Adam Smith’s ‘Sympathetic-Impartiality’ and Universality

I reconstruct here the implicit rationale of Smith’s ethical system, which unites in a single and consistent theory the most valuable features of both ancient virtue ethics and modern deontology. I propose that Smith could do this because of his approach to what I call “sympathetic impartiality”, and the pretension of universality that arises from it. In Smith’s theory, sentiments are moralized through the impartial spectator procedure which, willingly or not, changes the moral axis from emotivism to practical reason.