Reason and Passion

I think it's interesting to note the way that Smith combines reason with passion in Moral Sentiments. I think other political philosophers--Hobbes, for example--tend to think of reason and passion as two distinct, and sometimes competing, entities. Smith, however, seems to be giving an account of how passions affect our reason, and how our reason tells us to interpret other people's passions and portray our own. The way we reason--our "imagination," and how we judge the reasonableness of one's emotions--affects our "fellow-feeling" that we're able to extend to others. At first it seems somewhat uncompassionate to give reason such a large role in determining how we interpret other people's emotions, but I think Smith is actually proposing a more advanced way to look at the person, since reason and passion do get intertwined/affect each other in the way we interact with other people. I think reason and passion are still separate in some ways for Smith; for example, the person who gets angry when provoked will likely get angry without reasoning about whether that anger is justifiable. However, from the impartial spectator's view, reason will play a large part in determining whether one's anger is justified, and whether other people will sympathize with that anger.