Get started

WorkAdam Smith

The Essays of Adam Smith

The handful of essays Smith spared the bonfire — chief among them a history of astronomy that reads philosophy as the mind's cure for wonder.

by Adam Smith914 passages held

  • English, the original language, and your language
Sign in or subscribe to discuss this work See it in context
First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
English

Report a rights issue

Overview

Dying in 1790, Smith had his friends burn sixteen volumes of his manuscripts in the week before the end — the unfinished work of a lifetime, on law and government, on rhetoric and literature. This book is most of what he let live. Chief among the spared pieces is a long essay he had kept, unmentioned, in a cabinet since his twenties: The Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries, illustrated by the History of Astronomy. In it Smith treats scientific theories less as truths than as machines the mind builds to quiet the discomfort of surprise — wonder, then a system to settle it, until a new anomaly unsettles the system and the cycle begins again, from the spheres of the ancients to Newton. He had trusted the essay enough, in 1773, to name it to David Hume as the one thing worth publishing if he died on the road. Hume died first; Smith outlived him by fourteen years and still withheld it. His executors, Joseph Black and James Hutton, brought it out with the other survivors in 1795, five years after his death. What was destroyed is the greater loss, but this is where Smith is caught thinking about how thinking works.

Key concepts

What is this book, and how did it survive?

It is a posthumous collection of the fragments Smith allowed to survive when, dying in 1790, he had friends burn sixteen volumes of his manuscripts. His executors, Joseph Black and James Hutton, published the spared pieces in 1795. Chief among them is a long essay on the history of astronomy that Smith had kept back for decades — once telling Hume it was the one thing worth publishing if he died on the road.

What is the History of Astronomy essay's central idea?

Smith treats scientific theories not primarily as truths but as machines the mind constructs to relieve the discomfort of surprise. An unexpected phenomenon provokes wonder; a system is invented to connect it smoothly to what we already accept; the system satisfies until a new anomaly disturbs it, and the cycle repeats. He traces this from the ancient homocentric spheres to Newton, reading the history of astronomy as a psychology of inquiry.

What does Smith mean by wonder in this essay?

Wonder, for Smith, is the uneasy feeling stirred when something new or unaccountable will not fit the chain of ideas we already hold. It is the discomfort of a gap in our understanding, and it is what drives us to build explanatory systems that close the gap. Far from a pleasant curiosity, wonder is a disturbance the mind seeks to quiet, and philosophy and science are how it does so.

What is sympathy in Smith's moral psychology?

Sympathy is not pity but fellow-feeling: the capacity to enter imaginatively into another's situation and feel a version of what they feel. We judge an action's propriety by whether, so imagining, we can share the passion that prompted it. Sympathy is thus the foundation of moral judgment for Smith — approval and disapproval arise from this imaginative correspondence of sentiments, not from reason or self-interest.

What is the impartial spectator?

The impartial spectator is the standpoint of a fair, well-informed observer that we imaginatively adopt to judge conduct — including our own. By stepping outside our own interest and viewing ourselves as this spectator would, we reach judgments that are not merely self-serving or swayed by actual bystanders. Conscience, for Smith, is this internalized impartial witness, and moral maturity is learning to act as it would approve.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Science as the cure for wonder

Are scientific systems discoveries of how things are, or devices the mind builds to soothe itself? Smith's history of astronomy treats them as the second — machines to quiet the discomfort of surprise.

The prized survivor of the collection is Smith's long essay, kept in a cabinet since his twenties, on the principles that lead and direct philosophical enquiries, illustrated by the history of astronomy. In it he treats scientific theories less as truths than as machines the mind builds to settle the unease of the unexpected: wonder arises, a system is invented to calm it, and it holds until a new anomaly unsettles it and the cycle begins again — from the spheres of the ancients to Newton. It is a strikingly modern psychology of inquiry, and, as the prose has it, where Smith is caught thinking about how thinking works.

  • astronomy
  • epistemology
  • perception
  • metaphysics
  • imagination
  • aesthetics
  • nature
  • justice

Enter a dialogue

Sympathy and the impartial spectator

How do we come to judge conduct, our own and others', as right or wrong? Smith's moral psychology grounds it not in reason or self-interest but in the imaginative sharing of feeling.

Alongside the philosophy of science, this collection carries Smith's moral psychology. We approve or condemn an action, he holds, by sympathy — imaginatively entering into it and feeling whether the passion fits its cause, which he calls propriety. To judge impartially we adopt the standpoint of an impartial spectator, an internal witness who is neither the doer nor the sufferer, and self-command is the Stoic discipline of governing feeling to meet that standard. Morality here rests on fellow-feeling refined by an imagined observer, not on calculation, and resentment and gratitude are read as the natural registers of harm and desert.

  • sympathy
  • impartial spectator
  • propriety
  • self-command
  • moral judgment
  • resentment
  • merit
  • virtue
  • moral psychology

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
914
distinct concepts
1,074
by passages held, corpus-wide
#25

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: propriety with sympathy.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 106 shared passages in all. 88 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
proprietysympathy17
ethicsvirtue16
proprietyvirtue15
aestheticsperception10
imaginationsympathy10
aestheticslinguistics8
aestheticsimagination6
ethicspropriety6
aestheticssympathy5
imaginationperception5
aestheticsethics4
aestheticsvirtue4

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1763 Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms

    Not a work Smith published but a student's notes from his Glasgow course, found and printed in 1896 — the seedbed of the Wealth of Nations and of a theory of justice he never finished.

     EN
  2. 1776 The Wealth of Nations

    The book that founded political economy as a system, and the one for which Smith is now chiefly remembered — though he set as much store by his moral philosophy.

     EN
  3. 1795 The Essays of Adam Smith you are here EN
Sign in or subscribe to discuss this work

— or open another of their works