Smith

For Smith the possibility of morality depends on reflexivity, inter-subjectivity

and imagination (Brown, 2016). Sympathy, for example, depends on not just

me imagining what you’re feeling in your situation or what I might feel in your

situation; it can also involve a change in person and character so that I imagine

myself as you in your situation. In the latter case I must, to some extent, identify

with the other person to enter his perspective; on the other hand, I can only

reflectively and normatively sympathize with the other and endorse or disapprove

of his feelings/actions if I can maintain the ‘distance’ implied by having my own

perspective. Sympathy in this sense is a bridge which simultaneously allows for

imaginative participation in the life of another while at the same time maintaining

the distance required for judgement. It is hard to see how a preference function

can capture all of these nuances.

In some sense the matter is more complicated since there is no ‘I’ who exists

independently of both the other’s perspective and the sympathetic act. The self

does not exist isolated and fully formed at a particular point in time; instead, any

understanding of who I am depends on an ongoing effort over time to ‘see myself

as you’.

---K.M.