Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments generally views human morality
through the interaction of the individual and society. While the first 2 parts
of the work consider the foundations of our judgments concerning the sentiments
of others, part 3 seeks to establish the basis for our judgments about our own
feelings and behavior. He begins with the premise that we can only make
judgments about ourselves from a certain psychic distance. The only
sufficiently distant perspective that can judge our behavior is that of another
person – one whose judgment reflects the existing social mores of that context.
Essentially, “we approve (or disapprove) of our own conduct according to
whether, when we adopt the situation of a spectator, viewing our conduct with
his eyes (so to speak) and from his standpoint, we feel that we can (or cannot)
entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives that
influenced it” (62). We try to examine our behavior as we perceive an unbiased
spectator would. We’ve understood from previous chapters in this work that
humans invariably feel the passions expressed by others around them, but Smith
frequently revisits the “impartial spectator” as an entity who has no personal
attachment or aversion to a given subject, and thus the impartial spectators’
judgments of one’s conduct are the most valid judgments. Therefore, when we act,
we aim to place ourselves in the spectator’s position and “enter the passions”
that the spectator would feel when seeing our own action. If the imagined
spectator approves of the action, we consider it morally proper and pursue it.
If we imagine the spectator to disapprove, we usually choose not to act that
way.
But the subject then takes another step to sympathize with the passions
that the spectator experiences when he observes the subject’s actions. Smith
claims, “my judgment that my conduct is morally proper involves two exercises
of sympathy: (1) the imagined spectator’s sympathy with my actual
motives and feelings, which leads to his having such feelings; then (2)
my sympathy with those feelings of the spectator’s” (62). This
creates a circular process wherein the subject must imagine what the spectator
will feel, determine whether the spectator would approve of the actions, and
then sympathize with the spectator’s passions that the subject himself evoked.
This circular form is troubling because it relies on the existence of an
original set of social mores within the circle that gets reproduced – by
imagining the spectator, determining self-approval, and behaving in agreement
with the presumed social mores to reinforce their place in society. In fact,
Smith proposes that given a man who somehow may have grown up with no awareness
of social mores, “bring him into society and all his own passions will
immediately become the causes of new passions. He will observe that mankind
approve of some of them, and this will elate him; and that they are disgusted
by others, which will cast him down” (63). That is, the circle of self-approval
cannot exist without a social order that informs it. Humans do not possess an
innate ability to determine how an impartial spectator will judge their conduct
– this judgment develops socially. Smith then summarizes: all our judgments of
self are, in fact,
socially developed. He asserts, “we are concerned about our own beauty and
ugliness only because of its effect on others. If we had no connection with
society, we would be altogether indifferent about both” (63). Given these
conditions, can humans develop moral judgments of the self without society? Is
there any space within these cycles for social mores to transform or reform,
even though Smith proposes that we all behave to be praiseworthy, i.e. approved
by imagined spectators who reflect existing social mores? What assurance do we
have, if any, that all members in a functioning society imagine a spectator’s
sympathies similarly, and thus reproduce the same social mores in this
self-approval cycle?
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