ABSTRACT
In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith provides detailed and well-informed descriptions of the way people interact, of the way they emotionally respond to each other and make judgments about feelings and actions as morally good or bad. Scholars agree that his purposes include at least the following two: First, he wants to provide evidence for his claim that humans' natural dispositions include not only self-love or selfishness but also ‘sympathy’, a disposition to emotionally care for each other which plays a key role in a person's moral development. And second, his study of the dynamics of social interaction aims at explaining the way in which, through processes of interaction driven both by self-love and sympathy, people can, as individuals, acquire the capacity of self-command and moral conscience and, as members of a society, a state of mutual approval and respectful co-citizenship in accordance with moral standards. Self-command and moral conscience are, according to Smith, the characteristic features of the free and responsible moral agent. Respectful interaction in accordance with moral standards allows people to achieve a state of social harmony in which they still enjoy a great degree of individual liberty, a state which, according to Smith, is a condition for a happy life.
