| Summary: | The present paper discusses Adam Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator
from an epistemological point of view. Inextricably lined to the concept of ‘sympathy’,
as theorised in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), the impartial spectator takes
centre stage in a world in which the gaze of others accounts for appropriate or
inappropriate feelings and actions. Eager to pass judgement on my own adequate or
inadequate conduct, I have to check whether my own judgement is influenced by the
views of others in order not to fall prey to my own feelings of self-love or self-interest.
Inspired by both David Hume’s and Francis Hutcheson’s moral philosophy and,
particularly, debates on the mechanism of sympathy stemming from disinterested
benevolence, Smith’s spectator places himself in a theatrical situation, in which he is
not a simple onlooker, but an inquisitive entity that makes use of the practice of the
imagination in order to understand others’ feelings in the public sphere. Deemed as
a personification of our conscience, the allegedly impartial spectator is employed by
Smith in order to emphasise sympathy as a universal fellow-feeling which can
contribute to the development of what Hume calls “the Science of Man” (Hume,
“Treatise” x).
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