The Research Of Adam Smith’s Sympathy Theory

Adam Smith,as a famous moral philosopher and economist in the eighteenth century,is also one of the representatives of emotional Enlightenment.His moral theory system based on sympathy has rich theoretical connotation and practical significance.As a core concept throughout the entire ethical system of Adam Smith,"sympathy" often refers to multiple specific meanings: When Smith emphasized that sympathy is a gifted emotion possessed by human beings,the meaning of his reference is close to what we usually call compassion.When Smith emphasized that bystanders can take advantage of "sympathy" to realize the reappearance of other people’s emotions in the self,"sympathy" mainly refers to a special psychological mechanism.And when Smith makes a general dissertation on the related subjects of "sympathy",it is not only a kind of innate emotion and ability,but also the moral behavior resulting from it,as well as the modification of the sympathizers’ emotion and behavior aiming at appropriateness after reflection as emphasized by Smith.Taking the sympathy endowment that everyone has as a prerequisite and on the basis of overcoming the criticism of "altruism and self-interest",the sentimentalism theory of Adam Smith deeply analyzes and demonstrates how "sympathy" is an emotional tendency that focuses on the well-being of others from a psychological action mechanism that can be subjectively regulated to a whole process of a special mode of communication that aims at pursuing "suitability".In today’s increasingly prominent problems such as moral indifference and lack of value identification,an in-depth analysis of Adam Smith’s theory of moral emotion and its value will undoubtedly bring us a lot of thinking and inspiration.