Summary of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Best known for his revolutionary free-market economics treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he investigated the flip side of economic self-interest: the interest of the greater good. Smith's classic work advances ideas about conscience, moral judgement and virtue that have taken on renewed importance in business and politics.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638151067

IRB Media

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Summary

of

Adam Smith’s

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Table of Contents

Overview

Key Insights

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Important People

Author’s Style

Author’s Perspective

Overview

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) by Adam Smith is the philosophical precursor to The Wealth of Nations (1776), one of the most influential books in the English language. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is tightly focused on morality, a set of rules for living that arise naturally from people’s capacity for empathy.

The human moral system is organically constituted, not imposed by any other power. Morals extend from individual emotional lives and relationships to other people. If people behaved in a purely self-interested manner, morality would not exist. God made people empathic by giving them the capacity to imagine what others feel and experience, which discourages them from harming one another. Empathy informs justice, which is