Word: smith
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Smith is an important source for Obama’s conviction that just and impartial judgment must be grounded in a sense of empathy for our fellow human beings. Although the president’s critics have insisted that justice must be blind and that empathy can only bias judicial opinions, Smith knew that justice would be an impossible ideal were human beings unable to share each other’s thoughts and feelings...
...word “empathy” was coined in the 20th century to describe our ability to feel our way into another’s point of view. Smith called this ability “sympathy.” He saw every instance of sympathy as involving an implicit form of moral judgment. When empathetically engaging with the situation of others, we are led to imagine how we ourselves would react in their situation and don’t sympathize with reactions that are inappropriate. This is why sympathy can serve as the basis for our sense...
Sentiments of justice involve what Smith called “divided sympathy,” in which multiple individuals with conflicting interests are the objects of our empathy. When two or more parties are in conflict, we must empathetically evaluate each of them. Only after having done so can we determine to what extent each has behaved properly toward the other. And only after that can we determine the principles of justice governing the case at hand...
...Smith goes on to argue that rules of justice can be generalized from our individual moral sentiments. We conclude that slavery is unjust from the fact that we sympathize not only with the fictional Eliza but with all those who really suffered under slavery. Our society can then be called just to the extent that the law reflects these general rules. When it fails to do so, the law needs to be changed. Smith was an outspoken opponent of slavery when legal systems around the globe still permitted...
...great books to a selection of Harvard’s brightest students in Social Studies 10. Each year, I wondered who among them might end up on the Supreme Court, or even in the presidency. My hope is that, when they attain positions of power, they remember what Smith had to teach them, not only about economics, but also about empathy...