Broadly speaking, Smith followed the views of his mentor, Francis Hutcheson of the University of Glasgow, who divided moral philosophy into four parts: Ethics and Virtue; Private rights and Natural liberty; Familial rights (called Economics); and State and Individual rights (called Politics). Hutcheson had abandoned the psychological view of moral philosophy, claiming that motives were too fickle to be used as a basis for a philosophical system. Instead, he hypothesised a dedicated "sixth sense" to explain morality. This ...
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Broadly speaking, Smith followed the views of his mentor, Francis Hutcheson of the University of Glasgow, who divided moral philosophy into four parts: Ethics and Virtue; Private rights and Natural liberty; Familial rights (called Economics); and State and Individual rights (called Politics). Hutcheson had abandoned the psychological view of moral philosophy, claiming that motives were too fickle to be used as a basis for a philosophical system. Instead, he hypothesised a dedicated "sixth sense" to explain morality. This idea, to be taken up by David Hume (see Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature), claimed that man is pleased by utility. Smith rejected his teacher's reliance on this special sense. Starting in about 1741, Smith set on the task of using Hume's experimental method (appealing to human experience) to replace the specific moral sense with a pluralistic approach to morality based on a multitude of psychological motives. The Theory of Moral Sentiments begins with the following assertion: How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.
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While the current laissez-faire capitalists hold up Adam Smith as their model, the real Adam Smith was first and foremost a teacher of moral philosophy in his native Scotland. Read his ideas on natural and desirable human virtues such as sympathy. Contrast that with the real author of our current form of capitalism, Ayn Rand, who declared compassion a vice. Compare Smith's ideas on moral duties with Rand's derision of "do-gooders," as her followers call those who use their education to help others. Compare Smith's altruistic concern for the human condition and how to better the economic condition of all free people by concentrating on lifting ourselves out of miserable economic conditions and fostering the cooperation and peace needed for capitalism instead of devoting our lives to the constant European religious wars with which Smith was so familiar.
This book will give you the necessary insight into the vision of the future author of the Wealth of Nations and the world he hoped to foster. Contrast that with the highly SOLE and separate self-interest of Ayn Rand and you will begin to see how dangerous philosophies can be when their ideas are usurped by those who do not understand the philosophy or change it into something Smith would not recognize and I believe would find abhorrent, based on the ideas he presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Rand was scarred by almost dying in her flight from totalitarian communism and naturally reacted to government as "the enemy."
It is ironic that those who hold government to be their natural enemy think they are following Adam Smith, who was a government bureaucrat and believed government naturally provided some necessary services for the people that smaller fragmented entities could not provide or provide as efficiently! A must read for those interested but perhaps bewildered by their own economic condition and the conflicting moral messages sent by Smith vs. Rand.