Kirby: Approval Necessitates Adoption: How Sympathy Informs a Spectator of Sorrow

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Even, “the greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without,” the natural inclination of a fellow-feeling, or sympathy, argues Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. (1) Though we can never imagine the full extent of another’s emotional excitement, be it negative or positive, it is in our principle nature to sympathize with them. Smith defines sympathy as more expansive and complex than its original definition, which was once grouped in with the pity or compassion of a“fellow-feeling.” Sympathy prescribes to, “any passion whatsoever.” (2) The author goes on to outline the natural variance of sympathies when observing others: fear overrides care for the angry (12,19), death mortifies and constrains the living (4), external acceptance is mutually sought (5), efforts beyond expectation merit admiration (9), socialization composes us all (12), we “reverence the reserved” (12), and onwards. Each passion, however, falls within a spectrum of expression in which we evaluate its propriety. Certain passions, when in excess or defect, are more forgiven in their exercise than others, based on if “mankind are more or less disposed to sympathize with them.” (14)


In the act of sympathizing with others, Smith posits that our reaction determines agreement or disapproval of those we observe. If we elicit emotion in reaction to another’s joy or sorrow, then we “cannot well deny the propriety,” of that passion. Indeed, Smith expressly argues that we are inherently biased by our perspective in how we react to others. Our reactions, or lack thereof, indicate approval or disapproval: adoption or dissolution. He writes that even in contexts where we do not understand the full extent of another’s passions immediately, we eventually come to realize the “impropriety of our present emotions,”; likewise, we may incur distractions which stop us from proper reaction, and yet “we are sensible that upon most occasions we should very heartily join it (the passion).” (7,8)  Our estimated validity of another’s emotions is dependent on how we ourselves might react, in respect to the passion’s motive and its ends.


For the emoter herself, Smith believes that she will never be relieved by a perfectly harmonized reaction from the spectator: no one can feel joy, sorrow, or otherwise as precisely as the originator. He recommends that she “flatten” her passionate reaction in order to achieve “concords” with spectators. (11) In fact, the scale of composure is measured by the spectator’s familiarity with the emoter: Smith notes that tranquility of the emoter is highest and sympathy of the observer(s) is lowest when there is a relational unfamiliarity, and vice versa. (11) Not only is the familiarity of observer and emoter important, but so too is the emotion. Smith believes that we often embrace sympathizing with joyous passions far more than sorrowful ones: “nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take any further share.” (29)  If sorrow naturally bars an observer from embracing full sympathy, I’m curious as to how we can fulfill certain predications as laid out by Smith. 


Seemingly, if I am the observer of a sorrowful emoter, I cannot fulfill the natural laws of sympathy which Smith has predicated. Can we affirm the propriety of this person, if we are avoidant to sorrow? Even in cases of our distraction or misunderstanding, Smith  posits that we cannot access sympathy to sorrow as we can with joy. Conversely, for the emoter: if society pays “reverence [to] the reserved,” and a notion of “flattening” is required to acquire sympathy: how can the expression and absorption of sorrow be properly understood under Smith’s social constructs? Impartial spectatorship seems, at least to me at this point, unachievable if man is naturally bound to react and judge by his own accord, without conscious knowledge of doing so.


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