Why we feel the pain of others: Adam Smith’s theory of moral sympathy
In short: Adam Smith is best known for the invisible hand, but his 1759 masterpiece, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, reveals a different side of human nature. He argues that we are hardwired for sympathy, using our imagination to mirror the passions of others and build the foundations of social morality.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith departs from the 'moral sense' tradition of thinkers like David Hume and Francis Hutcheson. Instead of an innate moral organ, Smith proposes 'sympathy'—the imaginative act of placing ourselves in another person's situation. Because we cannot directly experience what others feel, we reconstruct their sensations by asking what we would feel if we were in their shoes. This mirroring process is not merely intellectual; it is visceral. When we see someone dance, we move; when we see someone injured, we wince, feeling their pain as if it were our own.
Smith distinguishes between intrapersonal emotions, like joy and grief, which trigger sympathy easily, and interpersonal emotions, like anger, which require context. We often fail to sympathize with anger because we lack knowledge of the provocation. Crucially, Smith argues that our sympathy is often disconnected from the other person's actual reality. A mother watching a suffering infant may feel more distress than the child, who only experiences the immediate physical discomfort. We are not reacting to their state, but to our own imagined version of it.
This system of sympathy is essential for human connection. Smith suggests that mutual sympathy—the sharing of emotions—is a fundamental source of pleasure. We find relief in sharing sorrow, and we view the failure to offer sympathy during times of grief as a form of inhumanity. While Smith acknowledges that humans are naturally self-interested, he argues that this self-regard is balanced by our capacity for sympathy. Through this lens, human behavior is simultaneously self-regarding and other-regarding, a duality that forms the core of our social and cultural enterprise.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: The Theory of Moral Sentiments
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