Adam Smith\u27s Theory of Sympathy and Justice : A Study on Sentiments of Modern People

How is it possible to construct a peaceful social order from a number of individuals acting on the principle of self-love? This problem is characteristic of modern times. Adam Smith gave his answer to it, developing the theory of sympathy and justice. Smith argues that a fundamental human nature is the desire to be sympathized with, and that the desire makes original emotions of the agent harmonious with sympathetic feelings of the spectators. But according to Smith, spectators have a propensity to sympathize with agreeable emotions more easily than with disagreeable ones, so the agent is apt to cool his disagreeable emotions which are not sympathized with and to stir up his agreeadle emotions which are easily sympathized with. Thus, men are transformed to socialized people who are fit for modern society. As for Smith\u27s justice, it will be made clear that his theory of justice presupposes the embodied-labour theory of value, and that from the same viewpoint he approves the profit in the capitalist production, sympathizing with the expect of owners of capital goods