Quote: "For Smith, sympathy is our capacity for fellow-feeling with another person. We cannot enter directly into another person’s mind or experience what she experiences. Instead, we use imagination. We place ourselves, as best we can, in her situation and ask what we ourselves might feel there." But in the Old Testament too: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rw94JIwiYIAtIiwa_xAMXP2PgROexnFojGvxmC7IglQ/edit?usp=sharing
In other words, the Golden Rule, no doubt a result of Protestant Christianity.
Yes, Smith gets his moral psychology concept of sympathy from many influences, including the Old Testament. Some of it he gets from Hume, who definitely was *not* getting it from the Old Testament!
Here's a good essay on Smithian sympathy that I recommend:
Tocqueville sees a 19th Century America of roughly similar ethnic, linguistic and ancestral characteristics (Blacks being aside from this section of his writing). From these data points he can infer a democracy that enables mutual sympathies. As American demographics and class structure have subsequently become more complex — including the legal, and increasingly political, emancipation of Black citizens, but also the immigration of different ethnicities — the gap that must be bridged between “equal” individuals has become wider, the links more tenuous. When stress is applied to these gaps and links, as economic stresses have materialized across our history (and for our purposes, especially over the last half century), divisiveness is enabled while sympathetic bonds grow weaker. This divisiveness invites those who would exploit it, from organized labor movements and civil rights movements (which we may admire) to more intense racial animus and resentment of elites (which we may deplore, but MAGA welcomes). Democracy must somehow contain more, and more diverse, multitudes, than it did during the less differentiated earlier history of the republic.
Lynn: I greatly appreciate your re-examination of Tocqueville’s exceptional mid-19th century review of America’s democratic experiment. His understanding and prognostications seem to me almost otherworldly sometimes in their accuracy and usefulness. I have a piece of writing I’m working on that begins with his observations on slavery, and the likely persistence of its influences in the American polity even after it disappears as a legal institution (would be happy to send it to you if you wished, but I expect you already have a backlog of absolutely essential reading piled up — as do we all in these times). I also appreciate your work on our energy and electricity systems — I work for NRDC on western electrical grid modernization and expansion, so leveraging your thinking on that subject matter also.
Quote: "For Smith, sympathy is our capacity for fellow-feeling with another person. We cannot enter directly into another person’s mind or experience what she experiences. Instead, we use imagination. We place ourselves, as best we can, in her situation and ask what we ourselves might feel there." But in the Old Testament too: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rw94JIwiYIAtIiwa_xAMXP2PgROexnFojGvxmC7IglQ/edit?usp=sharing
In other words, the Golden Rule, no doubt a result of Protestant Christianity.
And thank you for sharing your article, I look forward to reading it.
Yes, Smith gets his moral psychology concept of sympathy from many influences, including the Old Testament. Some of it he gets from Hume, who definitely was *not* getting it from the Old Testament!
Here's a good essay on Smithian sympathy that I recommend:
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/speakings/sympathy-fellow-feeling-and-the-imagination
Tocqueville sees a 19th Century America of roughly similar ethnic, linguistic and ancestral characteristics (Blacks being aside from this section of his writing). From these data points he can infer a democracy that enables mutual sympathies. As American demographics and class structure have subsequently become more complex — including the legal, and increasingly political, emancipation of Black citizens, but also the immigration of different ethnicities — the gap that must be bridged between “equal” individuals has become wider, the links more tenuous. When stress is applied to these gaps and links, as economic stresses have materialized across our history (and for our purposes, especially over the last half century), divisiveness is enabled while sympathetic bonds grow weaker. This divisiveness invites those who would exploit it, from organized labor movements and civil rights movements (which we may admire) to more intense racial animus and resentment of elites (which we may deplore, but MAGA welcomes). Democracy must somehow contain more, and more diverse, multitudes, than it did during the less differentiated earlier history of the republic.
I couldn't agree more with your last sentence, which summarizes part of my motivation for doing this.
Lynn: I greatly appreciate your re-examination of Tocqueville’s exceptional mid-19th century review of America’s democratic experiment. His understanding and prognostications seem to me almost otherworldly sometimes in their accuracy and usefulness. I have a piece of writing I’m working on that begins with his observations on slavery, and the likely persistence of its influences in the American polity even after it disappears as a legal institution (would be happy to send it to you if you wished, but I expect you already have a backlog of absolutely essential reading piled up — as do we all in these times). I also appreciate your work on our energy and electricity systems — I work for NRDC on western electrical grid modernization and expansion, so leveraging your thinking on that subject matter also.