Perspective Taking and Moral Evaluation: Themes from Adam Smith.

Abstract

When we engage in moral deliberation, we take it upon ourselves to consider our conduct not only from our own perspective, but from the perspectives of others. I take this to be obvious. It is far from obvious, though, what this requirement amounts to. When we consider other people’s perspectives, what is it that we must do? Are we merely obligated to consider how we would feel if we were in their shoes? Or must we imagine how they feel? What reason do we have to consider other people’s perspectives in the first place? And how does doing so affect our moral judgments? In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith presents an account of imaginative perspective taking and moral evaluation that answers these questions. Based on a close reading of Smith’s text, and drawing on recent work in both philosophy and social psychology, I argue that we are required to consider other people’s perspectives in virtue of our status as members in a moral community of independent and mutually accountable equals. We imagine ourselves in other people’s shoes not to experience their feelings, but to determine how they ought to feel. We imagine ourselves in their shoes as part of an effort to find common ground: to construct a shared perspective from which to collectively judge the propriety or impropriety, justice or injustice, of our (and their) conduct. I argue that Smith’s account of imaginative perspective taking leads not to utilitarianism (as is commonly thought), but to a contractualist theory of moral evaluation.