Kwong-loi Shun argues that our reactions to situations of danger to others needn’t be understood in terms of empathy for those others, but can be fully anchored in what is bad about the situations themselves. My reply begins by pointing out cases where the desire to help and/or emotional reactions to what is bad for others don’t seem to involve empathy and then showing how empathy actually works in those cases. It goes on to argue that empathy allows a deeper (...) and more nuanced explanation of our responses and non-responses to dire situations than the appeal to the badness of those situations makes possible. Bringing in empathy forces one to go beyond Shun’s attempt to stay within Chinese tradition.However, the reply to Shun goes on to demonstrate how our understanding of empathy and of many other aspects of our moral psychology can be deepened and enhanced by bringing in the distinctive Chinese ideas of yin and yang—conceived as complementary rather than as opposites or contraries. Via a revived and fine-tuned notion of yin/yang Chinese thought has much to teach Western philosophers. (shrink)

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of valid morality, that is, with assumptions it seems necessary for us to make in order for there to be such a thing as objective or binding moral requirements: for example, if we lack free will or are all incapable of unselfishness, then it is not clear how morality can really apply to human (...) beings. Moral psychology also deals with what one might call the psychological accompaniments of actual right, or wrong, action, for example, with questions about the nature and possibility of moral weakness or self-deception, and with questions about the kinds of motives that ought to motivate moral agents. Moreover, in the approach to ethics known as ‘virtue ethics’ questions about right and wrong action merge with questions about the motives, dispositions, and abilities of moral agents, and moral psychology plays a more central role than it does in other forms of ethical theory. (shrink)

The Theory of Important Criteria is used to argue that the age?old problem of the compatibility of free will and determinism turns on the question of the importance of causal indeterminacy of choice as a criterion of being able to do otherwise. One's answer to this question depends in turn on one's evaluation of certain moral issues and of the force and significance of certain similes, analogies and diagrams in terms of which one can ?depict? a deterministic universe. It is (...) further argued that the problem of free will and determinism is not a pseudo?problem, but a genuine problem that is hard to solve because of the depth and complexity of the evaluative issues on which it hangs. (shrink)

Moral sentimentalism can be understood as a metaethical theory, a normative theory, or some combination of the two. Metaethical sentimentalism emphasizes the role of affect in the proper psychology of moral judgment, while normative sentimentalism emphasizes the centrality of warm emotions to the phenomena of which these judgments properly approve. Neither form of sentimentalism necessarily implies a commitment to virtue ethics, but both have an elective affinity with it. The classical metaethical sentimentalists of the Scottish Enlightenment—such as David Hume and (...) Adam Smith—were all, to a greater or lesser extent, also virtue theorists. The connection is even stronger in the case of Enlightenment philosophers who were also normative sentimentalists , as with Frances Hutcheson. For Hutcheson, virtue simply is a habit of acting from the warm motive of universal benevolence. Today, neo-sentimentalist metaethicists such as Allan Gibbard, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson generally remain agnostic on the question of whether virtue ethics is superior to its deontological and consequentialist competitors. Michael Slote, however, has developed a comprehensive theory of sentimentalist care ethics in an unambiguously virtue-centered form. (shrink)

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

This new book by Michael Slote argues that Western philosophy on the whole has overemphasized rational control and autonomy at the expense of the important countervailing value and virtue of receptivity. Recently the ideas of caring and empathy have received a great deal of philosophical and public attention, but both these notions rest on the deeper and broader value of receptivity, and in From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Slote seeks to show that we need to focus more on (...) receptivity if we are to attain a more balanced sense and understanding of what is important to us. -/- Beginning with a critique of Enlightenment thinking that calls into question its denial of any central role to considerations of emotion and empathy, he goes on to show how a greater emphasis on these factors and on the receptivity that underlies them can give us a more realistic, balanced, and sensitive understanding of our core ethical and epistemological values. This means rejecting post-modernism's blanket rejection of reason and of compelling real values and recognizing, rather, that receptivity should play a major role in how we lead our lives as individuals, in how we relate to nature, in how we acquire knowledge about the world, and in how we relate morally and politically with others. (shrink)

Originally published in 1985 and now re-issued with a new preface, this study assesses the two major moral theories of ethical consequentialism and common-sense morality by means of mutual comparison and an attempt to elicit the implications and tendencies of each theory individually. The author shows that criticisms and defences of common-sense morality and of consequentialism give inadequate characterizations of the dispute between them and thus at best provide incomplete rationales for either of these influential moral views. Both theories face (...) inherent difficulties, some familiar but others mentioned for the first time in this work. The argument proceeds by reference to historical figures like Bentham, Ross and Sidgwick and to contemporary thinkers such as Williams, Nagel, Hare and Sen. (shrink)

The theory of important criteria -- Value judgments and the theory of important criteria -- The rationality of aesthetic value judgments -- Inapplicable concepts -- Morality and ignorance -- Time in counterfactuals -- Assertion and belief -- Understanding free will -- Selective necessity and the free-will problem -- Is virtue possible? -- Morality not a system of imperatives -- Review of Alvin Plantinga's God and other minds -- Utilitarianism, moral dilemmas, and moral cost -- Object utilitarianism -- Utilitarian virtue -- (...) Moderation, rationality, and virtue -- Rational dilemmas and rational supererogation -- Ethics naturalized -- Nietzsche and virtue ethics -- Caring versus the philosophers -- Global caring, global justice -- Empathy and objectivity -- In place of moral reasoning -- Some thoughts for the future. (shrink)

Moral sentimentalism holds that moral sentiment is the source of moral judgment and moral motivation. It contrasts with rationalism, which puts reason in place of sentiment. Sentimentalism goes hand in hand with a virtue theoretic approach in normative ethics. In the version of sentimentalism defended here, the chief moral sentiment is empathic concern. The chaper argues that moral goodness consists in empathic concern for others. Moreover, it argues that the reference of moral terms is fixed by actual empathic reactions, and (...) not by reactions to merely possible circumstances. (shrink)

In Essays on the History of Ethics Michael Slote collects his essays that deal with aspects of both ancient and modern ethical thought and seek to point out conceptual/normative comparisons and contrasts among different views. Arranged in chronological order of the philosopher under discussion, the relationship between ancient ethical theory and modern moral philosophy is a major theme of several of the papers and, in particular, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and/or utilitarianism feature centrally in (most of) the discussions."--BOOK (...) JACKET. (shrink)

In this book, Slote offers the first full-scale foundational account of virtue ethics to have appeared since the recent revival of interest in the ethics of virtue. Slote advocates a particular form of such ethics for its intuitive and structural advantages over Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality, and he argues that the problems of other views can be avoided and a contemporary plausible version of virtue ethics achieved only by abandoning specifically moral concepts for general aretaic notions like (...) admirability and virtue. Although this study is not bound by particular Aristotelian doctrines, it places an Aristotelian emphasis on both self-benefiting and other-benefiting virtues. Slote criticizes Kantian and common-sense morality for internal incoherencies and for downgrading the moral individual and her well-being in some previously unnoticed ways. By contrast, this book defends a distinctive, intuitive, and symmetric ethical principle according to which we should balance self-concern with concern for others, but it also concludes that there is, contrary to utilitarianism, no single basis for status as a virtue nor any simple relation between the virtues and human well-being. (shrink)

Argues that rather than pursuing every optimizing choice, individuals use common sense in making decisions, and includes real-life examples.

Western philosophy treats cognition/belief/reason and emotion as entirely separable in the mind, but the Chinese concept of heart-mind strongly suggests otherwise. This can be validated by considering what belief involves. All cognitive functioning involves believing something. It is clear that confidence that p is an epistemic emotion, and many dictionaries define confidence as strong belief. Belief thus requires less strongly positive epistemic emotion. It is shown further that all elements in a functioning mind are instances of emotion, and emotion turns (...) out to be a yin/yang phenomenon, where yin and yang are conceived as mutually complementary rather than, more familiarly, as contraries. Irrational or non-virtuous states of xin can be viewed as distortions of yin/yang emotion, and the mind or, better, heart-mind is best conceptualized as an emotional yin/yang entity. The West has a great deal to learn from China. (shrink)

Practical reason or rationality can be understood in agent‐based terms. Strength of purpose, for example, can be internally characterized, and the rationality of the courage to face facts and not deceive oneself about what is unpleasant or horrifying can also be understood in agent‐based terms. Practical rationality also requires us not to be self‐defeatingly insatiable in our wants, but this likewise is a feature of inner motivation. Finally, being rational seems to require a certain amount of concern for one's own (...) well‐being or happiness – just as being moral requires a certain kind of concern for others; but like the other conditions of practical rationality just mentioned, this kind of concern can readily be understood in agent‐based terms. In fact, it makes more intuitive sense to understand the rationality of self‐interest in terms of motivation than to understand it in terms of consequences. (shrink)

Aristotelian virtue ethics does not treat motives or even character as the grounding basis for the rest of ethics, but the present agent‐based approach does. However, there are objections to agent‐basing that need to be considered. Having answered those objections, the chapter discusses three major forms of agent‐based virtue ethics: a somewhat less than plausible ”morality as inner strength” ; ”morality as universal benevolence” ; and ”morality as caring”. Any agent‐based morality does well to treat overall motivation, rather than occasional (...) single motives, as the fundamental basis for ethical characterizations. (shrink)

Views that understand both morality and human well‐being in agent‐based terms can be called ”hyper‐agent‐based.” The present such approach treats each of the agent‐based elements of practical rationality and morality as grounding its own separate and distinctive human good. Thus, for example, the rational virtue of noninsatiability is arguably necessary to and helps constitute appetitive goods; the rational value of strength of purpose is groundingly essential to the distinctive good of achievement/accomplishment; the courage not to deceive oneself about unpleasant facts (...) helps constitute the human good of wisdom; and the moral virtues of caring underlie and help bring about what is good about love, friendship, political involvement, and the like. It is argued that all human goods can be plausibly fitted into this hyper‐agent‐based view of what is good for us and that such a unified explanatory scheme is superior to a mere ”objective list,” however intuitive, of human goods. (shrink)

Is an agent‐based sentimentalist virtue ethics of caring or benevolence sufficiently action‐guiding, given the focus on the inner life rather than external factors? The answer is that such forms of ethics are not meant to be practical in this sense, because a focus on what is right or obligatory takes the agent away from a praiseworthy focus on the good of other individuals. The ideal agent is deeply connected with and directly concerned about the welfare of others, and such a (...) person does not conscientiously worry about whether he or she is acting rightly or virtuously. This conclusion allows us to understand moral growth and moral conflict – though in a way different from the way in which the Kantian tradition, with its emphasis on conscientiousness, does. (shrink)

The ethics of caring was originally based on the idea of a contrast between the ”feminine” focus on caring and a ”masculine” emphasis on justice. But an agent‐based ethics of caring can actually provide the means for understanding what justice is. Institutions, laws, and indeed whole societies can be politically evaluated according to whether they exhibit or reflect sufficiently caring motivation on the part of those who sustain/inhabit them.

If we think caring can be a valid basis for ethics, we need to describe further what kind of overall pattern of caring motivation is morally best. An ”inverse care law” that treats ideal caring as simply varying according to how distant in familial or personal terms someone is from the agent is considered and rejected in favor of an ideal of ”balanced caring,” according to which concern for the class of those near and dear to one is to be (...) balanced against concern for all others taken as a class. It is argued that humans can develop such motivation naturally without having to be told that it is their obligation to do so. (shrink)

An agent‐based approach can also help us understand what is good for people, human well‐being. Utilitarianism reduces virtue and morality to certain relationships with human or sentient well‐being; but Stoicism and even Aristotle can be understood as having reversed this order of explanation. For the latter, virtue is the basis for understanding human well‐being. An agent‐based ethics of caring can draw on certain ideas of Plato in order to argue that the moral virtue of caring and certain nonmoral virtues such (...) as strength of purpose help make certain experiences and ways of living count as good for us. This reversed reductionism can be called “elevationism”, and it represents a significant alternative to both dualistic and reductionistic accounts of the relation between moral virtue and human well‐being or welfare. (shrink)

It is important to decide between morality as caring and morality as universal benevolence. The latter has a distinctive conception of social justice that is more plausible, intuitively, than what utilitarianism says about justice, but there are reasons to think that the impartialism inherent in universal benevolence does not allow us to do justice to the value we place on love and loving relationships. For this and other reasons, we should prefer a virtue ethics of caring as the grounding basis (...) for individual and political morality. (shrink)

Our commonsense thinking about the virtues has certain advantages over Kantian ethics and commonsense morality narrowly conceived. The latter two are committed to a self‐other asymmetry with respect to moral goodness and rightness: what harms the agent is not treated as morally criticizable in the way that what harms other people is. By contrast, our ordinary understanding of virtues allows for both self‐benefiting and other‐benefiting virtues, and what harms or is likely to harm the agent counts against his or her (...) possession of the virtue of prudence as much as what is likely to harm others counts against his or her having the virtue of benevolence or kindness. But to treat what harms the agent as irrelevant to our deepest or most important ethical evaluations downgrades or devalues the agent himself or herself, and this criticism, while not applying to our ordinary thought about the virtues, does hold against both Kantianism and commonsense morality. (shrink)

A commonsense virtue ethics can contribute to moral education by pointing out the importance of self‐regarding virtues. That importance is often ignored or neglected in school ”values” curricula.

Terms like ”admirable” and ”a virtue” are not specifically moral, but they allow imperatives and the use of ”should” as readily as moral terms do. This allows our commonsense virtue ethics to say, overarchingly, that we should balance concern for ourselves with or against concern for others considered as a class.

Kantian and commonsense moral thinking are incoherent because self‐other asymmetry does not cogently combine with the belief that we owe more to people the closer they are to us in familial or personal terms. The latter is commonsensically explained by the claim that it is natural or inevitable that we should care about those closer to us more than about those less close to us, but this seemingly plausible assumption tends to undercut the justification that is typically and intuitively offered (...) for self‐other asymmetry, namely, that we naturally care more about ourselves than about others, so that there is no need to assume any duty to avoid harming oneself. A commonsense ethics of virtue avoids this and other incoherences or tensions in Kantian and commonsense moral thinking. (shrink)

Commonsense views about practical rationality are self‐other asymmetric in a way diametrically opposed to the asymmetry involved in commonsense or Kantian morality. What is likely to harm others does not count as irrational in the same fundamental way that what is likely to harm oneself does. Commonsense or Kantian morality is agent sacrificingly asymmetrical, whereas commonsense rationality is agent favouringly asymmetrical. This means that these two parts of ordinary thinking tug in opposite directions, but a virtue‐ethical approach that focuses exclusively (...) on commonsense thinking about what is admirable or counts as a virtue lacks this sort of tension, and such greater unity counts in its favor. (shrink)

Virtue ethics treats aretaic, as opposed to deontic, concepts as fundamental and focuses in the first instance on character traits or motives rather than actions. Virtue ethics also contrasts with utilitarianism because although both these approaches are self‐other symmetric, they embrace different forms of symmetry. Utilitarianism holds that one's concern for oneself should be no different, fundamentally, from the concern one has for each and every other individual. But such ”in sensu diviso” symmetry differs from an ”in sensu composito” symmetry (...) that would have us be equally concerned with ourselves and with others considered as a class. Commonsense virtue ethics subscribes to the latter kind of symmetry because of the way in which it gives equal or nearly equal weight to both self‐benefiting and other‐benefiting virtues. (shrink)

There are five basic classes of ethical notions: the notions surrounding the idea of welfare; moral notions; virtue notions; rationality notions; and notions involving the evaluation of states of affairs. Epicureanism and utilitarianism try to reduce all the other notions to that of well‐being or welfare, but Stoicism moves in the opposite direction, seeing well‐being as a function of virtue. Since virtue seems higher or more ideal as a value than sheer or mere well‐being, we can say that Epicureanism and (...) utilitarianism monistically reduce virtue to well‐being, whereas Stoicism monistically elevates well‐being to the status or level of virtue. But commonsense virtue ethics treats well‐being and virtue in dualistic fashion as mutually ineliminable. (shrink)

Two different kinds of intrinsic goodness are often conflated. A state of affairs can be intrinsically good, but certain things can be intrinsically good for a person, a constitutive element in his or her welfare. These notions do not come together, as Kant's example of the prosperous but evil individual manifestly indicates: intuitively, such a state of affairs is in itself intrinsically bad but is nonetheless intrinsically good for, i.e. beneficial to, the prosperous individual. Any virtue ethics needs to keep (...) these concepts distinct. (shrink)

The main issue between utilitarianism and commonsense virtue ethics is whether what is admirable is a function of the overall benefit a trait brings to sentient beings generally or whether there can be sources of admirability and virtue status somewhat independent of such overall consequences. It is argued by example that many kinds of admirability seem possible and that some of these do not grow out of overall likely benefits to sentient beings. This favors commonsense virtue ethics over utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism does best to approach justice, rationality, and various virtues in symmetric and impartialist fashion. A scalar form of utilitarianism that makes only comparative judgments of better and worse may be preferable for abstract theoretical purposes, though not in practice.