By analyzing the status and functions of sympathy in Smith and Hume, we can understand how the moral and social spheres of human conduct are articulated in modern civil society. With Smith, the operator of sympathy reconstructs the social genesis of moral distinctions and establishes the separation of the moral sphere from human social conduct. With Hume, sympathy operates in all human relations and, for this reason, poses in a different way the connections between the moral and the social. On one hand, with Smith, sympathy leads to the control of affective intensities to enable the deployment of moral conduct. On the other, with Hume, because sympathy can, according to circumstances, increase or decrease the affective intensities that motivate human relationships, it makes it necessary to develop a «policy», i.e., artifices that attenuate the consequences of the ordinary play of human nature’s tendencies.
Keywords: Smith, Hume, Sympathy, Human Relationship, Passion.