Compassion And Happiness

Adam Smith, who is one of the typical representatives of Scottish Historist School in Enlightment Times, is a thinker who has still influenced people'life greatly so far. As a moral philosopher, Smith's philosophy regarded Hobbes'philosophy as starting point to thought to transport. Hobbesian, as a product of British Bourgeois Revolution in Modern Times, was greatly affected by his historical conditions. He considered that selfishness was the human nature and the happiness was that you should meet your desire continuously. He also said that the contradictions between the two were determined to cause Hobbesian Problem, which stopped the human happiness from coming true. Due to denying human natural sociality, Hobbes used autocratic government to solve this problem, while this intention was contrary to the social development in Smith'times. According to his own times, he structured the theory of sympathy, which connected'Sympathy'to'Self-interest', to express human nature and which also provided a new train of thought for solving'Hobbesian Problem'and achieving human happiness. Finally, Smith overstepped Hobbes'thoughts of happiness entirely and made Hobbes'thoughts liberalized and commercialized substantially, which met the need of his society. Then this paper will explain the happiness from three aspects: the foundation of human nature, the objective content and the means. Firstly, Smith put'Sympathy'into human nature so that the sympathy and the selfishness could be connected together. As a result, he concluded that selfish individuals had the human nature socialization. In this way, it offered the base of human nature to solve'Hobbesian Problem'and the possibility of realizing the happiness. Secondly, he thought that the material happiness was the rich materials, the interpersonal happiness was to get sympathy and spirit happiness was a peaceful mind. Besides, Smith put all his efforts to advocating the exchange of commodity in'Civilized Society'. He thought that that this survival means could not only make each person get happiness, but also display the human nature. In addition, Smith regarded that people must protect the justice of exchange to guard the exchange behaviors. His theory of the happiness considered sympathy to be the foundation of epistemology, the needs of human to be the main idea, and the'Civilized Society'as the environment of achieving the happiness, which both paid close attention to human's survival condition and paid close attention to human's moral life. Both his achievements and limits reflect the special position of Scottish Historist School in the history and has abundant ethics connotation, the meaning of enlightening to the constructing of modern social ethics and the happiness of contemporary people very much, as well.