Théorie des sentiments moraux
- Langue:
- anglais
- État:
- Œuvre complète
- Paternité:
- Écrite par l'auteur
- État du texte:
- Texte propre
- Étendue:
- ~120 000 mots · 579 passages
Citer cette œuvre
- APAAdam Smith. (n.d.). Théorie des sentiments moraux. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments
- MLAAdam Smith. "Théorie des sentiments moraux." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments.
- ChicagoAdam Smith. Théorie des sentiments moraux. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments.
De quoi il s'agit
Le premier livre d'Adam Smith, de 1759, où il explique comment naît le jugement moral : non de la raison ni d'un commandement, mais de la capacité de se mettre à la place d'autrui.
Contexte et histoire
Le mécanisme en est la sympathie, qui ne signifie pas ici la compassion mais la faculté d'imaginer ce que nous éprouverions dans la situation de l'autre. De cette opération sort le « spectateur impartial », figure intérieure à laquelle nous confrontons notre propre conduite et qui tient lieu de conscience. Il vaut mieux lire ce livre avant « La Richesse des nations » qu'après : on a longtemps parlé d'un « problème d'Adam Smith », comme si l'auteur de la sympathie et celui de l'intérêt propre étaient incompatibles. Smith ne le voyait pas ainsi, et il révisa cet ouvrage jusqu'à l'année de sa mort, trente ans après l'autre. Il était professeur de philosophie morale, non économiste : voici son livre central.
Contexte éditorial, non une source citable : contrairement aux passages de l'œuvre, ces données ne peuvent pas être vérifiées dans le corpus.
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.…