Adam Smith on Infanticide and Moral Judgment

Abstract

Adam Smith's treatment of infanticide is usually interpreted to reflect upon his cosmopolitan commitments, or on his view of history and social development. There is, more importantly, an argument about moral judgment at work in this section of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. A close reading of Smith's thoughts on infanticide reveals a subtle case regarding the place of abstract concepts in sympathetic judgment, and relatedly, on how to discern our most basic human emotional proclivities. This entails that there is in Smith's philosophy some continuity between sociological observation and sympathetic judgment.