Talk:The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Philosophy: Literature / Ethics / Modern Mid‑importance

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Summaries

Where are summaries of parts II-IV???????????????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.169.55.94 (talk) 16:54, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Simply an extended quotation of Adam Smith. Pteron 05:37, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. Revise or delete. Cribcage 06:35, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Should be turned into a stub. Adam Smith only wrote two major works - The Wealth of Nations and A Theory of Moral Sentiments, and thus the book deserves an entry on Wikipedia. :ChrisG 10:15, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Keep and stubify. Agree with ChrisG. Andrewa 14:11, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Keep. This is one of the most influencial books in capitalist theory. mydogategodshat 12:32, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Innacuracies: Holds that Hume believed in moral sense, and that Smith came up with the theory of sympathy as the motivating replacement

instead of Hume

Irrelevance: Describing this book as an important step in the development of capitalist theory is beside the point. Adam Smith wrote this not to defend capitalism, but to do traditional moral theory.
Adam Smith never used the term "capitalism", and he was highly distrustful of businessmen. Its misleading to claim that this book was a theory of capitalism. The page should be kept, but I'm removing that reference.
This wiki needs an exposition of his important contribution to moral philosophy the "impartial spectator".

Interestingly the "impartial spectator" isn't listed as one of his notable ideas on the Adam Smith biography wiki. berserk

Part I, Section III needs summaries for all 3 chapters. There is just a long excerpt from Ch. 2, and almost all of Ch. 3 pasted in there. Going to put footnote or some other indication that summary is needed. Will cite public domain source from Gutenberg.org source in the meantime. Philogicatician 20:18, 21 Jan 2021 (CST)

Notes

Can someone find those chapter references, for the quotes stuck into the article? Wik idea 13:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Length

This article seems far too in-depth; it's very hard to read. I think summaries should be limited to whole parts, rather than breaking them into sections and chapters. Each part is fairly unified. The quotations are too long as well. obbst (talk) 07:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be revised to cover the 6th edition.

In "The Impartial Spectator" by D.D. Raphael, he spends some time writing about the significance of Smith's 6th version revision. Notably, Smith's 1st version was published in 1759. "The Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776, and then the 6th edition was published in 1790. This is significant, because it shows that Smith was re-affirming this work post "Wealth of Nations," and because this 6th edition included an entirely new part, Part VI: The Character of Virtue. For this reason, this article should reflect the 6th, not the 4th edition, with special attention given to the inclusion of this new section in the months immediately preceding his death. --Elliott Shultz (talk) 20:11, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How can you tell if the article is a part of any wiki projects?

The article was very detailed and may benefit from some summary revisions

— Gtiedy (talk) 22:08, 24 September 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Honestly what is going on with this article

It's been incomplete and relatively incoherent to an uninformed reader since 2009. It may just need to be rewritten from the ground up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prince Duke Electorate (talk • contribs) 04:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Most of it is a "summary" of the work which is far too long and detailed, and incomplete to boot. A brief summary (no more than 7 paragraphs) would be appropriate, along with some broad commentary from one or two Smith scholars: its relation to his other works, its relation to Stoicism or other moral philosophies, its reception by later thinkers (especially others in the Scottish Enlightenment), that sort of thing. I don't know enough to write it, unfortunately. Wgrommel (talk) 01:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]