Abstract

Álvaro Santana-Acuña

Outside the Self:  “External Metaphors” as a Source for the Rise of the Social in TMS

In this paper I seek to demonstrate the relevance of The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the genesis of the notion of ‘the social.’ Smith’s moral sentiments constituted a basic matrix of the social and epitomized the search for a secular theory about the dynamics of human interdependence. I claim that his findings constituted a critical step from conceiving the world as the ultimate outcome of a godly will to its perception and explanation as a social reality. Smith achieved this transition in TMS by means of what I call “external metaphors,” which were meant to produce a novel and supra-individual space for human interdependence that was neither religious nor entirely economic or political.