Adam Smith’s moral decision-making process

This paper explores Adam Smith’s account of the process of making moral judgements as he describes it in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In order to appreciate the moral decision-making process as Smith describes it, a complete set of mental faculties has to be taken into consideration. A unified account of the faculties of the human mind in the context of Smith’s moral decision-making process can now testify for far-reaching consequences also regarding the rationalistic connotation of a theory of moral sentiments. The role of understanding or reason, which has been underestimated in the context of the research on Smith’s moral philosophy, needs more attention. The change in the activation of the faculty of feeling sympathy, which is now activated by the imagination and an informed imagination by an actual cognition, expresses the change from the first, imperfect empathic feeling.