Adam Smith's Ethics

This dissertation presents a comprehensive approach to Adam Smith's moral philosophical theories, especially his ethics theory.In the beginning, on the base of a literature review on the researches about Adam Smith's thoughts for recent decades internationally, it gives a retrospect and conclusion about this research field and points out several trends on this researching field. It is indicated that the most noticeable focuses are Smith's attention on the nature of ethics and the importance of Theodicy and Stoicism in his thoughts.Under this trajectory, Smith's main ethics work The Theory of Moral Sentiments is explicated in details. The dissertation explores his ethics thoughts from five aspects: sympathetic psychological theory, justice theory, conscience theory, habits and utility theory and virtue theory. It compares the changes of his ethics thoughts from the 1st edition to the 6th edition of this book, analyses the main reasons of these changes, and explores the links between Stoicism, Calvinism and his ethics, indicating that Smith was influenced by Calvinism and Stoicism respectively in early thoughts and late thoughts.Although Smith's ethics have strong immanent link with Hume's ethics, scholars' attention focused on these links too much while ignored the originalities of his thoughts. The author analyses these originalities. Firstly, Smith began his ethics thoughts with analysis of sympathy as Hume did, but he emphasized on the propriety of sympathy rather than sympathy itself. Secondly, as an empiricist, he believe in the mysterious structure under nature and society rather than being an atheist as Hume. Further more, although Smith did not deny the value of utility in ethical judgement, he did not agree to give moral judgement according to utility. According to the author's study, the later his thoughts are, the more differences between his thoughts from Hume's ethics, and the more immanent relevance his thoughts with Kant's ethics.It is concluded that the characteristics and changes of Smith's ethics, were related with the transformation of modern civil society. There was an important reason of his attitudinal turn of human nature from optimism to pessimism, that is, he perceived that the progress of commercial society impacted on morality greatly, and he realized the intolerant nature between property and virtue. Therefore, hetransformed his ethics theory from immorality and relativism to morality and autonomy in his late editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In some sense, he retreated from civil society theory and front edge of Scottish enlightenment movement. This indicates his awareness of the limits of enlightenment movement and the crises of modern commercial society.It is pointed out that the changes and meaning of Smith's ethics is noteworthy. His turn of the emphasis from ethics to morality indicated his anxiety about the problems arising from the development of civil society and the popularity of commutative justice, and his anxiety of seeking the solution of these problems. If Smith embraced the beliefs of a kind of public order and custom and social ethics in his early time, he concerned more on the enlightenment of morality and edification. Relativist and relational elements, such as sympathy, propriety, began to give their way to elements with certainty, such as autonomy, prudence and justice. Therefore, Smith's ethics thoughts experienced 3 stages, from the outbreak of ethics certainty(on the ground of nature law) to relativist ethics based on sympathy and propriety theories, and from the relativist ethics to pursuit of certainty again-a sublation of relativist ethics.However, although Smith emphasized on moral consciousness and autonomy in his morality theory, he was ambiguous on this issue. On one hand, he needed a definite morality theory which provide a acceptable metaphysical basis for morality. On the other hand, He swung between Theodicy and Stoicism, suspecting both. The last edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is an evidence of this...