ADAM SMITH AND THE POSSIBILITY OF SYMPATHY WITH NATURE

Abstract:  As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's "all important emotion of sympathy" (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments , as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in "History of Astronomy and Physics," I show that sympathy with non-sentient nature is possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature.     

Systemic Therapy: A New Brief Intervention Model

A brief psychotherapy model based on systems theory is presented. The model emphasizes the interactional context of clients' problems and represents an efficient intervention paradigm.