The Sympathy of Sophie de Grouchy, translator and critic of Adam Smith

Sophie de Grouchy is known to the public for her highly appreciated French translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) by Adam Smith (1794) and for her publication of the Letters on Sympathy (1798). This article aims to reconstruct Sophie de Grouchy’s criticism of TMS and to show that it is based on a misinterpretation of Smith’s concept of sympathy. In her interpretation, Sophie de Grouchy seems to decontextualise the category of sympathy from the whole of the Scottish thinker’s vision on this topic, adopting an interpretative canon that is strongly influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thought.