The Theory of Moral Sentiments Ch. 13 Summary

Summary

Smith opens his examination of Stoicism by questioning why mankind overrates some conditions of life. If propriety and approbation chiefly recommend one state over another, noble conduct may appear in adversity as well as prosperity, and heroism needs peril to display itself fully; uninterrupted fortune wins only middling admiration, which is why poets invent reversals for their heroes.

The Stoics argued that a wise man treats all outward lots as equal because original appetites for health, wealth, and security matter less than acting with order, grace, and propriety. Virtue consists in submitting passions to reason and viewing oneself as a particle in a divine system governed for the whole; Epictetus illustrates accepting shipwreck once duty is done, leaving outcomes to providence. Yet Smith warns that Stoic perfection exceeds human nature, and that smaller humiliations can wound more sharply than great calamities. Appearing ridiculous before a gay assembly, the pillory, or a cane strike dishonors a gentleman more than wounds or the scaffold, because spectators sympathize with shame rather than trifling pain; contempt of mankind is harder to bear than poverty, danger, or death.

The chapter closes by opening Part II on merit and demerit, distinguishing desert from mere propriety. The suitableness of motives governs decency, while the beneficial or hurtful tendency of actions governs reward and punishment; Smith now turns from how conduct appears to what it deserves.

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Reading Emotional Isolation

Distinguish between suffering that draws people together and suffering that pushes them apart. Smith grounds the point in a concrete scene from moral spectatorship.

This week, pause before you call an emotion excessive and ask what situation you have not yet pictured.

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Inside the Mind: The untested prosperous man

A life of uninterrupted prosperity, Smith says, excites only an inferior admiration, which is why poets invent reversals for their heroes. Heroism needs a theatre of peril. The untested prosperous man is not envied for luck alone. He is hard to applaud because the spectator has been given no difficulty to enter.

Continue this thoughtThe Attention Rank Collects Without Earning

Coming Up in Chapter 14

Smith shifts from examining how we judge our own actions to exploring a fundamental question: what makes someone deserve reward or punishment? He'll reveal the surprising connection between gratitude, resentment, and our sense of justice..

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Chapter 13

The Stoic Way of Life

Of the stoical philosophy. When we examine in this manner into the ground of the different degrees of estimation which mankind are apt to bestow upon the different conditions of life, we shall find, that the excessive preference, which they generally give to some of them above others, is in a great measure without any foundation. If to be able to act with propriety, and to render ourselves the proper objects of the approbation of mankind, be, as we have been endeavouring to show, what chiefly recommends to us one condition above another, this may equally be attained in them…

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The Stoic Way of Life

Summary

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