The impartiality of the spectator

The introduction of the metaphor of the theatre into moral argument is not peculiar to Adam Smith, even though the figure of the spectator assumes a particularly prominent form in his work, especially in his innovation of the internalised spectator (‘the man within’; ‘the man in the breast’; ‘the internal voice’). The metaphor is found in Hume, in his predecessor and master Hutcheson and, as we know, in a great many English and French writers and essayists of the eighteenth century. Besides, as D. Raphaël notes, Smith borrowed the term ‘spectator’ from the title of the famous paper brought out by Addison and Steele almost forty years previously. But there is no question that the figure of an uninvolved spectator observing a suffering unfortunate is employed in Adam Smith in the most rigorous and systematic way to found a moral theory which also appears as an empirical social psychology and a political philosophy since it opens out into a construction which sets its sights on the possibility of harmonious and peaceful relationships between human beings in society.

Adam Smith appreciated the theatre and was interested in astronomy (in his youth he wrote an essay on the history of astronomy).