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Sen claims that his 2009 theory of justice is based in part upon Smith’s idea of the ‘impartial spectator’. His claim has received criticism: some authors have responded that his interpretation of Smith’s concept is unfaithful to the original; others, focussing on internal features of Sen’s analysis, critique his use of the Smithian impartial spectator, arguing that it is a weak point in his comparative theory of justice. In this paper, we address both sets of criticisms. While agreeing with commentators that Sen’s reading of Smith is somewhat unfaithful, we reiterate that his aim in The Idea of Justice is not to provide an exegesis of Smith but rather to build his own comparative theory of justice by ‘extending Adam Smith’s idea of the impartial spectator’ (IJ: 134) to his own project. After clarifying their distinct approaches to the concept of the impartial spectator, we draw upon our account of these differences to evaluate Sen’s own use of the concept. Despite significant divergences, we show that Sen’s version of the impartial spectator is not inconsistent with Smith’s analysis. Though it does not correspond to Smith’s concept, that is to what the Scottish philosopher sometimes calls the ‘man within’, it is reminiscent of another figure from Smith’s moral philosophy: the ‘man without’. Beyond this analogy, there are further connections between Smith’s imaginary figure of the ‘man within’ and Sen’s account of ‘common beliefs’—both notions are ways of representing our beliefs regarding what is moral or just. But whereas Smith’s moral philosophy offers an analysis of the process by which the ‘man without’ influences the ‘man within’, nothing of that kind is to be found in Sen’s conception of public reasoning. And it is here that Smith’s famous concept of ‘sympathy’ can supplement Sen’s theory, in a way that furnishes an answer to Shapiro’s (2011) criticism regarding the possibility of spontaneous change of beliefs towards greater impartiality.

The paper concerns a neglected aspect of the Wealth of Nations (with the notable exception of D. Levy 1999), dealing directly with decision under risk. In a few pages from book I, chapter 10, Adam Smith explicitly named lotteries various objects of choice (possible occupations, or investment opportunities, for instance), and provided an analysis which standard expected utility glasses would hardly t. Taking this into account allows a better understanding of the part played by typical characters like the projector or the sober man, in such matters as Smith's conception of entrepreneurship or of the credit market. The use of some modern concepts in decision analysis (inverse stochastic dominance, rank dependent utility, prudence toward risk), is a means to show the existence, in Smith's work, of an original theory from decision under risk, where his analysis of lotteries in the Wealth of Nations is consistent with statements from his moral philosophy on asymmetric sensitivity to gains and losses and to the regulating part played by the impartial spectator.