Theorie der ethischen Gefühle
- Sprache:
- Englisch
- Status:
- Vollständiges Werk
- Autorschaft:
- Vom Autor verfasst
- Zustand des Textes:
- Sauberer Text
- Umfang:
- ~120.000 Wörter · 579 Passagen
Dieses Werk zitieren
- APAAdam Smith. (n.d.). Theorie der ethischen Gefühle. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/de/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments
- MLAAdam Smith. "Theorie der ethischen Gefühle." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/de/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments.
- ChicagoAdam Smith. Theorie der ethischen Gefühle. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/de/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments.
Wovon es handelt
Adam Smiths erstes Buch, von 1759, worin er erklärt, wie das sittliche Urteil entsteht: nicht aus der Vernunft und nicht aus einem Gebot, sondern aus der Fähigkeit, sich an die Stelle eines anderen zu versetzen.
Kontext und Geschichte
Das Getriebe ist die Sympathie, die hier nicht Mitleid heißt, sondern das Vermögen, sich vorzustellen, was wir in der Lage des anderen empfänden. Aus diesem Vorgang geht der „unparteiische Zuschauer“ hervor, die innere Gestalt, an der wir das eigene Verhalten messen und die als Gewissen dient. Man liest dies Buch besser vor dem „Wohlstand der Nationen“ als danach: lange sprach man von einem „Adam-Smith-Problem“, als seien der Verfasser der Sympathie und der des Eigennutzes unverträglich. Smith sah es nicht so und arbeitete an diesem Werk bis in sein Todesjahr, dreißig Jahre nach dem anderen. Er war Professor der Moralphilosophie, nicht Nationalökonom: dies ist sein Hauptbuch.
Redaktioneller Kontext, keine zitierfähige Quelle: anders als die Passagen des Werks lassen sich diese Angaben nicht am Korpus überprüfen.
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. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it. As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some measure him, and thence form some idea of his sensations and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.…