3
sympathy, and the impartial spectator. Other than noting that general rules arise as
solutions to the operations of our moral faculties, little effort is expended analyzing the
larger significance of these general rules to the problems of moral life in general and to
the operations of our moral sentiments in particular.
Simply identifying Smith as a virtue theorist is a serious shortcoming.
2
In The
Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith presents a virtue-based ethics grounded in our
understanding of the operations of our feelings, passions, and emotions. But he also
presents a theory of duty based on his analysis of the limits of the operations of these
moral sentiments. Our adherence to the general rules of morality is explained as a
reflection of our chronic inability to maintain a virtuous character given the pressures
facing an individual in every day life and the foibles that are introduced into our
personalities given the operations of our passions and interests. Smith’s ethics is one that
ultimately recognizes the competing and, sometimes, impossible tensions that the
demands of virtue and of duty place upon the individual.
In this paper, I will investigate the theory of duty developed by Smith in Part III
of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. My goal will be to situate his theory of duty – the
regard that we have for the general rules of society – in his larger theory of the moral
sentiments. I will argue that this theory of duty plays a central, although all too often
underappreciated, role in Smith’s moral theory. For Smith, our sense of duty is seen as
solving certain problems arising out of the moral sentiments. But it also introduces other
problems, in particular a tension between this sense of duty and our moral sense of
propriety. This tension between duty and moral judgment, and not just the fact that we
are by nature creatures of moral judgment, lies at the heart of Smith’s moral vision. It is
2
This is a problem with Hope.
Convention