Signs of mutual sympathy. Where it all begins

Sympathy must naturally be used spontaneously, so that it is broad and satisfactory; instead, empathy emerges from a responsible perspective on authentic life, with meaning and tolerance, ideal remedy to reduce the gaps of division and anger.

Both of them are necessary for conservation good treatment and establishing a common path with the universal common sense. Francis Hutcheson is a famous proto-utilitarian. However, Adam Smith, his most famous successor in the department of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, took on other aspects of his master's sentimental ethics and based on the same sentimentality a completely different theory of morality.

Key words: Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, sentimentality, ethics, practical reason, Scottish illustration, sympathy, impartial spectator. Francis Hutcheson is known as a proto-utilitarian. Key words: Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, sentimentalism, ethics, practical reason, Scottish Enlightenment, sympathy, impartial spectator.

From Hutcheson to Smith: "complex" sentimentality. Francis Hutcheson is considered by many authors to be the true father of the sentimental ethics of the Scottish Enlightenment, the cradle of the later and still influential modern utilitarian tradition. But Adam Smith, another famous exponent of Scottish sentimentality, and the most famous student and successor in the Chair of Morals at the University of Glasgow Hutcheson, founded on the same sentimentality a moral theory that not only leaves, but even excludes utilitarianism, which approaches even the peculiar ethics of practical reason .

Moreover, among the few accolades that this author is known to have made during his entire life, one of the greatest is specifically for his teacher: “one who cannot be forgotten, Dr. Hutcheson.” However, the line that follows his sentimentality, and although based on the same foundations, is far from what his other and famous followers took: the utilitarians.

However, the connection between the ethics of Hutcheson and Smith and the time when the latter gives a "twist" to his teacher's theory to bring about a completely different ethics from the same point of view was, unfortunately, Charles Griswold - barely studied. Research on Hutcheson's theory has focused more on its ontological and epistemological aspects; in the moral sense and benevolence: "the unselfish pursuit of the happiness of another", the only virtue for Hutcheson and which is directly related to the later Principle of Utility or "the greatest happiness for the greatest number".

Smith sharply refutes these ideas, so the germs of his theory must be sought in other aspects of Hutcheson's sentimentality. In particular, we will focus on the concepts of sympathy and the impartial spectator, two pillars on which Smith's moral philosophy is based and which can also be found in the thinking of his teacher. Hutcheson only touches on these issues obliquely, but it is possible that in developing some of his predecessor's intuitions Smith found some inspiration, thus giving the final turn to his sentimentality.

My hypothesis would be that the concept of "mutual sympathy" is the one that changes Smith's sentimentality because of the larger implications it has both in introducing the concept of "property" and in the kind of viewer he must now appeal to .: spectator who goes from the third to the second person. These two elements are what would turn it, in the words of Charles Griswold, into sentimentalism or "sophisticated" emotivism; one that would finally move him away from the tradition of his contemporaries.

While liking Smithy Hutcheson doesn't mean the same thing, a "practical" comparison can be made between the two. In Hutcheson, sympathy is initially dependent on social meaning, but then becomes independent until it becomes a “feeling of sympathy.” For him, as for Smith, it is the “power of perception,” which implies a determination to rejoice in the happiness of others and to be saddened by their sorrow “even if we do not take advantage of it.” At the most basic level, then, one might think that Smith is taking this secondary element of his teacher's ethics to make it a pillar of his theory.

But one cannot simply equate Smithea's sympathy with social feeling—or with Hutcheson's social feeling or sympathy. There are important differences, among which the most important is that the latter's sympathy is not connected with moral assessment, which is the exclusive task of his “moral sense.” While it is true that this author states that we are naturally inclined to associate the two, for Smith sympathy is precisely the way in which moral judgments are made.

This is, at first, the same concept defined by Adam Smith. Although the latter author continues his development until he reaches a concept that differs significantly from that of her predecessor. Although in both authors it changes its meaning, in Smith the tendency of its evolution is clear, and in Hutcheson only the statute, which, as a definition of the mind, has a modification. Therefore it is convenient to distinguish various types sympathies that these authors give with their works to understand when Smith makes a turn that will change the nature of his theory.

The most basic unidirectional empathy is what Luigi Turco describes as a "mechanism": an involuntary contagion of feelings in which the mere observation of a feeling produces a similar one in the viewer. This does not require the agent to be aware of the viewer's reaction or even of their observation.

Adam Smith also talks about this, even more clearly, when he states that sympathy is barely enough to see the passion of another person. “Passion seems to flow from one person to another, instantly and before they know what caused it.”

Secondly, within the framework of unidirectional sympathy there is one in which the viewer sympathizes with the agent through figurative identification. The viewer “sits into his seats” and, according to what the agent lives, he rejoices in his joy and grieves in pain. Although there are nuances, the agent does not actively participate in this empathy. This is an exclusive process of the viewer who “looks from the outside” into the situation. The viewer identifies himself, but, in “personal” conditions, does not notice the situation; and if the agent is not aware of this identifier, there is no change to it.

An example of both authors is their sympathy for very distant or past events in which their protagonists cannot identify with the audience. “This,” says Turco, “is the first clear manifestation of the concept of sympathy as the imagination of something that is not necessarily real.”

But for Hutcheson there is only identification with the joy or pain of agents, and in principle there is no need to know the cause of these feelings. Smith criticizes this notion of sympathy by stating, first, that sympathy or identification occurs with every possible passion, and that what amounts to the joy or pain of others is still very imperfect sympathy. But beyond this, he argues that identification must be made "depending on the situation", for which it is necessary to open the context, to the causes of the various passions with which the viewer will identify himself.

Although Smith is the one who systematizes and develops this "more perfect identification", in Hutcheson some microbes of this species are already visible. There are at least two situations in which the viewer discovers the context to determine whether the situation is truly worthy of identification with the agent's binding. The first is "gallantry" or even adultery, in which the viewer does not identify with the agent's joy, but, on the contrary, condemns it because of the pain it causes to the husband, father or brothers of the woman in question.

Another case that recurs in both authors and is extremely important to their theories is that of justice and punishment, in which, according to Smith, there is a "direct antipathy" with the aggressor. In this situation, it is even legal to injure another, since it has already harmed a third party. Here identification again depends on context.

However, as in Hutcheson, we're talking about only about the passions of pain and joy, and in general, without revealing the context, in Smith these examples of one-sided identification increase significantly. So much so that it can even meet the dead and the crazy, where we imagine ourselves in their situation and feel what they don't feel, but they would feel if they can somehow be aware of what is happening to them.

The reason why people seek to identify with them was stated by Smith: "Nothing pleases us more than seeing other people with all the emotions in our chest; nothing shocks us more than the appearance of the opposite." Therefore, when we become aware of this identification, our joy increases or our pain decreases. This is why Hutcheson condemns those who exaggerate or fake their pain just to gain compassion or the pleasure of seeing others sympathize.

This, he said, is the beginning of the greatest corruption of the mind. But at the same time, without noticing it, it is also the germ of what Smith's Copernican Revolution implies: mutual sympathy. The return, the leap that will finally separate Smith's ethics from his teacher, is the so-called mutual sympathy, bidirectional definition and will bring with it a new motivation and moral justification for his theory.

Raphael, Hume is the one who introduces the concept of sympathy as "to share feelings with those affected by an action, to explain the approval or disapproval of it"; that is, the psychological explanation of what Hutcheson has just given a name: moral meaning. Smith considers this definition still very narrow and replaces it with a new concept of sympathy: mutual sympathy.

In the latter, both the viewer and the agent sympathize with the other, identify each other, exchange positions and try to record all the circumstances that affect them. They exchange "people and characters," Smith points out; not only put in another place to look at each other from their eyes, but also to feel how the other feels. After this process they return to themselves and try to adjust their passions to each other in order to establish a point of agreement in feelings, a point that Smith would call property, and thus gain the pleasure of mutual sympathy.