This paper investigates the possibility of transcending sympathy’s limitations through imaginative engagement with the other via literature.
Beginning with an analysis of reasons why Smithian sympathy resists universalization, the paper then explores literature’s potential as a tool for extending sympathy’s operation.
To illustrate this, the paper then focuses upon Gustave de Beaumont’s...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is known for his poetry and literary criticism in the Biographia Literaria. But he also wrote extensively on politics, history, natural philosophy, wealth, and property. An avid critic of Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Robert Malthus, and the new political economy of the early 19th century, he sought a moral foundation for commercial society.
With the notable exception of...
This paper compares Adam Smith’s naturalistic theory of moral sentiments and the art of literary persuasion.
Section 1 establishes relevant concepts and mechanisms from TMS: fellow feeling, mutual recognition, sense of propriety, and conformity.
Section 2 outlines the logic of narrative art.
Section 3 compares Smith’s theory of moral sentiments and key moments in three great literary...
