The Theory of Moral Sentiments (71 page)

Tacitus
(ca. AD 56-118), Roman historian whose
Histories
and
Annals
chronicle Roman politics under the emperors from Tiberius to Domitian; his studies of political intrigue were of particular interest to early modern readers who alternately found in him republican and authoritarian sympathies.

Tamerlane
(1337-1405), Turko-Mongol conqueror and founder of central Asian empire.

Themistocles
(ca. 524-459 BC) Athenian politician and commander who played a principal role in the Persian Wars; ultimately ostracized from Athens for suspected intrigue with the Persians, he traveled to Asia Minor, where he is thought to have died a natural death as governor of Magnesia.

Theramenes
(5th c. BC), Athenian politician and one of the Thirty Tyrants established in Athens after its defeat by Sparta in 404 BC; his moderation was despised by the hard-line oligarchists who had him put to death.

Thomson, James
(1700-1748), Scottish poet who composed plays on classical themes but whose principal fame rests on
The Seasons
(1730).

Tibullus
(ca. 55-19 BC), Roman poet whose works focus on romantic love and the pleasures of rural life and psychological tranquility.

Tigranes II
(1st c. AD), king of Armenia and head of empire in Syria until defeat by Roman expedition commanded by Lucullus and then by Pompey in AD 66.

Timoleon
(4th c. BC), Corinthian commander renowned for deposing Syracusan and Sicilian tyrants and for his victory over Carthage.

Turenne, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de
(1611-1675), celebrated French commander under Louis XIV whose genius was displayed in a series of successful campaigns throughout the Thirty Years’ War, the Fronde, and the Dutch War.

Ulysses
(Roman name for Odysseus), king of Ithaca whose efforts to return home after the Trojan War are chronicled in Homer’s
Odyssey
.

Voltaire
(François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778), French philosopher, playwright, poet, historian, and essayist who championed the liberal values of the Enlightenment in his
Philosophical Letters
(1734), his
Age of Louis XIV
(1752), and his
Treatise on Toleration
(1763); Smith was a particular admirer of Voltaire’s dramatic works, and sought him out for a personal visit at his estate in Ferney outside of Geneva during his travels in France.

William III
(1650-1702), Prince of Orange and King of England from 1689 until his death; on the invitation of leading English politicians he left Holland to assume the throne abdicated by James II.

Wollaston, William
(1659-1724), English moral philosopher and author of a single but influential treatise on natural religion,
The Religion of Nature Delineated
(1724).

Zeno of Citium
(
335
-
263
BC
), Greek philosopher who traveled to Athens and founded the Stoic school and set forth initial statements of Stoic logic, ethics, and metaphysics.

Textual Notes

ADVERTISEMENT

1
Smith’s “various occupations” over his career included professor of logic and then moral philosophy at Glasgow (1751-64); tutor to the third Duke of Buccleuch (1764- 66); and Commissioner of Customs for Scotland (1778-90).

2
The
Wealth of Nations
was published in 1776. Smith lectured on jurisprudence at Glasgow, and while he did not live to complete the work here mentioned, student transcriptions of his lectures have been published as part of the Glasgow Edition as the
Lectures on Jurisprudence
.

3
The “Advertisement” was new to the sixth edition of 1790; the final paragraph here mentioned was original to the first edition of 1759.

PART I , SECTION I

1
Smith introduces his work as an intervention in the debate over the relative degrees of selfishness and benevolence in human nature. The classical debate was defined by the contest of Stoicism with Epicureanism; Smith’s more immediate interlocutors include those who sought to defend pity and compassion and similar other-directed sentiments against the egoism of Hobbes and Mandeville, esp. Shaftesbury,
Inquiry Concerning Virtue
2; Hutcheson,
Essay with Illustrations
1.3-4 and 2 Preface and
System
1.1.5-6; Butler,
Fifteen Sermons
, esp. 1 and 5; Hume,
Enquiry Concerning Morals
App. 2; Kames,
Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion
1.1 and 1.2.5; and Rousseau,
Discourse on Inequality
, passim.

2
rack: “an engine to torture” (Johnson).

3
Smith here draws on the terms of Hume’s epistemology. For Hume’s account of the copy mechanism, see
A Treatise of Human Nature
1.1.1, 1.2.3.2-3; on the productive capacities of the imagination, see
Treatise
1.1.3, 1.4.2.31-37. For commentary on Smith’s debts to Hume’s conception of the imagination, see esp. Skinner, Griswold, and Raphael.

4
The spectator is one of Smith’s principal categories. Here he uses the term in the sense of an audience member at a theatrical spectacle; elsewhere he uses it to describe a range of ethical acts, from the spectatorship of the actions and character of others that provides the principal data that we use to construct ethical norms, to the idea of the “impartial spectator” whose apprehension of and judgments upon the self are the main agents of moral reform. Though Smith is the first to build a theory around spectatorship, the concept was central to several texts with which Smith engaged, including Addison’s
Spectator
; Hutcheson’s
Essay with Illustrations
; Hume’s
Enquiry Concerning Morals
; and Rousseau’s
Letter to d’Alembert
.

5
perfidious: “treacherous; false to trust; guilty of violated faith” (Johnson).

6
Sympathy is a central concept of Smith’s ethics. Prior to Smith it played an important role in several ethical systems; see Hutcheson,
Short Introduction
1.1.9; Kames,
Essays on Morality and Religion
1.1; Burke,
Philosophical Enquiry
1.13-15; and esp. Hume,
Treatise
2.1.11, 2.2.5-9 and 3.3.1-3. Smith’s use of the term is anticipated and clarified by Johnson, who defines it broadly as “fellow-feeling; mutual sensibility; the quality of being affected by the affection of another,” but limits pity to “sympathy with misery” and compassion to “painful sympathy.”

7
In speaking of the “illusions of the imagination” here and in 3.2 and 4.1, Smith may have Hume in mind; see, e.g.,
Treatise
1.3.5.4, 1.4.2.29, 1.4.7.6.

8
In 7.3.1 (p. 371), Smith names Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Mandeville as self-love theorists and refers to their various teachings on sociability and dependence.

9
spleen: “anger; spite; ill-humour” or “melancholy; hypochondriacal vapours” (Johnson).

10
For explication, see Smith’s review of Hutcheson and Hume at 7.2.3 (p. 353).

11
On the intellectual sentiments of admiration, wonder, and surprise, see esp. Smith’s
History of Astronomy
1-2; for commentary, see Eric Schliesser in
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13
(2005).

12
Smith’s response to this position is further developed in 4.2 (p. 218).

13
Smith’s distinction between the amiable and the awful virtues is anticipated by several others; see, e.g., Hume,
Treatise
3.3.4.2 and
Enquiry Concerning Morals
App. 4.6; Burke,
Philosophical Enquiry
3.10. The distinction plays a principal role in his thought and that of other main figures of the Scottish Enlightenment insofar as the distinction between the awful and amiable virtues represented more generally a distinction between the demanding virtues revered by classical antiquity and savage societies and the more polite and gentle virtues of commercial modernity. This theme reappears in remarks on savagery (5.2), human excellence (6), and Stoicism (7.2.1); a key discussion of Smith’s immediate context is Hume,
Enquiry Concerning Morals
7.11-18.

14
Matthew 22:36-40; Mark 12:30-31; John 13:34-35; 1 Corinthians 13:13; see also 3.6 (p. 197).

15
Smith’s distinction between propriety and virtue is fundamental to his thought as it both distinguishes the subjects of Part 1 from those of Part 6 and anticipates his distinction between the ordinary objects of praise, and the noble and honorable actions associated with praiseworthiness (3.2). In distinguishing mere propriety from true virtue, Smith may have in mind the distinction of
decorum
(propriety) and
honestum
(honorable and noble) fundamental to Cicero (see, e.g.,
De officiis
1.93-95), and revived in the Scottish Enlightenment in part via Hutcheson’s reminder of the difference between the ordinary duties described in Cicero’s
De officiis
and the supreme goods examined in his
De finibus
(
Short Introduction
Preface). Smith explicitly invokes the concept of offices on other occasions (e.g. 2.1.2, 7.2.1).

16
Smith returns to this point in his discussion of the wise and virtuous man at 6.3 (p. 280); see also Cicero,
De officiis
3.15.

PART I , SECTION II

1
Among ancient treatments, see, e.g., Aristotle,
Politics
1.2, 1252a25-1253a25; Epictetus,
Discourses
1.3.3, 1.6.12-22; Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
3.16, 6.23; Cicero,
De officiis
1.105-7. The comparison of animal to human nature was a prominent theme in Descartes, Locke, and Malebranche; in Smith’s more immediate context, see, e.g., Hume,
Treatise
2.1.12 and 2.2.12; Rousseau,
Discourse on Inequality
1.

2
See 1.1.1 above.

3
In his
Philoctetes
, Sophocles recounts Philoctetes’ laments at the injustice of his abandonment and his physical suffering (l. 732- 821). Sophocles’
Trachinian Women
recounts Heracles’ pain following his wife’s inadvertent poisoning and his plea to his son to put him out of his misery (l. 749-812, 971-1278). In
Hippolytus
, Euripides portrays the suffering and death of Hippolytus after having been dragged by his horses (l. 1173-1254, 1347-1466).

4
See 1.1.4 (p. 25).

5
raillery: “slight satire; satirical merriment” (Johnson).

6
For Tibullus’ praises of tranquil country life, see, e.g., 1.1, 1.5, 2.1; for his critique of the pursuit of wealth as inimical to tranquility, see, e.g., 1.1, 1.9, 1.10, 2.2. His poetry was often bound with that of his contemporary Propertius (as in the 1753 edition published in Glasgow owned by Smith); Smith’s disparaging reference to Petrarch in the previous paragraph had been to Propertius in all editions prior to 1790.

7
The afterlife paradise of the ancients; see, e.g., Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
10.8.

8
Thomas Otway’s play
The Orphan
.

9
Racine’s
Phèdre
was a retelling of Euripides’
Hippolytus
, referenced by Smith throughout called “the finest tragedy, perhaps, that is extant in any language.”

10
See 2.2.3 (p. 103).

11
For the Stoic conception of providentialism, see 7.2.1 below and accompanying notes.

12
Smith elaborates on the “musical passions” in his essay “The Imitative Arts” (esp. 2.13); see also his discussions of musical education in
Wealth of Nations
5.1.f and
Rhetoric
2.117.

13
perfidy: “treachery; want of faith; breach of faith” (Johnson).

PART I , SECTION III

1
Smith here refers to Hutcheson, who argues for the existence of a “natural disposition to congratulation with others in their joys” in
System
1.2.3 and 1.4.10; see also
Short Introduction
1.1.15; and
Essay with Illustrations
1.3.4.

2
After reading the first edition, Hume wrote Smith to suggest that he clarify his account of sympathy (
Correspondence
36). Smith wrote a draft of this note later that year in response and included it in the second and all subsequent editions of
TMS
.

3
Cato’s character and suicide were important themes across the eighteenth century owing in part to their depiction in Addison’s play. For Seneca’s portrait, see
De providentia
2.9-12.

4
See Plato,
Phaedo
117a-e.

5
Contemporary accounts of the execution describe Biron’s last moments as frantic and furious, emphasizing his threat to strangle the executioner rather than his tears of remorse or regret for lost greatness. Other accounts known to Smith, including that in the
Mémoires
of the Duc de Sully, do note Biron’s tears (see Bk. 13, for the year 1602); of these, Smith’s account is perhaps most similar to that of Helvétius in
De l’esprit
(see 3.28), published in 1758, a year before
TMS
—a work Hume recommended to Smith in 1759, but which Smith, in a 1763 letter to Hume, claimed not to have read prior to the publication of the first edition of
TMS
.