Cultivating Sympathy: Sophie Condorcet's Letters on Sympathy

In 1798, Sophie de Grouchy, the marquise de Condorcet, published a translation of the seventh edition of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1792), along with a series of eight “letters” on the subject of sympathy. These letters are, in fact, substantial essays that allow us to discern how she read Smith. Intellectual historians have a tendency to privilege an author's intent, and to read the Theory of Moral Sentiments in order to determine what Smith actually meant, and how meaning was constructed in the context of a particular intellectual environment. As long ago as 1978, literary theorists such as Wolfgang Iser suggested that a reader's response is at least as interesting a question as an author's intent (Iser 1978). And Sophie de Grouchy is no ordinary reader. Her translation of, and commentary on, Smith's work allow us to see how a theory constructed in the intellectual context of the Scottish Enlightenment would be received by a different intellectual community. While de Grouchy shared much of the background that informed Smith's work, she could not write a commentary on sympathy during the Terror without taking into account recent French political experience and debate. And, I argue, her reading was not merely idiosyncratic, but rather representative of a particular group of intellectuals seized with the problem of adapting Enlightenment theory to the political reality of the Republic.