Quotation
Last reviewed:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
Adam Smith · Moral philosophy · Enlightenment · 1759
What does it mean?
Self-interest is real, and on the opening page of his moral philosophy it is not the whole of human nature, because we are built to care about other people's fortunes. Their happiness becomes, in a limited way, necessary to us, even when we gain nothing but the pleasure of seeing it. A rival reading treats the sentence as a cancellation of The Wealth of Nations, as if sympathy and self-interest could not live in one thinker. The sentence is his own English, and it is the surest way to stop the myth that he thought people were only selfish.
Did Adam Smith really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. The opening sentence of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith's own English. It is the surest way to stop the myth that he thought people were only selfish. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
The Theory of Moral Sentiments I.i.1.1
Approximate date: 1759.
How to use it
When a neighbour in a Glasgow close explains a choice, try the sympathy account before the cunning one: the person may have acted because someone else's happiness had become, in a small way, part of their own. He thinks that interest is often the more obvious cause, and it still counts as a pleasure rather than as sainthood. The explanation does not deny the rent, the bill, or the bargain; It denies that those are the only springs.
A mindset reading
A pleasure in another's happiness is still a pleasure, and he is not claiming that people are saints or that selfishness is a slander. He is claiming that we are not sealed off. Using the sentence to deny that butchers mind their own interest would contradict the other book; Using the other book to deny this sentence contradicts this page; He wrote both.
Understand the philosophy
The impartial spectator, the imagined fair judge within, grows out of this sympathy in the course of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The key term is sympathy, the fellow-feeling by which we enter into another person's situation, not a gush of pity and not a denial of self-love. The Wealth of Nations is the other panel of the same thinker, not a retraction of the opening. The English is his, from 1759.
- ethics
- society
- love
FAQ
What does it mean?
Self-interest is real, and on the opening page of his moral philosophy it is not the whole of human nature, because we are built to care about other people's fortunes. Their happiness becomes, in a limited way, necessary to us, even when we gain nothing but the pleasure of seeing it. A rival reading treats the sentence as a cancellation of The Wealth of Nations, as if sympathy and self-interest could not live in one thinker. The sentence is his own English, and it is the surest way to stop the myth that he thought people were only selfish.
Did Adam Smith really say this?
Well attested. The opening sentence of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith's own English. It is the surest way to stop the myth that he thought people were only selfish. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
The Theory of Moral Sentiments I.i.1.1 Approximate date: 1759.