From One Sympathy to Another: Sophie de Grouchy’s Translation of and Commentary on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments

Laurie Bréban and Jean Dellemotte

History of Political Economy, 2017, vol. 49, issue 4, 667-707

Abstract: This essay examines Grouchy’s translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments along with her critical commentary on Smith’s moral philosophy: The Letters on Sympathy. In this paper, we analyze these two pieces as a whole and build on Grouchy’s commentary in order to highlight some of her choices of translation. Thus we supplement the existing interpretations of Grouchy’s choices of translation. We show that the self-interested basis of her system of sympathy might explain, at least in part, why she missed the important Smithian distinction between self-love and selfishness. Likewise, we make a connection between her abandonment of Smith’s vocabulary of movements and the absence of an identification process in her own analysis of sympathy.

Date: 2017
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