sympathy and moral judgement at the centre of our understanding of society.

From the book

“We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.”

— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

On The Theory of Moral Sentiments

“One of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared.”

— Edmund Burke, The Annual Register (1759)