ADAM SMITH AND THE POSSIBILITY OF SYMPATHY WITH NATURE

Author: FRIERSON, PATRICK R.

Source: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 87, Number 4, December 2006 , pp. 442-480(39)

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Abstract:

As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's “all important emotion of sympathy” (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in “History of Astronomy and Physics,” I show that sympathy with non-sentient nature is possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00271.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy Whitman College Walla Walla, Washington

Publication date: 2006-12-01