ABSTRACT
Most discussions of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, beginning with the famous assessments of Edmund Burke, David Hume and Gilbert Minto, overwhelmingly focus on the mechanism of sympathy at work in the book (see Corr. Letter 38 from Edmund Burke, 10 September 1759, in Smith 1987: 46; Smith 1976a, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I. iii. 1. 9: 45f. and notes; Raphael 2007: 7, 128f; cf. Anon. 1764: 152; Smith 1976a, TMS V. 2. 9: 206). Given that its opening chapters elaborate a specific concern with the propriety of action, however, it is surprising that relatively few interpreters examine the concept of propriety in the same detail (cf. Fleischacker 1999; Griswold 1999; Haakonssen 1989). One early response that does examine the concept, however, and upon which my discussion shall shortly build, explores its dramatic embodiment in the character of Cordelia, from Shakespeare's King Lear (Richardson 1788). Therefore, after first outlining some of the basic contours of propriety in Theory of Moral Sentiments, my discussion turns to how some of the central themes at issue in King Lear might in fact provide significant resources for understanding the broader and dramatically complex role played by propriety in Smith's work. This is because my principal aim is to show how central the standard of propriety is in Smith's work, and to explore its function as part of his wider moral and political theory of what might be termed persuasive agency. According to Smith, the propriety of agency or action is a measure of how persuasive its claims to our sympathy might be, particularly when seen from the vantage point of the spectator, and which is therefore a judgment of its suitability, rightness or otherwise.
