Letter To Adam Smith Sympathy Essay

Sympathy is what motivates one to action, and mutual sympathy is what connects the spectator and the agent. In a letter dated in 1759, David Hume wrote to Adam Smith, and offered his criticisms of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. In that letter he referred to Smith’s concept of sympathy as a “hinge.” Hume writes “I wish you had more particularly and fully proved, that all kinds of sympathy are necessarily agreeable. This is the hinge of your system, and yet you only mention the matter cursorily in p. 20.” However, Hume warns Smith that if sympathy is always agreeable it is inconsistent to admit any disagreeable sentiments from sympathy in his system. Smith responds:

I answer, that in the sentiment of approbation there are two things to be taken notice of; first, the sympathetic passion of the spectator; and, secondly, the emotion which arises from his observing the perfect coincidence between this sympathetic passion in himself, and the original passion in the person principally concerned. This last emotion, in which the sentiment of approbation properly consists, is always agreeable and delightful. The other may either be agreeable or disagreeable, according to the nature of the original passion,

We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted; and the pleasure which we find in the conversation of one, whom in all the passions of his heart we can entirely sympathize with, seems to do more than compensate the painfulness of that sorrow with which the view of his situation affects us. On the contrary, it is always disagreeable to feel that we cannot sympathize with him; and, instead of being pleased with this exemption from sympathetic pain, it hurts us to find that we cannot share his