ABSTRACT

“The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. It is perhaps, the instinct upon which is founded the faculty of speech, the characteristical faculty of human nature” (Smith, 1976, p. 336). This statement by Adam Smith appears not in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1983; henceforth LRBL), but near the end of his treatise on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1976; henceforth TMS). In TMS, Smith principally argues that another of “our natural desires,” sympathy, is at the root of human moral sensibilities. In the course of doing so, he frequently uses the field of rhetorical action (particularly epideictic practice) to litmus philosophical distinctions, support his arguments, or otherwise help illustrate his theory. Taken in context, such references amply suggest that Smith saw a fundamental relation between the human faculty of persuasion and the principles of human action studied by ethics. But just what was this relation?