Friday, May 28, 2010

Current Reading: The Theory Of Moral Sentiments

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin Classics)
While I probably won't get much reading done until after the primary elections, I just had to write and say that I began Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and am completely enamored with it.  While it was not exactly what I expected, everything from the introduction through the second chapter (all I have read up to this point) have been intoxicating.  The writing is very succinct and understandable, setting it apart from most philosophy of its time, and very informative.  Can't wait to finish it.

"Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.  They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels."
                                                  -Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Chapter 1