Perfect and Imperfect Sympathy in Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy

This chapter shows in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding Smith’s conception of harmony between oneself and others. Specifically, assuming the centrality of the concept of immediacy, I describe in what sense sympathy would be central to understanding human nature, mind and the self in relation to Smith’s conceptions of the origin of moral judgment, the moral development of the self, and emotional expression. Firstly, I analyse the fundamental role of the passions as the object and origin of moral judgment in human beings, showing their immediate dimension. Then I consider the crucial role of the imagination in the articulation of the imperfect and perfect degrees of sympathy, understanding this imagination as a mental process consisting of two moments: a natural-immediate, linked to sensory perception; a moral-rational, marked by an intellectual effort. Thus, imperfect sympathy is defined as that related to the perceptual dimension, which a person experiences only when he has a general idea of the cause that provokes the feeling with which she sympathises; perfect sympathy is described as that which a person has when, considering the other’s situation, she expresses a moral judgment on the character and conduct of the other. Finally, the chapter offers an inventory of Smith’s main qualifications of the concept of sympathy in his moral theory.