Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Feeling
Relationships between people of different generations constitute the sub-of-the-moment connections that life offers. They form deep beliefs, goals and priorities. The theory of moral sentiment [TMS]Adam Smith describes human actors as people who have been led by relationship experiences. Does the relationship between young people and old people have a distinct role in moral formation?
My experience suggests that the answer is yes. In the theory of moral sentiment, Smith argues that a sense of good and evil develops through interaction with other individuals that serve as a reference point for moral recognition or disapproval. In this framework, relationships are of the most important aspect, especially thos that challenge our own views of ourselves.
Pity is a philosophical core that allows readers to draw out the very importance of relationships for moral formation.
We can never investigate our feelings or motivations. You cannot form a judge about them. Unless we try to repair ourselves and see them at a certain distance from us from our own natural stations. But we cannot do so other than trying to see them with the eyes of others, or because people are more likely to see them… We try to examine our own actions, as we imagine a fair and impartial audience to look into it.
Although emotes and passion are experienced by individuals, communicating with others and experiencing recognition or disapproval of felt emotions leads to sympathy (emotional harmony) or antipathy (emotional discomfort).
Friendship, market relationships, and family can all act as “mirrors” and interaction can teach you to be involved in your passion at once. The relationship between the elderly and young people provides an opportunity to sympathize with a completely different perspective. Smith reflects the serious benefits arising from intergenerational relationships recorded below.
Season of Gaiety
Youthful talent and weathered wisdom are exchanged in interactions between the elderly and young people. Children enjoy small joys and spread laughter and joy to those around them. Although Smith did not have his own child, it appears he had experienced the child’s light-hearted countel sentiment.
Nohing is more spectacular than hilarious. This is what is always seen in a peculiar taste for all the small pleasures that general abuse brings. We will sympathize with it soon. It brings us the same joy and lifts us all up with the same pleasant side that presents it to those blessed with this happy device. Hell is that young people, which is Gaiety’s season, attract our love so easily.
Pitying the child’s cheerfulness changes the views of the audience. I look at the challenge from a more bone-filled perspective, encouraging a child’s happy device.
Careful parenting
Though fun, young people’s passion requires abstinence for practical purposes. Gaiety is not known for its protective woman. Parental wisdom gained through age and experience is an important juxtaposition with the light-hearted foolishness of young people. “The first lesson he is taught by people whose childhood is entrusted with, and largely to the same purpose. The main purpose is to teach them how to avoid harm.” Though not too whimsical, parents’ guidance demonstrates careful virtue.
According to Smith, the weakness of young people is their stupidity and lack of self-command. One example of Smith’s criticism of young people is in his arguments of mutual good behavior and his friendship as a means of service. He writes: Smith’s criticism may be generalized to the lack of concern over the overall benefit or service benefits for a subthorn other than the self.
Children have had the opportunity to see themselves through the audience’s eyes, so they begin in a state of complete self-observation. “A clever young child who doesn’t have self-commands,” writes Smith, but “warns” that he tends to discomfort the nurse or parents. Parents can ease the explosion, but not until the child estranges a man of “homeostasis and stiffness” trained to consider himself a fair audience. The ability of virtue is less linear with age, but young people are less practiced in sympathy and self-commands and can benefit from a relationship with well-trained Thue.
Perfume for despair
Smith continues to contrast with the devices of young people and older people. “We are young people and even the playfulness of childhoods are fascinated. But we are soon tired of the frequent flats and the gravity of Tarsel that accompany old age.” This comment includes criticism of those who allow them to be carried by despair. However, “gravity” falling to the sub is not without treatment. Pity for the young person revitalizes the tired mind:
Even that Sem animates the flowers, and the tendency of joy that shines through the eyes of young people and beauty… much higher, even more enjoyable than normal. They forget their anxiety for a while and abandon themselves to them to add ideas and feelings that they have been strangers for a long time, but when it is sad that many witnesses have been parted, and they listen more as they explain this long separation.
“Happiness is a natural passion from young people, but it must be grown in old age.”
Happiness is a natural passion from young people, but it is the passion that you must cultivate in old age, especially when you are suffering from anxiety. Entering the experience of others through sympathy can provide a refreshing alternative to the hub of the mind.
Ambition with disabilities
Gaiety and Joy are probably more visible than the virtues of the elderly, but older people are not far from moral abilities. In the theory of moral sentiment, Smith easily repeats human concerns, usefulness, and distinctions through the average of the poor. In his youth, the son of a poor man wants to achieve the customs of the rich. He believes that palaces, carriages and personal servants provide content and procedures that will tirelessly strive to achieve these extravagances. In ambition, the poor abandons “humble security and satisfaction” and “sacrificing a real carti that is always in his power.” In old age, the poor discover that “wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility,” and provide less security than tweezers cases.
Smith admits that most men fall into the same EMTY promise as the son of a poor man. They imagine that all the trinkets of the rich are a means of burning happiness. Stupid ambition – dangerous evil – charm with the old man.
But in the fatigue of sick viding women and old age, the joy of the vain and empty difference of disappointment of greatness. For one thing, in this situation they are not capable of recommending a hard-working pursuit that previously had hib. In his mind, he asserts his ambition, and regrets in vain that he had sacrificed the ease and lazy of the youth, folded forever, and foolishly sacrificed when he got it.
Experience weakness through age and illness creates wisdom that young and ambitious men lack. Smith doesn’t condemn all ambitions – IIT motivates people to cultivate, build and invention. With that profit, Smith maintains the view that ambition is “drainage” that young people must warn. Older people who have tasted the life you have to offer will guide an ambitious young man who has misunderstood the source of happiness. The story of the Poor person offers Smith’s readers the opportunity to sympathize with the character’s disappointment and skill.
Smith’s respect for seniors
In addition to highlighting the differences between the old and young, Smith makes a strong claim that lenses the dignity of the elderly. He says that treating the elderly shows virtue. “The weakness of childhood interests indicates the affection of the most cruel and heartfelt person. It is only for the noble and humane person that the anxiety of old age is not the object of conflict and dislike.” It is easy to deal with a child kindly, but noble responsibility may not be natural. Pity changes our natural tendencies and dislikes, allowing us to move the paste into a transactional approach to relationships.
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Smith believes that relationships can be built for generations as part of moral development. The advantages of such relationships illustrate Smith’s view that moral competence is developed in a social environment through exchange of sympathy. Each season of life has feelings that complement the emotions and passions of others, giving each child, parent, grandparent, and leader the role they play in cultivating virtue.
footnote
[1] Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Feelings. 110.2
[2] TMS 110.3
[3] TMS 42.3
[4] TMS 212.1
[5] “The objects that rely primarily on health, good fortune, personal class and reputation, his comfort and happiness in this life are generally considered to be the proper business of that virtue, wise” (213.5).
[6] TMS 225.18
[7] TMS 145.22
[8] TMS 145.22
[9] TMS 146.25
[10] TMS 246.21
[11] TMS 42.3
[12] TMS 181.8
[13] TMS 181.8
[14] TMS 182.8
[15] TMS 183.10
[16] TMS 219.3
Anna Claire Flowers is a PhD. A student in economics at George Mason University. She received her Bachelor of Government and a Bachelor of Economics from Samford University. Her research interests include the economic implications of family economics, particularly family relationships, and the economic factors that influenced family decisions.
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