| 摘要 | Key Points
Adam Smith helps with moral challenges, especially in work and employment. He inspires the individual to make a useful and satisfying place for himself in society by contributing.
The crucial competence is. Sympathetic deftness might be thought of as social intelligence. Employers are wise to look for it. Workers with sympathetic deftness are more productive. Sympathetic deftness is win-win-win.
We have seen three seats of sympathy: sympathy with familiars, those we live with; sympathy with unfamiliars, which calls forth common decency and civility; and sympathy with the man within the breast, or.
Introduction
In the times of Erasmus and Martin Luther and after, printing and literacy cracked interpretation wide open—interpretation of scripture, of politics, of work, of life, of life after death. Consciousness got a lot more complicated.
Man evolved for life in small cohesive bands, and our genes have not changed that much since the small band of 12,000 years ago. And then came social hierarchy. But traditional society worked to enforce social cohesion and to keep interpretation closed. Since Luther, however, many forces have tended otherwise, toward discohesion and moral confusion, busting interpretation open.
Some of our most influential thinkers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, have accentuated discohesion. Others, including Adam Smith, treated it less than squarely. They did not want to raise alarm about how modern developments—in literacy, science, technology, commerce, jurisprudence, and politics—might tend to undo traditional forms of social cohesion.
But treating it less than squarely does not mean that Smith did not treat it profoundly. Here I highlight elements of Smith as relates to moral challenges of modern society, especially in work and employment. Smith inspires the individual to make a place for himself in society, a useful and satisfying place, by contributing.
Competence is key, but the crucial competence is in sympathy. The individual needs competence in sympathy to find a place to work and contribute and to find his own life satisfying. As moral counselor, Smith helps the worker and the employer.
By “sympathy” Smith meant fellow feeling or shared sentiment. Deftness in sympathizing might be thought of as social intelligence. It’s crucial to the social virtues. Sympathetic deftness is a kind of competence or ability. Employers are wise to look for it. Workers with sympathetic deftness are more productive—lower cost, higher revenue.
And there is a pleasure in sympathy. Even when the sentiment that is shared is an unpleasant one, as at a hospital perhaps, there is a pleasure in the sharing of it. Workers with sympathetic deftness are nicer to be around. A nice workplace makes jobs there more attractive to other workers. Sympathetic deftness is win-win-win.
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