Violence as a Response to Oppression

In the first section, in Chapter 3, Smith talks extensively about how "we judge the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men" (11). Smith establishes a few truths. One, that we are capable of understanding when other people are in pain. This idea is heavily supported in his prior chapters on sympathy, but he expounds upon it further when judging the merits of emotional reactions. Humans are, with a few exceptions, necessarily sympathetic, and we delight when we can commiserate or celebrate with other people (9). The expression "Misery loves company" is not merely colloquially true, it is reflective of human nature. Two, that when we witness peoples' reactions, particularly to negative events, we instinctively pass a moral judgment as to the affections' propriety or lack thereof. Three, even if we don't experience the same emotions as a person who is grieving, angry, or confused, we can still approve of reactions. Smith gives the example of a man who is grieving from the death of his father - you don't need to have lost your own father to approve of his grief.

I think we can take his points two steps further. One, I think we can examine the proportionality of responses. Two, I think we can apply individual sentiments to communities.

On the first point, it makes sense that if one is grieving, that such grief may be accompanied by physical action as well. Shouting and tears accompany grief, and in many cases, the mental state of grief, particularly when the grief is great, is inseparable from the physical result. I don't think Smith defends disproportionate responses. In fact, he writes "The propriety of every passion excited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves... must lie... in a certain mediocrity." (23) If I receive news that my dog dies, I have a right to be sad, but I don't have a right to disrupt other peoples' lives for my plight. While it is obvious that one can overreact to grief, an interesting question is whether or not one can underreact to tragedy. Lebron certainly thought Bush underreacted to Katrina; perhaps if one is not bothered by tragedy, either internal or external, one is not behaving properly, just as the one who overreacts is not behaving properly.

On the second point, I think this is a lot easier to prove. If I watch my floormate receive bad news, I feel sympathy toward him. If I watch him score a homerun in a Stags baseball game, I feel joy with him. Someone in the bleachers behind me might feel the same joy I do, even though the runner's joy is primarily focused on his victory, not on the exact number of fans in the stand. If two people can share a common emotion, I don't see why three people, four people, or an entire society's worth of people could not also share that emotion. In 1970, at the Kent State shooting, when a newspaper took this photograph, the entire country felt the woman's grief. She did not run out of grief to share because her emotions were seen from coast to coast.

I think we have now established a groundwork for a question on violence. We know that certain sects in a nation will often collectively feel grief or outrage in a society, much like the African-American community did after Trayvon Martin's demise a few years ago or Michael Brown's shooting in Ferguson. If the degree of reactions must be proportional to the negative event, the question is: in a time of oppression, can violence ever be justifiable, and if so, what conditions are necessary? Smith writes "The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer." (16) In the Kent State example, while we might feel outraged at the national guard, we won't feel the same outrage that the woman (Mary Ann Vecchio) in the photograph feels. I'm not 100% clear on Smith's explanation, of doing our best to simply bring the case home to our hearts (13). For me, his claim is dubious because 1) I am not convinced we can know what it's like to be another person. 2) This standard relies on subjective human character. Someone who is more prone to violence or has anger management issues is going to be more likely to condone violence as a response to oppression than will a pacifist, even if such biases are implicit. This poses a problem for Smith because the righteousness of an action, found in whether or not the response is proportional or disproportional, is entirely subjective.

A Foggy Moral Compass

Smith’s perspective on human sympathy provides an interesting conception of human relations. Some of the other blog posts brought up Smith’s failure to incorporate different types of sympathy, or his failure to incorporate empathy. However, I believe they miss the point. Smith doesn’t believe that people can ever truly put themselves in another person’s shoes, and therefore, he doesn’t believe in empathy. As he puts it, “the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing place in fancy with the sufferer, that we come to either conceive or be affected by what he feels…” The entire basis, Smith believes, of our feelings for others comes from our imaginations of our own pain in their place. Because we can never truly be in their place, either at the moment they experience a certain pain, or throughout their emotional history that would lead them to that specific brand of pain, we can only have some filtered shadow of their passions. Empathy, truly feeling what another person feels, it not possible.

This leads one to a clear conception of Smith’s human being. Perhaps this is obvious, but under this theory, a person’s relation to the world is based entirely on his own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. This implies that people cannot possibly sympathize with people in a situation they have never encountered before. Only by relating a portion of it to pains or joys in their past can they try to conceive of the pain being suffered. For example, if a person falls out of a tree, I attempt to measure their pain by thinking about times when I fell from similar heights, or by recalling situations in which I was similarly shocked by an unexpected turn of events. These human beings are profoundly limited, and cannot simply evaluate a situation based on its own merits and faults. They are intensely subjective, and they cannot ever truly evaluate another person’s experiences. Smith’s person could never truly understand another person. Although obvious, this conception has profound implications for morality, effective human interaction, and normative behavior in general.

In order to appeal to such a being, the most effective tactic would clearly be to appeal to what they can relate to. The more similar a person’s situation is to another person’s situation, the more he can pretend to understand it. However, there will forever be the subjective component. Even if two people experience the exact same situation, their idea of what the other suffers is still based on their own imagination of the feelings involved. He can never feel the exact emotions of the other person.

Response to Henry

I tried to post this as a comment on Henry's post, but it was too long for a blog comment, so I am posting it here!

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Hey Henry!

I want to challenge your interpretation of several of the things Smith is saying.

1,2,3: I'm not sure Smith would conclude that the act of sympathy is impersonal simply because we take into account the circumstances of the passions gripping a fellow stranger. The act of sympathy itself, it seems, is powerfully personal -- we are literally trying, to the best of our abilities, to emulate the circumstances of another person. We seek to understand the situation which excited the passion so that we may understand whether or not the passion is justified -- it's not selfish or inhumane to think it unworthy of our time to sympathize with someone crying over spilled milk, but, we think it much more dignified to grieve over the loss of a father.

4,5,9: I don't think Smith believes the "best of humankind are those who are able to totally control and comport themselves in situations of duress" at all. Smith states that "if you have either no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have met with, or none that bears any proportion to the grief which distracts me; or if you have either no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or none that bears any proportion to the resentment which transports me, we can no longer converse upon these subjects. We become intolerable to one another. You are confounded at my violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold insensibility and want of feeling " (I.IV.5). Sympathy is a two-way street and, when passion is justified, it is inhuman to withhold proper passion.

6: The best of human kind are those who "indulge [their] benevolent affections" -- that is, those who are best at extending their hand of sympathy. He is describing the exact opposite of "cool rationality" which would deny alms to a (justifiably displaced) beggar. Moving into his praise of friendship, Smith argues that the restrain of selfish passions can take the following form: "Men of the most ordinary good-breeding dissemble the pain which any little incident may give them; and those who are more thoroughly formed to society, turn, of their own accord, all such incidents into raillery, as they know their companions will do for them. The habit which a man, who lives in the world, has acquired of considering how every thing that concerns himself will appear to others, makes those frivolous calamities turn up in the same ridiculous light to him, in which he knows they will certainly be considered by them. "(I.III.34) Basically, the best people are those who can turn their own pain into humor for and sympathize with others.

7: Smith is not highlighting that even the lowliest of humans are capable of self-control, rather, he is exalting the virtue of magnanimity! That is, Smith is arguing that generosity and sympathy are marks of true humanity which lives above mere wild beasts. The sentence before the quote you cite is: "The amiable virtue of humanity requires, surely, a sensibility, much beyond what is possessed by the rude vulgar of mankind" (I.I.45). He is arguing that humanity requires a much higher degree of self-command to achieve excellence and Virtue -- a much loftier and noble goal.

8: I don't think Smith is saying that we can only experience an idea of what others are feeling in a "down-the-middle, average sort of way." Smith cites countless examples of how powerfully sympathy can affect us. Certainly, Smith believes that certain passions and circumstances excite us more than others -- but it is this proportionality that matters. Some things excite us with sympathy, others don't. While certainly the sympathized and the sympathizer meet somewhere in the middle between the extremes of passion, this doesn't mean the experience is average. Smith cites the endless array of tragedies which continue to grip our hearts and move us to action. Further, we can only easily imagine the immense grief we experience for a loved one who has died. Passion is not related in a mediocre fashion.

10: I'm not sure what your definition of rational is here. Certainly Smith explained the powerful motivational forces guiding us towards status and fame, but his cautionary warnings would serve as a contradiction to "rationality."

According to Smith, to "those who have been accustomed to the possession, or even to the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and decay" (I.III.23) Of all the "discarded statesmen who for their own ease have studied to get the better of ambition, and to despise those honours which they could no longer arrive at ... the greater part have spent their time in the most listless and insipid insolence, chagrined at the thoughts of their own insignificancy, incapable of being interested in the occupations of private life, without enjoyment, except when they talked of their former greatness, and without satisfaction, except when they were employed in some vain project to recover it" (I.III.23). Smith warns, "never enter the place whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you" (I.III.23). And that "great object which divides the wives of aldermen, is the end of half the labours of human life; and is the cause of all the tumult and bustle, all the rapine and injustice, which avarice and ambition have introduced into this world" (I.III.23).

To me, Smith is not championing the "rational" self which desires the sympathy of the world the applause and attention. When smith said to repress the selfish passions, I think, he means for us to suppress our never ending vanity and desire for the world to pay attention to us and our status. The terrifying picture he paints above demonstrates why the pursuit of status is both self destructive and outwardly destructive -- responsible for the death of private life and the injustice of our world.

Smith on the way we handle death

Smith mentions our tendency to grieve for those who have passed away, and to believe that “we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity” (1.1.13). We feel so much emotion, Smith seems to think, because we put ourselves and our consciousness into the situation of those who have died. We think about how we would feel buried underground, struggling to breathe, never to see the light of day again.

But in actuality, Smith points out, the dead cannot feel in this way at all. If we thought about it, we would realize that “The happiness of the dead … is affected by none of these circumstances” (1.1.13). But yet, we continue to think of the dead and how miserable they must be, and to sympathize accordingly.

“It is from this very illusion of the imagination”, Smith goes on to say, “that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive” (1.1.13). By calling this use of our imagination an “illusion”, and by pointing out that there is a disconnect between this strange exercise of our sympathy and reality, my instinct is that Smith is trying to make the point that the way that we handle the deaths of others – and the way that we think about our own impending demise – is misguided.

However, at the end of this paragraph on death, Smith seems to pivot, concluding with the following declaration: “And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society” (1.1.13). So, which is it, Smith? Is our conception of death a fallacy and an illusion? Or, somehow, in the way that it restrains men, is it one of the better things to ever happen to society? Or, maybe these two things are not mutually exclusive, and the way that we have and continue to handle death in society is one of the better mistaken beliefs we’ve ever held.            

Womyn in Politics

           I’m really interested in the real world implications of Smith’s claims about sympathy. In particular, I’m convinced that his beliefs strongly necessitate the participation of more diverse politicians in public office. I will focus on women, because that’s what I know best, but this extends to people of color, those who are low-income, transgender people, etc.

            In Part 1 sec. 1 ch. 5, Smith breaks down the experience of sympathy into two ways of expressing ‘sentiments’. Firstly, one can sympathize without holding any particular relation to another or their sentiments. For example, two people may find particular joy in a certain poem. In order to do this, it is not necessary to put oneself in the other’s shoes. Furthermore, one can preserve “harmony and correspondence” (20) with another despite disagreements; there is nothing innately controversial about disagreements in these cases. Secondly, one can sympathize with another over an experience that greatly affected one party. In this case, one must imagine the other’s situation; there must be some “correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and the person principally concerned” (21). If one does not sympathize with the other, there cannot be a reconciliation of these differences.

            Furthermore, the emotions of this second kind of sympathetic exchange will not be shared equally between the participant and the spectator. In fact, Smith asserts that although mankind is “naturally sympathetic,” one can “never conceive…what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned” (21).

            While women make up 50% of the population, they constitute approximately 20% of all the leadership positions in the House and Senate.[1] This lack of representation greatly impacts the lives of women in the U.S. It is predominantly men who present legislation and vote on legislation. It is concerning that men hold so much influence over legislation that greatly affects women (title IX, reproductive rights). How can one accurately protect the entire populace’s interests when one sex’s opinions (or simple ignorance) are favored and codified into law? Putting oneself in another’s shoes is possible—and greatly effective in terms of the sympathy that it invokes. However, men cannot entirely experience the suffering that has accompanied the historical and present day subjugation of an entire sex.

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[1] http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

The Privilege Problem and Sympathy

An integral part of Smith's theory is quite obviously the ability to sympathize. Though, as Cristina and Sebastian have pointed out, he does not quite distinguish sympathy and empathy in a way that would be more convincing, his account does seem to align with many patterns that we see in daily interactions as well as wider social interactions. An important distinction that he does make is that, "sympathy... does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation that excites it" (12). Perhaps an easy way of characterizing sympathy is to feel sorry, or happy or whatever affection, that an individual is in the situation that they are in, rather than feeling those affections for the person. This is because we can more easily imagine ourselves in the situation than as the person due to our lack of complete knowledge of others. The significance of this distinction is made more clear in Section I, Chapter III when Smith says, "When we judge in this manner of any affection, as proportioned or disproportioned to the cause which excites it, it is scarce possible that we should make use of any other rule or canon but the correspondent affection in ourselves" (18). Furthermore, "if, upon bringing the case home to our own breast, we find that the sentiments which it gives occasion to, coincide and tally with our own, we necessarily approve of them as proportioned and suitable to their objects; if otherwise, we necessarily disapprove of them, as extravagant and out of proportion" (19).

So, we feel sympathy for the situation that a person is in rather than the person directly. Additionally, we can only feel this sympathy if we think that the reaction the person has is proportioned or suitable to the object/stimulant of the situation. Lastly, and most importantly, we can only find the reaction suitable or proportioned if we think that we would have a similar reaction to that object/stimulant. If this is true and accepted, it would make clear the problem of privilege. As sociologist Michael Kimmel puts it, 'privilege is invisible to those who have it.' This was also supported in Lebron's writings. Even with the utmost reflection, it is extremely difficult to separate oneself from the realities of one's life-- and that includes one's privilege. Take, for example, a female college student who walks around campus with pepper spray; she feels extreme fear as a reaction to being alone at night. Male college students may evaluate her reaction to that situation as excessive. 'She has no reason to be so afraid,' they might say, 'this is a college campus, it's safe.' Because of their privilege inherent to being a male, there is little to no way that they can understand the fear the female student feels, and thus they believe it unjustifiable. They do not feel the degree of sympathy that the female student would say is justified. Even the most intensive efforts to understand the student's fear cannot truly be successful, because for that they would have to experience it themselves.

Smith's theory makes it clear why we tend to invalidate other's experiences or reactions and partake in activities like tone-policing, but it also leads us to question of what would be the most virtuous behavior. Do we accept the female student's account that her fear is justifiable (or any group that is discriminated against on a wider scale), or do we value what a third-party observer would say is justifiable? Smith seems to suggest that a balance between these two is the most virtuous. I'm not completely convinced on this point yet, at least insofar as using this as a widely applicable rule of thumb.

The Inception of Rationality

(1)   “Our senses… never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations.” (I.I.2)

(2)   “Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it.” (I.I.10)

(3)   “Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges the like faculty in another.” (I.I.29)

(4)   “We reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow… in the distant, but affecting, coldness of the whole behavior.” (I.I.42)

(5)   “We admire that noble and generous resentment which governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by the rage which they are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator.” (I.I.43)

(6)   “To restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.” (I.I.44)

(7)   “The amiable virtue of humanity requires, surely, a sensibility, much beyond what is possessed by the rude vulgar of mankind. The great and exalted virtue of magnanimity undoubtedly demands much more than that degree of self-command, which the weakest of mortals is capable of exerting. (I.I.45)

(8)   “The propriety of every passion is excited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves, the pitch which the spectator can go along with, must lie, it is evident, in a certain mediocrity.” (I.II.1)

(9)   The man, who under the severest of tortures allows no weakness to escape him, vents no groan, gives way to no passion which we do not enter into, commands our highest admiration.” (I.II.14)

(10)“When we consider the condition of the great… it seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state.” (I.III.17)

Hopefully, these quotes (and my title), give you a good idea of where I am going with this. Each of these quotes, and the whole passage, I believe, leads to the classic economic idea of rationality. While they do lay out morals along the way, none of the morals are incongruous with the idea of rationality. I picked the quotes above because I think they best lend themselves to this idea.

1, 2, 3: When viewing a situation with more than one individual, how can those individuals be said to act? Smith would say, in their best imagination of the others in the situation. Each has a concept (based on themselves) of what it would be reasonable (or rational) for the other to do in the situation. Aggregated across the situation (even if it only includes two parties), we end up with a concept of what it is rational to do in the situation, based on the overlap of the different opinions. Specifically, in quote 2, we are said to appeal to the situation, which makes it even less personal.

4, 5, 9: In each of these quotes, the best of humankind are those who are able to totally control and comport themselves in situations of duress. The rest of us admire those few, and strive to be like them. We admire them because we would not be able to feel their pain (literally), and we appreciate them undertaking the effort to experience the situation as we do. In an everyday situation, we can act like them, in a composed manner. Thus the idea of cool rationality is born.

6: In light of the two passages directly preceding this one, I interpreted this to mean not acting benevolently by giving alms to the poor, but rather by comporting oneself in a restrained, cool manner. That is to say, acting in a way that is in line with how a spectator would see the situation, i.e. rationally.

7: We (even the lowest among us) are sensible and in command of our selves.

8: The passion of others is related to us in a mediocre fashion. That is to say, we can experience an idea of what others are feeling, but only in a down-the-middle, average sort of way.

10: The entirety of section 3, chapter 2, and in particular this quote, seemed to me to be an explanation of why it is rational for all human beings to desire wealth and status.

True Sympathy vs. Artificial Sympathy

Adam Smith’s analysis and interpretation of Sympathy is profoundly interesting. In the beginning of Part I, Chapter III he states, “To approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them; and not to approve of them as such, is the same thing as to observe that we do not entirely sympathize with them.” I beg to differ with Smith’s claim of sympathy coinciding with the approval of one’s feelings. I believe it is possible for a man to approve, as in to understand where one’s hurt and emotions come from, in almost all situations but to sympathize takes effort. Sympathy requires a deeper understanding of another’s experience. We may always be able to approve or not, but to show or not show compassion takes us to a new level of understanding. Take for example, the case of the stranger Smith talks about whose father recently passes away. Here Smith writes, “We have learned, however, from experience, that such a misfortune naturally excites such a degree of sorrow, and we know that if we took time to consider his situation, fully and in all its parts, we should, without doubt, most sincerely sympathize with him” (18). From this example, I take that sympathy requires a certain degree of “experience.” Say for instance, that I, in my past, have been hit by car. From this experience I truly know and understand the pain and terror the situation may have caused me. Someone who has never encountered such a tragic situation will never be able to fully sympathize with me. They may only imagine and approve, implying a basic level of understanding, my experience. Nevertheless, if I were to witness a close friend of mines being hit by a car now, my personal experience of the same circumstance, despite how fast the car was going and where my friend was hit by the car, would allow me to really recognize her/his suffering. Therefore, a distinction between true and surface-based sympathy must be made for one's own comprehension and judgment.