The Theory of Moral Sentiments (review)

This book will not supplant its predecessor, from the Glasgow edition of Smith's collected works, as the definitive edition for Smith scholars. Nor was this its intention. As the publisher explains on the back cover, the "main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English." This particular volume, one suspects, was added to the series only for the sake of completeness, since the Glasgow edition is still readily available through Liberty Fund. This latest edition appears to be directed at students, with a goal no more ambitious than to make Smith's moral philosophy accessible to them in an attractive, reliable, yet inexpensive tome. Knud Haakonssen was an obvious choice for the role of editor. The principal points of interest for Smith specialists will be his footnotes and brief introduction.

This is not a variorum edition. It follows the text of the sixth edition, the last to appear in Smith's lifetime. Fortunately, Haakonssen has made important variations available in the footnotes. Although the paragraphs are all numbered, readers of this edition will find it difficult to work with the usual part.section.chapter.paragraph references. The page headers do not track the part, section, and chapter numbers, meaning one has to leaf through the book to find the specific pages on which the part, section, and chapter numbers are indicated before the paragraph numbers can be of any use.

Like D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, the editors of the Glasgow edition, Haakonssen uses footnotes only to provide biographical and bibliographical details for Smith's many historical and literary references. What commentary he offers is confined to the introduction. Relative to the Glasgow edition, the footnotes are slightly greater in number (Haakonssen has perhaps targeted undergraduate readers and added more explanatory notes accordingly) and more informative (he acknowledges a debt in this regard to the editors of a recent Parisian edition). The footnotes are easily the best feature of this edition.

The introduction makes no attempt to acquaint readers with the basic structure of the book (although it does offer a three-page biography). Rather it offers up Smith's theory as a counterweight to certain trends in modern moral philosophy, whose "whole idea" is "to justify a criterion for right action" (xxiv). The thrust of the argument is to demonstrate that Smith doesn't believe it possible to establish moral principles by a priori reflection. Translating Smith's central principle of sympathy as the "practical" or "creative imagination," Haakonssen emphasizes how for Smith moral codes and rules are generated on the fly through ceaseless imagined interpersonal comparisons of sentiments and judgments. With some aspects of Haakonssen's interpretation I would quibble, but on this central point surely we can all agree.