Sentimental Education: Adam Smith and the Value of Literature

Abstract: In the final (1790) edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith adds a striking reading recommendation to his discussion of how we learn the hard lessons of morality, claiming that literary authors—he mentions Racine and Voltaire, Richardson, Marivaux, and Riccoboni—are “much better instructors than Zeno, Chrysippus, or Epictetus” (TMS III.3.14). This talk explores why Smith enlisted literature in his sentimentalist moral project and how those literary sources would have worked to advance that project. Specifically, I focus on the epistolary novel, an early form of the novel that employed first-personal narration through a series of private letters. I argue that formal features of these novels, especially the perspectival positioning created through the artifice of reading 'over the shoulder' of another person, activates and trains the reader's skills as an impartial and sympathetic spectator.