This week I am giving a talk at this workshop on the problem of evil at Notre Dame. My talk will be about Adam Smith (the subject of my dissertation). After a few years away from his writings, I am reading him with fresh eyes. During a very clever talk on moral luck in Smith, by a graduate student (Arizona) Keith Hankins, the following passage caught my renewed attention.
“A man of humanity, who accidentally, and without the smallest degree of blamable negligence, has been the cause of the death of another man, feels himself piacular, though not guilty. During his whole life he considers this accident as one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the family of the slain is poor, and he himself in tolerable circumstances, he immediately takes them under his protection, and, without any other merit, thinks them entitled to every degree of favour and kindness. If they are in better circumstances, he endeavours by every submission, by every expression of sorrow, by rendering them every good office which he can devise or they accept of, to atone for what has happened, and to propitiate, as much as possible, their, perhaps natural, though no doubt most unjust resentment, for the great, though involuntary, offence which he has given them” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments).
My paper will be extended commentary on this passage (not moral luck) because it calls attention to the moral significance of seeing oneself as a cause. I'll try to post highlights after the week-end.
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