Question on Smith- Dara Schoolcraft
In this blog post I want to critique/pose a question about Smith’s argument. Smith argues that “both the pleasure and the pain are always felt to instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration” (14). Before this Smith presented the common argument that self-love motivates our sentiments and sympathies for others. He argues that instead of resulting from egoism and self-love, our sympathies come from other people. To present this idea he uses the example of a person and a book. An individual may have read the book before and consequently no longer receives pleasure from reading it. But if this person shares the book with another person, they can find renewed pleasure in it. He says, “we consider all the ideas that which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own” (14). By imagining another person enjoying the book for the first time the individual can derive a new sense of pleasure. Smith’s argument is that this sympathy comes from the pleasure of another person rather than from self-love. I think this is a great demonstration of his point and a successful rebuttal against the claims of egoists. However, later he presents examples that seem to conflict with this argument.
Within the same page, Smith explains that humans are more inclined to share sad or negative experiences with others because the sympathy of others can relieve some of the sorrow or pain. He explains “that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable that our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter” (15). It could be argued that because the relief of pain is dependent on the sympathy of another person that it is not motivated my self-love. But to me it seems that the act of sharing disagreeable passions is very much motivated by self-interest because the person sharing is seeking solace for their own benefit. They are acting to make themselves feel better.
Another way that I think Smith presents his argument from an egoistic perspective is how subjective sympathy is. The amount of sympathy you feel for another is based on your experience and emotions, “his own sentiments are the standards and measures by which he judges of mine” (17). If someone is laughing at a joke longer than we would laugh or making a big fuss over something we consider trivial we don’t sympathize. Under Smith’s account how we interact and sympathize with others is entirely dependent on our standards. We value our own experiences and ideas more highly than others which seems like a prime example of self-love.
In Smith’s argument other people play a role in the sympathies we have but mostly it is entirely dependent on the person who is doing the sympathizing and their standards. I’m curious if anyone has any ideas on how to reconcile the two seemingly opposing arguments. I also could have totally misinterpreted his argument against self-love or misunderstood self-love, self-interest, and egoism to be synonymous. I’m just a bit confused why Smith outlines his opposition to egoism while he then goes on to seemingly include it as a part of his argument.
Hi Dara, this is great question and a point that also felt a little confusing to me. I think I might be able to answer part of it by helping draw the distinction between what he calls 'self-love' and what you describe as '"valu[ing] our own experiences and ideas more highly than others." Smith argues, and I tend to agree, that we are simply incapable of valuing other people's experiences and ideas over our own, or really of valuing them at all. This is whole point of sympathy. Smith says at the outset that "we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form *no idea* [emphasis added] of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation," (1). In that sense, you're right that he is assuming that people are 'self-interested,', which explains his theory of how we view different kinds of emotions in others by 'bringing them home' to ourselves. However, the fact that the emotions are 'brought home' and processed subjectively doesn't make them not about other people. Smith argues, and I tend to agree, that, given our epistemological constraints, this is as 'selfless' as we can possibly get. Even the word 'selfless' implies something impossible: one cannot actually be without a self, and so any efforts to do so will always be filtered through the self. Sympathy, as he describes, is therefore the process of understanding others through the self, just as anything we understand is necessarily understood through the self.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that this doesn't conflict with his argument against what he calls "self-love" is that that passage refers specifically to the idea that people enjoy receiving sympathy because it is associated with some form of *material* gain, i.e. the "assur[ance] of assistance," (14). He then also points out that receiving sympathy not just a way of heightening our own emotions, since sympathy for grief doesn't make us sadder, so sympathy must carry it's own natural pleasure. This doesn't take away from the fact that when we feel sympathy for others, it is only because we can imagine ourselves in their shoes. It is intended only to counter the idea that we enjoy sympathy for practical reasons, or because it is an enhancer of our own emotions, and establish that receiving sympathy is pleasurable in and of itself.
Hello Dara and George,
ReplyDeleteThis aspect of Smith was also confusing to me, but George’s comment helped clarify the topic. I think I can add to George’s answer by looking at Smith’s conception of sympathy in Chapter I. “Sympathy… be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.” (10) The definition is very broad, and demands the reader to wonder where such fellow-feelings must arise from given that Smith states, “We have no immediate experience of what other men feel… Though our brother is upon the rack… our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.” (9) We cannot originate our feelings directly from what others feel, or our own particular emotions, but instead we must call upon “consideration of what he himself may feel if he was reduced to the same.” (12)
In order to experience sympathy, we must call upon our own experiences and emotions in relation to the circumstance of others. It is not that we value our own feelings and interests higher than those of others, but instead the fact that it is impossible to experience and truly know the feelings and interests of others, which motivates us to rely on personal experience to convey sympathy. Sympathy prevents self-love from becoming harmful, as an egoist conception of self may because it calls us to use our own experiences and interests to ensure that others are paid attention to and respected. “A man is horrified when… he looks round and nobody laughs at his jests.” (14) As a result of self-love, we desire admiration and acceptance. Sympathy motivates us to use this feeling of self-love to ensure the company we keep may be afforded the same privilege of acceptance and admiration. The two exist in a certain balance in Smith’s description, not conflict. An embrace of self-love must be balanced with mutual considerations of others' motivations to find similar fulfillment through their own self-interest/love.
Dara and George,
ReplyDeleteDara, I'm glad you made this post because similarly, I was trying to think of a philosophical school that Smith was coming from or arguing for, but for most of the reading, it just seemed like he was making observations that didn't go towards any real point. I think George did a really good job in answering the question posed by Dara. We are unable to put other people's emotion above our own and we feel other people's situation by imagining how we would feel in that situation. In general, I felt that the first 2 sections of the book were very insightful and did a really good job of portraying how and why humans relate to one another. As Dara says in the last paragraph of the blog post, it is evident to me that people naturally have different standards of sympathy and this is dependent on many different standards.
It was interesting to me to read what you had to say, George, about the self and the need for a self. This reminded me of the Buddhist theory of no self and how this may relate to moral sentiments. When I was reading Smith, it struck me that many of the ways that we can sympathize with other people can be improved through practice and education. While it may be hard, as Smith says, to feel for someone that is experiencing bodily pain, and it makes one annoyed to see people that are outraged because we cannot experience that outrage, these are things that one can, and in my view, should, work on. It is very valuable to be able to empathize with others, and everyone can work on this in some ways. After reading Smith and George's comment, I think that learning from the Buddhist philosophy and trying to break down our strong attachment to our "self" and consider ourselves as inextricably attached to others helps us get a better understanding of other people's struggles and happiness and loosen some of the filters to fully understanding the struggles of others.
Another interesting idea that I wanted to through out is the idea of society and conversation with others as a way of restoring our mind to tranquility. I thought this was a very profound idea. Someone who is grieving is, in a way, restricting from grieving all the time because they have to go out into society and talk with others who do not understand what they are going for, so we tone down our sorrow so that we can relate to others.
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DeleteHi Dara, George, and Henry,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog posts. I would like to add onto the conversation about the interplay between self-love and sympathy. I think a crucial point to note is that, for Smith, the intersection between self-love and sympathy lies in reciprocity. Smith notes how when others display feeling or understanding the emotions that we are feeling, we are pleased. Similarly, we are displeased when they seem to lack that capability. It seems then, although this is not made explicit in this section, that there exists an underlying agreement regulating sympathy throughout society. This idea fits in with what Smith will go on to later describe as key components of justice, that being, perfect propriety of conduct, dictated by reason and prudence rather than passion. Importantly, justice restrains self-love, and thus ensures that we treat others in the ideal way. This fact in no way negates from Smith's emphasis on self-interest, and the importance of self-love in his theories, but it does put it into context.
Henry, I think your point about the Buddhist philosophy of no-self is fascinating. I’ve read a little bit about the parallels between Indian philosophy (specifically Buddhism and Hinduism) and stoic philosophy (I’m not sure if there’s influence, I think it’s just similarity). Stoic influence is evident in Smith’s work (I’m thinking of the passage where Smith talks about self-command, mastering passions rather than being a slave to passions), and after your comment, I’m starting to contemplate potential linkages between Smith and Indian philosophy as well. While different in many obvious ways, it’d be interesting to posit a metaphysical explanation for the origin of Smith’s sympathy using Indian philosophy, most principally (and perhaps predictably) the idea that permeating all humans is Brahman, the ultimate reality and spirit of the universe.