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Amartya Sen has recently revived Adam Smith's impartial spectator theory as a tool for thinking about international justice (see "Open and Closed Impartiality,â[euro] Journal of Philosophy 99 (9), 2002, 445-69). For all those who are eager to learn more about Adam Smith and cosmopolitanism, Forman-Barzilai's Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy comes in handy. It brings Smith's theory of sympathy in dialogue with questions of contemporary cosmopolitan theory, consciously crossing the borderline between intellectual history and political theory (25). This reading of Smith both in the context of his time and with regard to contemporary relevance is very refreshing.
Forman-Barzilai explores the theme of oikeisis in Smith: the doctrine, of Stoic origin, that human affection radiates outwards from the self in concentric circles of declining intensity. But whereas in Stoicism the goal was to overcome this tendency, in the architecture of Smith's thought it is endorsed as a principle that structures the social space; his reception of the oikeisis doctrine was, hence, "conflicted and incompleteâ[euro] (8). Forman-Barzilai shows how the fact of limited sympathy ties the impartial spectator's moral judgments to local cultures, which is a problem for those who, like Sen, want to use the impartial spectator for intercultural moral evaluations. But Forman-Barzilai argues that Smith's theory of justice, which is based on the resentment to cruelty, can...