Smith begins The Theory of Moral Sentiments by explaining sympathy and how individuals use it. According to Smith, sympathy is a universal feeling. He claims that “[t]he greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it” (2). He explains that while an individual can never truly understand the degree to which others suffer, he is able to imagine what or how he would feel in a similar situation. Only the imagination can create these feelings within the sympathizer because he has no method of truly understanding how another feels. Thus, the imagination is crucial for the sympathizer to be able to identify with another person. While the sympathizer may feel these sentiments more or less severely than the person who is actually affected, this does not eliminate the fact that in this instance, he is sympathizing with the other party. He is imagining himself in another’s position and is trying to feel how that person would feel. Smith says:
Our joy for the
deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as
sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their
misery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their
gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their
difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against those
perfidious traitors who injures, abandoned, or deceived them. (4)
Part of Smith’s theory is that
sympathy is not only limited to imagining or sympathizing with another’s misery
or unhappiness. For Smith, sympathy can also be practiced with positive
emotions as well. Happiness and excitement can also be exhibited by a
sympathizer. All types of emotions can cause this fellow-feeling. After seeing
another’s extreme emotions and imagining what this individual must feel, the
sympathizer begins to imagine how he would feel in a similar situation whether
positive or negative, and he looks upon the other person with sympathy.
From
this point, Smith begins to discuss various aspects of sympathy that apply to
general communication. He begins the second chapter of the “Of Propriety”
section by saying, “But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it
may be excited, nothing please us more than to observe in other men a
fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much
shocked as by the appearance of the contrary” (10). Smith later explains how an
individual could forgive a sympathizer for not expressing as much joy as he
thinks the sympathizer should feel, but he becomes enraged when a sympathizer
is not as afflicted when he tells of his troubles.
Then Smith
discusses how in the process of sympathy, an individual will also go through a
process of approval and disapproval. During this procedure, the sympathizer or
the afflicted will approve or disapprove of the emotions exhibited by the other
individual. For Smith, “[t]o approve of another man’s opinions is to adopt
those opinions, and to adopt them is to approve of them” (17). If the
sympathizer does not feel enough or if he feels too much on behalf of the
afflicted, the afflicted is likely to disapprove of the sympathizer’s
sentiments because they disagree with the afflicted’s own feelings. However,
Smith also recognizes that even if the sympathizer is in such a mood that is
contrary to the present feelings of another, he can still approve of the
emotions displayed by that individual. In this case, the sympathizer recognizes
that if he was in a more fitting mood, he would heartily agree to the
sentiments portrayed by the other person. Therefore, he does not fault the
other party because the sympathizer knows that in any other state, he would
approve of the individual’s emotions.
Smith then traces
this idea through until it reaches its final stage, self-regulation. The
sympathizer practices approval or disapproval in another’s emotional state.
However, the other party practices self-regulation in order to obtain sympathy
from the sympathizer. During the self-regulation process, the other individual
examines his emotions and adjusts them to reflect the severity of the reaction
he can reasonably expect from the sympathizer. Smith writes, “But he can only
hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that pitch, in which the
spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten . . . the
sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord
with the emotions of those who are about him” (27). The individual seeking
sympathy must only display the exact amount of emotion that will help him
receive an adequate amount of sympathy whether positive or negative. In order
to adjust, he uses a self-regulation method to analyze where his emotional state
currently is. At this point, he then adjusts his display of emotions to match
the amount of sympathy that he can reasonably expect from the sympathizer.
This regulation
also relates to how an individual will conduct himself among different
audiences. Smith claims that a friend can help compose a sufferer because the
sufferer will place himself in the friend’s situation just as the friend will
place himself in the sufferer’s situation. The sufferer is then able to compose
himself as both the sympathizer and sufferer practice the perspective changing
technique of sympathy. Generally, an individual expects less sympathy from
those less familiar with himself. Individuals expect close relationships to be
more sympathetic to their plights. However, Smith claims that when an
individual expects less sympathy, he is more likely to regulate himself and his
emotions. Thus, an individual is more likely to be composed among a room full
of strangers than with close confidants. This occurs because generally
speaking, individuals do not reasonably expect a large amount of sympathy from
strangers.
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