Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

London and Edinburgh

Printed for A. Millar, A. Kincaid, and J. Bell

1759

"Dr. Hutcheson was so far from allowing self-love to be in any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences, according to him diminished the merit of a benevolent action."

Dr. Hutcheson was so far from allowing self-love to be in any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences, according to him diminished the merit of a benevolent action. This was a selfish motive, he thought, which, so far as it contributed to any action, demonstrated the weakness of that pure and disinterested benevolence which could alone stamp upon the conduct of men the character of virtue. In the common judgments of mankind, however, this regard to the approbation of our own minds is so far from being considered as what can in any respect diminish the virtue of any action, that it is rather looked upon as the sole motive which deserves the appellation of virtuous.
(pp. 462-3; cf. p. 303 in Liberty Fund ed.)

Theater::Applause

Reading

10 entries in the ESTC (1759, 1761, 1764, 1767, 1774, 1777, 1781, 1790, 1792, 1793, 1797). A revised title with a complicated textual history.

See The Theory of Moral Sentiments: By Adam Smith (London: Printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh, 1759). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>

Reading Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984).

06/19/2014