The Theory of Moral Sentiments (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 355 help. I say this, to repeat, although I think Lemos to be on the right track in spite of occasionally becoming sidetracked. Among other concepts that Lemos considers are the general will and its determination, partial association, religion, and republicanism. In all of these his comments are illuminating and often incisive. He has an interesting chapter in which he compares Rousseau and Marxism, noting several similarities as well as difference. Lemos is at some pains throughout the book to place Rousseau in the camp of Christian philosophers. In many ways he tries to accomplish this by making him more Kantian than Kant. He stresses the Kantian argument for immortality based on the necessity of completing perfect justice, which is not attainable in this life, by a personal survival of death that makes it possible. I do not find it a compelling argument, nor do I find it a necessary ingredient of Rousseau's views in, say, The Social Contract. The advantages of civil society as Rousseau conceives it are not dissipated by the impossibility of perfect justice on earth. The notion of its attainment in another life contains so many difficulties when compared and contrasted with conditions on earth that it is hardly possible that we are even speaking about the same concept. In conclusion I wish to repeat that in spite of some difficulties of style and argument, this is an excellent study of Rousseau's political philosophy and well worth the effort to read it. THEODOREWALDMAN Harvey Mudd College Adam Smith. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Mackie. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. s To mark the bicentenary of The Wealth of Nations, Glasgow University has commissioned editions of all of Adam Smith's works; the present volume is the first of this impressive series of six. Nor will this first volume disappoint the scholarly audience to which it is addressed, for Professors Raphael and Mackie have produced a handsome and authoritative edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments with a fully annotated text, an extensive introduction, several appendices , and a full index. This project is the more welcomed as there has been no modern, full, scholarly edition of this work in English. In the last of the four sections of the introduction, the editors enunciate their policy on the text, which has led them to use the sixth edition of 1790 as their copy-text. This was the last authoritative edition in Smith's lifetime (the first being 1759), and having been extensively and meticulously revised by him it seems reasonable as a choice to represent his mature thought on the work. However, the editors have been assiduous in checking all the other five editions published during his lifetime as well as the seventh edition of 1792, and they append to the text details of minor changes. These notes are supplemented by an appendix that sets out variations in editions in greater detail, though the editors rightly confine themselves, in annotating the text, to alterations in style, words, and so on, rather than in wholesale revisions which Smith obviously wanted to stand. They do consider these major revisions of the texts in another section of the introduction. The other sections of the introduction deal respectively with an account of the formation of the work from the Glasgow lectures Smith gave in 1752, the influence of ancient and modern thought on Smith's philosophy, the evolution of the edition (revisions) and its relation to the Wealth of Nations, its reception upon publication at home and abroad and subsequent criticism (with bibliography ), and finally, the section on the text which I have already mentioned. The evolution of the text shows Adam Smith's constant concern to revise and refine his thinking. The thought itself, the editors stress more fully than has been done before, is deeply imbued with the Stoic spirit, particularly in its emphasis on self-restraint. Nevertheless, Smith's ideas of sympathy and the impartial spectator are original to him. Among the moderns Hutcheson 356 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and Hume are given prominent place, the editors showing how criticism of Hume led to redrafts of The Theory of...