QuestionsWhat makes something right?The impartial spectator: judging ourselves through a third party's eyes
What makes something right?Nature or conscience

The impartial spectator: judging ourselves through a third party's eyes

The impartial spectator; the man within; the little finger and the earthquake in China

Adam Smith 1723 · 1790We judge right and wrong by putting ourselves in others' place, under the eye of an "impartial spectator".
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What it claims

Our moral judgment of ourselves, and our capacity to prefer justice to our interest, come from the eye of the impartial spectator we carry within.

Why

Our little finger moves us more than a hundred million strangers; what makes us just is the eye of an impartial judge within.

In short

"The impartial spectator: judging ourselves through a third party's eyes" is an argument by Adam Smith (Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759 (1777 ed.), III, ch. 2) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: nature or conscience). Its claim: Our moral judgment of ourselves, and our capacity to prefer justice to our interest, come from the eye of the impartial spectator we carry within. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759 (1777 ed.), III, ch. 2
Valid with an implicit premise

A man of goodwill in Europe hears that an earthquake has just swallowed up China with its millions of inhabitants. He will express his sorrow, then dine and sleep peacefully. But if he were to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep a wink. Yet no one would agree to sacrifice a hundred million strangers for his little finger. What holds us back? For Adam Smith, it is not benevolence, which is too weak. It is the eye of an "impartial spectator" that we carry within: we see ourselves as a third party with no tie to us would. This inner judge, formed by life in society, corrects self-love and makes us prefer justice to our interest.

P1We are naturally far more affected by what happens to us than by what happens to others: losing our little finger troubles us more than the ruin of a hundred million strangers we never see.
P2Yet no one would sacrifice a hundred million people to avoid this misfortune: human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the most corrupt world never produced a man capable of entertaining it. Our active principles are often generous and noble.
P3It is not the soft power of humanity, that feeble spark of benevolence, that can counteract the strongest impulses of self-love: it is a stronger power, reason, principle, conscience, the man within, the great judge of our conduct.
P4This man within judges from the standpoint of a third party with no tie to us or to those our conduct affects, who views us with the same indifference as we view others. We learn this in society, which is the mirror in which we see our own passions.
P5 · implicit premiseThere is no other possible source of these generous principles of action than benevolence or the judgment of this spectator (neither an a priori rule, nor an outside command, nor the actual opinion of others).
Therefore our moral judgment of ourselves, and our capacity to prefer justice to our interest, come from the eye of the impartial spectator we carry within.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where we act generously neither from benevolence nor from a spectator: for instance out of respect for a moral law given by pure reason.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. P1 and P2 state a fact: we are selfish in our feelings but generous in our acts. P3 rules out benevolence as an explanation, being too weak. P5 says only the spectator remains. Objections target P5: they offer other sources (pure reason) or say the spectator is merely society's opinion.
Analogy. Before posting a message written in anger, you imagine it read by a stranger who knows neither you nor your opponent. Suddenly you see what is excessive. Smith says that this third-party eye, which you carry with you, is your conscience.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

David Hume (the difficulty he raises for any morality of sympathy) 1739 · attacks premise 4

Hume, who also grounds morality on sympathy, raises the difficulty himself: we sympathise more with those close to us than with strangers, more with our countrymen than with foreigners. Yet we give the same approval to the same moral qualities in China as in England. If esteem came from sympathy, it should vary as sympathy does. (Hume himself answers with "general points of view".)

a defender replies
Adam Smith defender of the argument · 1759
Smith's solution: to compare opposite interests, we must change place and take that of a third party with no tie to either. Habit and experience teach us this. Without this sense of propriety and justice, sympathy would remain unequal according to distance.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Smith keeps sympathy but corrects it with an impartial standpoint, which resembles Hume's "general point of view". It remains to be seen whether this standpoint is still sympathy or a rule of reason. The debate is open.
Immanuel Kant (feelings cannot ground the law) 1785 · attacks premise 5

Kant refuses to ground morality on a moral feeling or on sympathy. Feelings differ infinitely in degree and cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil; and no one has a right to judge others by his own feelings. The moral law must come from pure reason.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Smith in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Smith, still alive in 1785, did not answer Kant (Kant's text does not name him). But he had already distinguished the impartial spectator from the opinion of others: the man within judges "not what the world approves or disapproves of, but what appears to this impartial spectator" to be worthy of approval. So it is not a personal feeling, but a standpoint anyone can take.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Kant demands a rule valid for every rational being, Smith is content with a human but impartial standpoint. Both admit that self-interest must be overcome. The debate is open.
Adam Smith himself (custom corrupts judgment) 1759 · attacks premise 4

Smith admits that custom can establish as lawful and blameless actions that shock the plainest principles of right and wrong. He cites the exposure of newborn infants, allowed in almost all the Greek states, even in Athens. The spectator we carry within can therefore be distorted by the habits of our society.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Smith in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Smith does not conclude from this that the spectator is useless: he holds that custom affects judgment of character in general less than particular usages. But he does not explain in this passage how the spectator can correct custom, which is the force of the objection.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open question. Is the spectator a standard independent of society, or its idealised reflection? Smith leans to the first while admitting limits.