Reading Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments 2

Of the Degrees of the Different Passions which are Consistent with Propriety

My first two posts on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) are here and here, and you can read the man himself here.

Though we have differences in how we do so, I think most everyone has encountered situations where we think people are expressing their emotions inappropriately, whether grandstanding and attention-demanding over a minor triumph, or with gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over a few drops of spilled milk, or, on the other side, keeping things too bottled in, to the point where it is difficult for anyone to bond with them in sympathy. Different times and places have different expectations over this sort of thing, but expectations do exist. It is something parents try to teach children: what sort of emotional expression is right for different circumstances. Sometimes it is okay to cry, but not when your teacher gives you a B+ on an essay which, honestly, is pretty generous. Another thing we learn as we grow is that the sympathy people will feel for us depends in part on whether they think our own handling of the situation is appropriate to the magnitude of what has happened. Knowing that, and appreciating the sympathy of our friends, leads us further to moderate our reactions.

In the second section of TMS Smith wants to try to sort what emotional expressions and passions are “consistent with propriety”. This sounds like he is writing a book on etiquette. And, well, etiquette is a part of our moral life: when we teach children to say “please” and “thank you” we are doing more than just teaching them a social custom, but are teaching them not to take others for granted. I don’t think I am alone in having found that seeing how someone addresses staff in a restaurant is a pretty accurate guide to their moral grounding.

Smith is going to do more than this: he is seeking a theory of morals. “Propriety” and sympathy are his starting point, laying the groundwork.

So, what does he say?

Smith does not give a strict set of rules: how could he? But he does have ideas on when it is easiest to garner appropriate levels of sympathy, and when it is not.

The passions of the body are the hardest with which to gain sympathy, because “empathy” in the modern sense is impossible. I can feel badly for someone who is hungry, but I will not literally feel their pangs of hunger. Smith says we can sympathize with the fear of pain, or of hopelessness, much more readily:

We can sympathize with the distress which excessive hunger occasions, when we read the description of it in the journal of a siege, or of a sea-voyage. We imagine ourselves in the situation of the sufferers, and thence readily conceive the grief, the fear, and consternation, which must necessarily distract them. We feel, ourselves, some degree of those passions, and therefore sympathize with them: but as we do not grow hungry by reading the description, we cannot properly, even in this case, be said to sympathize with their hunger.

I remember long ago reading Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger, and there is a passage where he is terribly, awfully thirsty. I didn’t feel thirsty reading it (or maybe I did a little?), but it is imagining the fear that is most gripping: what if this is it? What if there is no water to be found? Any reasonably competent director of a horror film knows this: you grip the audience through fear of what is about to happen, not the moment of pain itself.

And so we come to Smith’s first piece of advice in this section: recognize that there will always be a distance between your physical passions and what someone can sympathize with.

… this is the case of all the passions which take their origin from the body: they excite either no sympathy at all, or such a degree of it, as is altogether disproportioned to the violence of what is felt by the sufferer.

It is quite otherwise with those passions which take their origin from the imagination. The frame of my body can be but little affected by the alterations which are brought about upon that of my companion; but my imagination is more ductile, and more readily assumes, if I may say so, the shape and configuration of the imaginations of those with whom I am familiar. A disappointment in love, or ambition, will, upon this account, call forth more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil. Those passions arise altogether from the imagination. The person who has lost his whole fortune, if he is in health, feels nothing in his body. What he suffers is from the imagination only, which represents to him the loss of his dignity, neglect from his friends, contempt from his enemies, dependence, want, and misery, coming fast upon him; and we sympathize with him more strongly upon this account, because our imaginations can more readily mould themselves upon his imagination, than our bodies can mould themselves upon his body.

This is likewise with that other great passion: love. I am happy for the friend who finds themself in love with someone, but obviously I don’t feel the same love for that someone. I do feel happy that they are happy and hopeful. And for that reason, we gain more sympathy when we put more emphasis on that:

All serious and strong expressions of [love] appear ridiculous to a third person; and though a lover may be good company to his mistress, he is so to nobody else. He himself is sensible of this; and as long as he continues in his sober senses, endeavours to treat his own passion with railery and ridicule. It is the only style in which we care to hear of it; because it is the only style in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it. We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and Petrarch, who never have done with exaggerating the violence of their attachments; but the gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, are always agreeable.

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We need to keep in mind that Smith is looking at the propriety of how we express our emotions not just through what is seemly, but with regard to how others can engage with us in sympathy.

The man who is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident; who is hurt if either the cook or the butler have failed in the least article of their duty; who feels every defect in the highest ceremonial of politeness, whether it be shewn to himself or to any other person; who takes it amiss that his intimate friend did not bid him good-morrow when they met in the forenoon, and that his brother hummed a tune all the time he himself was telling a story; who is put out of humour by the badness of the weather when in the country, by the badness of the roads when upon a journey, and by the want of company, and dullness of all public diversions, when in town; such a person, I say, though he should have some reason, will seldom meet with much sympathy.

Which brings us to anger and resentment. If a friend has fallen in love, we can feel pleased for both a friend and for his beloved (as long as he doesn’t drone on and on about her), and sympathy comes easily. But that is not true for anger and resentment, for our feelings for the friend who has been wronged is tempered by our concern from the target of the resentment:

There is another set of passions, which, though derived from the imagination, yet before we can enter into them, or regard them as graceful or becoming, must always be brought down to a pitch much lower than that to which undisciplined nature would raise them. These are, hatred and resentment, with all their different modifications. With regard to all such passions, our sympathy is divided between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them. The interests of these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy with the person who feels them would prompt us to wish for, our fellow-feeling with the other would lead us to fear. …

The hoarse, boisterous, and discordant voice of anger, when heard at a distance, inspires us either with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards it, as to one who cries out with pain and agony. Women, and men of weak nerves, tremble and are overcome with fear, though sensible that themselves are not the objects of the anger. They conceive fear, however, by putting themselves in the situation of the person who is so. Even those of stouter hearts are disturbed: not indeed enough to make them afraid, but enough to make them angry; for anger is the passion which they would feel in the situation of the other person. It is the same case with hatred. Mere expressions of spite inspire it against nobody, but the man who uses them. Both these passions are by nature the objects of our aversion. Their disagreeable and boisterous appearance never excites, never prepares, and often disturbs, our sympathy.

And this is maybe why I find my sympathy with the Trump voter with whom we are meant to empathize - say in this column from the Times’s Nicholas Kristof (gift link) - so difficult. Yes, there is genuine hardship out there. But their candidate of choice promises nothing but resentment and punishment, and anybody who is going to bother to vote at all knows this. People might have dumb ideas on whether Trump’s promised tariffs would raise their standard of living - so be it. But the promise of deporting ten million people is another thing entirely, and every Trump voter knows that he has promised to implement this terribly cruel measure. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with someone willing to be an enabler of it, because my sympathies lie much more with the immigrant families, as I write this, so fearful of what might become of them.

Reading on, in the next section Smith will consider how we sympathize differently with the rich and the poor, which seems relevant here.