ENN New Voices: Sophie de Grouchy's Moral Philosophy: Interview with Getty Lustila

In this episode, Nan Lin speaks with Getty Lustila, Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University, about the work of Sophie de Grouchy, an 18th and early 19th century philosopher whose contributions to moral and political thought have often been overlooked. Best known for her translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Grouchy didn’t just translate—she developed her own ideas on sympathy, ethics, and politics in The Letters on Sympathy. The discussion explores Grouchy’s place in the sentimentalist tradition, her engagement with questions of morality and human nature, and why her work matters for understanding the history of ethics. We discuss how she builds on and departs from Smith’s ideas, the role of sympathy in shaping moral and political life, and the broader intellectual context in which she was writing.

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References

Work referenced in the episode
Grouchy, S. (2019) Letters on Sympathy: A Critical Engagement with Adam Smith’s ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’, trans. and ed. S. Bergès and E. Schliesser, New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Works by Getty Lustila
Getty L. (2023). “Remorse and Moral Progress in Sophie de Grouchy's Letters on Sympathy.” In Karen Detlefsen & Lisa Shapiro, The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 584-596.
——— (2023). “Sophie de Grouchy on the Problem of Economic Inequality.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 61 (1):112-132.
 
Literature on de Grouchy
Bréban, L. and J. Dellemotte. (2017) “From One form of Sympathy to Another: Sophie de Grouchy’s Translation of and Commentary on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments,” History of Political Economy 49: 667–707.
Bergès, S. (2015a) “Is Motherhood Compatible with Political Participation? Sophie de Grouchy’s Care Based Republicanism,” Ethical Theory and Practice 18: 47–60.
——— (2015b) “Sophie de Grouchy on the Cost of Domination in the Letters on Sympathy and Two Anonymous Articles in Le Republicain,” The Monist 98: 102–12.
——— (2016) “Wet Nursing and Political Participation: The Republican Approaches to Motherhood of Mary Wollstonecraft and Sophie de Grouchy,” in S. Bergès and A. Coffee (eds.), The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 201–18.
——— (2018) “Family, Gender, and Progress: Sophie de Grouchy and Her Exclusion in the Publication of Condorcet’s Sketch of Human Progress,” Journal of the History of Ideas 79(2): 267–83.
——— (2019) “Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late Eighteenth Century France and Why They Matter,” Australasian Philosophy Review 3(4): 350–70.
Halldenius, L. 2019. “De Grouchy, Wollstonecraft, and Smith on Sympathy, Inequality, and Rights.” Australasian Philosophical Review 3(4): 381–91.
Malherbe, M. (2015) “From Scotland to France: From Smith’s sympathy to Grouchy’s Sensibilité,” in J. François Dunyach and A. Thomson (eds.), The Enlightenment in Scotland: National and International Perspectives, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, pp. 139–51.
Riskin, J. (2002) The Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1979) Emile: Or, on Education, ed. and trans. A. Bloom, New York: Basic Books.
——— (1997). The Discourses and Early Political Writings, ed. V. Gourevitch, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schliesser, E. (2017) “Sophie de Grouchy, the Tradition(s) of Two Liberties, and the Missing Mother(s) of Liberalism,” in J. Broad and K. Detlefsen (eds.), Women and Liberty, 1600–1800: Philosophical Essays, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 109–22.
Smith, A. (1985) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Tegos, S. (2013). “Sympathie moral et tragédie sociale: Sophie Grouchy lectrice d’Adam Smith.” Noesis 21: 265–92.
——— (2019). “Excluding Manners and Deference from the Post Revolution Republic: Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy on the Conditions of Non-Domination.” Australasian Philosophy Review 3(4): 413–21.