Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
Letters on Sympathy
Eight letters appended to her translation of Smith: sympathy begins in bodily pain and pleasure and needs equality and just laws to grow into justice.
Introduction
Sophie de Grouchy, widow of the philosopher Condorcet, published her French translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1798, followed by eight letters to “C***”, generally identified as her brother-in-law, the physician Cabanis. She agrees with Smith that morality starts from sympathy but asks where sympathy itself comes from, and traces it to our physical sensitivity to pain and pleasure, first experienced in childhood. From there she builds an account of conscience, moral judgement and justice, and argues that inequality, privilege and unjust laws corrupt natural sympathy. Long read only as a translator’s appendix, the Letters are now studied as an independent work of moral philosophy.
Connections
Responds to
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments1759 · Adam Smith
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made