Abstract:
This paper situates Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) in relation to Enlightenment ideas
about selfhood. It argues that the moral philosophy of two central figures from
the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith, may be used to shed
light on Austen’s dramatisation of the self’s interaction with others, especially
in Emma. Of particular importance is the emphasis on ‘sympathy’ in the work
of Hume and Smith. The genuinely ‘sympathetic’ self gains self-knowledge
and self-insight through responsiveness to the perspectives and predicaments of
others. This is in stark contrast to solipsistic conduct, which locks the individual
in a form of moral and epistemological blindness.
