Jacqueline Taylor presents an original reconstruction of Hume's social theory, which examines the passions and imagination in relation to institutions such as government and the economy. She goes on to examine Hume's system of ethics, and argues that the principle of humanity is the central concept of Hume's Enlightenment philosophy.

The foundation of morality, and mainly, the possibility of moral sentiments that are universal and inalienable, is a central problem in Maine de Biran’s philosophy. Many studies focus on the part played by the self in Maine de Biran’s late philosophy, but relatively few consider with precision the importance of the concept of sympathy in this context. In this paper, I would like to show that this concept, which Biran mobilizes from his first to his last writings, is an (...) important conceptual resource in his enterprise of founding morality. I will draw on three main texts that cover almost the entire period in which he wrote, namely, his Mémoire sur l’influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser ([1802] 1987), his Mémoire sur les perceptions obscures ou sur les impressions générales affectives et les sympathies en particulier ([1807] 1984), and his Fragments relatifs aux fondements de la morale et de la religion ([1819] 1859). The main finding is that sympathy occupies a central place in this enterprise of moral foundation but undergoes profound and almost contradictory conceptual re-elaborations throughout Biran’s intellectual journey. Although in his first philosophical texts Biran concentrates on the fundamental dimension of organic sympathy, he rejects it almost entirely in his last texts in favor of an analysis of the sympathy between the selves. (shrink)

A 2012 review article for Metascience which explains Mach's realistic brand of empiricism, contrasting it with the common phenomenalist reading of Mach by John Blackmore in two recent books.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I address the question of what we are really after when we seek Smithian mutual sympathy; I also show how the answer I propose can be used to illuminate a crucial feature of Smith's moral philosophy. The first section develops a Smithian response to egoistic interpretations of the desire for mutual sympathy. The second section identifies a number of different self- and other-relevant ways in which one could desire mutual sympathy. Some of these different (...) ways of desiring mutual sympathy comprise a spectrum of degrees of self-centredness; others comprise a spectrum of degrees of other-centredness. The third section shows that the spectra of ways of desiring mutual sympathy can be used to explain the kind of sincere, motivating attachment to morality characteristic of fully developed Smithian moral agents. (shrink)

In what follows, I wish to discuss empathy and sympathy’s relevance to ethics, taking recent findings into account. In particular, I want to consider sympathy’s relation to the idea of a person’s good or well-being. It is obvious and uncontroversial that sympathetic concern for a person involves some concern for her good and some desire to promote it. What I want to suggest is that the concept of a person’s good or well-being is one we have because we (...) are capable of care and sympathetic concern. Well-being is normative for care in the sense that it is intrinsic to the very idea of a person’s good that threats to it are what it makes sense to be concerned about for that person for her sake. (shrink)

This paper shows that even if the mental states of non-human animals lack phenomenological properties, as some accounts of mental-state consciousness imply, this need not prevent those states from being appropriate objects of sympathy and moral concern. The paper argues that the most basic form of mental (as opposed to biological) harm lies in the existence of thwarted agency, or thwarted desire, rather than in anything phenomenological.

In this entry to David Hume scholarship, Jacqueline Taylor brings together a line of interpretation she has been developing over several years, connecting Hume's theory of the passions to what she calls Hume's "social theory." Through a concise, well-organized argument, the book offers insights into how one of the Enlightenment's most famous and gifted thinkers conceptualized social roles and institutions, the ways we navigate these roles and institutions, and how all this connects to the kind of creature we are. It (...) is a rewarding read for anyone interested in Hume's moral project.The book begins with a lively, historicized defense of Hume's "experimental" method against readers who have thought his approach fails... (shrink)

In this paper, I show how reading Hume’s moral philosophy in light of seminal works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American authors can provide resources for developing a richer and more intentionally relational conception of sympathy. I begin by identifying two phenomena to which African American intellectuals like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Anna Julia Cooper refer with the term “sympathy.” For ease of reference, I label these phenomena “sympathetic commitment” and “sympathetic understanding,” respectively. (...) I then show that there are concepts in Hume’s moral philosophy that refer to similar phenomena and suggest that Hume scholars can draw on these concepts to develop an enriched and distinctively Humean sense of sympathy. (shrink)

After his mental crisis in 1826 J. S. Mill set out to revise Benthamite Utilitarianism. The nature of that revision and its relation to Mill's mature philosophy is central to Mill scholarship. This study suggests that in order to understand the development of Mill's thought it is necessary to understand the central role he assigned to sympathy. ;Benthamism, to Mill, was based upon the assumptions that mankind was predominately motivated by self-interest, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest (...) number would be achieved by an artificial identity of interests. During his crisis Mill discovered that enlightened self-interest and an education based upon associationist psychology could not provide an abiding link between an individual's happiness and the happiness of others. The possibility of establishing such a bond, Mill came to believe, lay in each individual's capacity to sympathize with others. Mill's recovery from his crisis was sparked by the discovery of his ability to identify sympathetically with others and by his recognition of the possibility of nurturing the capacity for sympathy. This dissertation argues that these experiences became the foundation for Mill's revision of Benthamism and the core of his moral and social philosophy. Analysis of Mill's early essays , newspaper articles and letters establishes the extent of Mill's belief in the necessity of developing sympathy, and his insistence that sympathy be incorporated into Utilitarianism. ;Mill's appeal to sympathy is best understood in its intellectual context. This work interprets Mill's emphasis on sympathy within the context of the discourse on the relation of sympathy and self-interest to social morality articulated in the moral philosophies of Adam Smith and David Hume, the Romantic poetics of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, the moral philosophies of the critics of Benthamism and the social criticism of the Saint-Simonians. ;The role of sympathy in Mill's thought has yet to be fully examined. While this dissertation focusses on Mill's revision of Benthamism, sympathy is also a major theme in his mature moral and social philosophy. This study further suggests the need for re-examining Victorian liberalism in the light of the central role of sympathy. (shrink)

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It (...) is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe.This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period.About a century ago the idea of Einfühlung was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field. (shrink)

Unlike conventional ethical theory, environmental ethics—and eco-philosophy generally—have frequently been able to escape the desiccating rigors of analytical thinking. This is due in large part to the nonconforming and creative work of people like Henryk Skolimowski, whose ideas have influenced the philosophical dialogue for nearly 40 years now. The guiding principle of his new worldview, that the world is a sanctuary and not a machine, implies a radically expanded conception of eco-ethics. And his metaphysical stance of noetic monism demands that (...) mind and reality be taken together, as a unit. These ideas fit well with the recent trend in philosophy of mind toward panexperientialist ontologies. Collectively, such notions point toward the concept of universal intrinsic value in nature, and a concomitant form of ethics that I call “universal sympathy.”. (shrink)

Two longstanding questions about Hume's later moral theory have preoccupied scholars of his work: First, what does Hume mean by "humanity" in the second Enquiry, and what are we to make of its seeming replacement of "extensive sympathy" as the source of our moral sentiments? Second, what happened to the associationist account of sympathy emphasized so keenly in the Treatise? My primary task in this paper will be to answer the first of these two questions. To do this, (...) I conduct a careful analysis of Hume’s notion of humanity with heavy emphasis on the text of the second Enquiry. This is not to say I will skip over sympathy. On the contrary, if I am right that humanity is dependent on sympathy (or at a minimum, the process of sympathizing), then we must also take a close look at the Enquiry account of sympathy. -/- However, I do not directly discuss the mysterious disappearance of the associationist account of sympathy from the Enquiry in this paper. Instead, I address that part of the puzzle in a second, related article (published in the subsequent issue of BJHP in the same year). What we find in that related analysis, however, is that the associationist explanation of sympathy never really disappeared from the Enquiry . Taken together, then, the arguments of the two papers goes some distance towards confirming that there is no real inconsistency between Hume’s position in the Enquiry and the Treatise regarding humanity, sympathy, and the source of our moral sentiments. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core (...) moral theory. We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory. (shrink)

My aim, in this chapter, is to outline the key details of this particularly interesting aspect of Hume's philosophical system. My presentation will be threefold. In the first section of the paper, I will elucidate the nature of sympathy, drawing upon some of the more recent ways in which Hume's commentators have attempted to resolve the interpretive puzzles Hume's works present. In the second section, I will explicate some of the functions sympathy has in Hume's philosophy, including not (...) only three that have been particularly prominent in the secondary literature, but also two others that have received considerably less attention. In the final section, I will summarize Hume's account of the nature and functions of sympathy and briefly suggest some of the ways in which these aspects of Hume's moral psychology seem to be supported by contemporary psychological research. (shrink)

Reflecting Subjects is an important and timely book, both as a piece of Hume interpretation and as a work of philosophy more generally. Let me begin with the first. It has increasingly become a commonplace in Hume interpretation that the passionate and social dimensions of human life play an unusually fundamental role in Hume's philosophy. But we are only beginning to appreciate the significance of this side of Hume in a systematic way. It is precisely here that Taylor focuses her (...) attention, providing us with a... (shrink)

Kant’s theory of friendship is crucial in defending his ethics against the longstanding charge of emotional detachment. But his theory of friendship is vulnerable to this charge too: the Kantian sage can appear to reject sympathetic suffering when she cannot help a suffering friend. I argue that Kant is committed to the view that both sages and ordinary people must suffer in sympathy with friends even when they cannot help, because sympathy is necessary to fulfill the imperfect duty (...) to adopt others’ merely permissible ends, and we ought to take friends’ MPEs as our own. MPEs are individuated in terms of concepts which include marks of the first person, and no marks of law other than permissibility. To adopt ends of others individuated in terms of such concepts rather than merely promote them as means to different ends, those concepts must engage with one’s feelings in a way that requires sympathy. (shrink)

This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and (...) their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face. (shrink)

Sympathy for animals is regarded by many thinkers as theoretically disreputable. Against this I argue that sympathy appropriately underlies moral concern for animals. I offer an account of sympathy that distinguishes sympathy with from sympathy for fellow creatures, and I argue that both can be placed on an objective basis, if we differentiate enlightened from folk sympathy. Moreover, I suggest that sympathy for animals is not, as some have claimed, incompatible with environmentalism; on (...) the contrary, it can ground environmental concern. Finally, I show that the traditional concept of anthropomorphism has no coherent basis, and I argue that the attempt to prove that animals lack thoughts is both unsuccessful and irrelevant to sympathy for languageless creatures. (shrink)

According to a popular thought, sympathy is an epistemic phenomenon: in sympathizing with others we come to be aware of them as fellow sentient beings. This view–which I call the Epistemic View–effectively characterizes sympathy as a form of social cognition. In this paper, I will argue against the Epistemic View. As far as I can see, this view radically misconstrues the way sympathy is directed at others. I will at the same time provide some material for, and (...) motivate, an alternative proposal according to which the primary significance of sympathy is practical rather than epistemic. On this account, sympathy is a form of interpersonal acknowledgment rather than interpersonal awareness. (shrink)

When modern economists use the notions of sympathy or empathy, they often claim that their ideas have their roots in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, while sometimes complaining that Smith fails to distinguish clearly enough between the two concepts. Recently, Philippe Fontaine has described various forms of sympathy and empathy, and has explored their respective roles in Smith's work. My objective in this paper is to argue that Smith's analysis of how people's sentiments impinge on one another (...) involves a concept of fellow-feeling that is distinct from both sympathy and empathy. Unlike sympathy and empathy, fellow-feeling does not fit into the ontological framework of rational choice theory – which may explain why it tends to be overlooked by modern readers of Smith. (shrink)

This is a book about the metaphysics of perception and discusses touch, audition, and vision. Though primarily concerned with the nature of perception, it draws heavily from the history of philosophy of perception, and connects the concerns of analytical and continental philosophers.

It is widely held in contemporary moral philosophy that moral agency must be explained in terms of some more basic account of human nature. This book presents a fundamental challenge to this view. Specifically, it argues that sympathy, understood as an immediate and unthinking response to another's suffering, plays a constitutive role in our conception of what it is to be human, and specifically in that conception of human life on which anything we might call a moral life depends.

More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM “incomparably the best” of all his writings only because he preferred that (...) later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content? (shrink)

Hume holds that sympathy is both crucial for making moral judgments and a distorting influence that prevents us from assessing the virtue of characters impartially. He writes, When any quality, or character, has a tendency to the good of mankind, we are pleas’d with it, and approve of it; because it presents the lively idea of pleasure; which idea affects us by sympathy, and is itself a kind of pleasure. But as this sympathy is very variable, it (...) may be thought, that our sentiments of morals must admit of all the same variations. We sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with strangers: With our countrymen, than with foreigners. This essay will argue that Humean sympathy can play a .. (shrink)

With his theory of sympathy in the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume has been interpreted as anticipating later hermeneutic theories of understanding. It is argued in the present article that Hume has good reasons to consider a hermeneutic theory of empathetic understanding, that such a theory avoids a serious difficulty in Hume’s “official,” positivist theory of sympathy, that it is compatible with the complex and subtle form of positivism, or naturalism, developed in Book 1 of the Treatise, and (...) that his analysis of sympathy provides valuable methodological rules for empathetic interpreters. Against the interpretation of James Farr in “Hume, Hermeneutics, and History,” it is maintained that Hume’s theory does not support a hermeneutics of nonempathetic Verstehen. (shrink)

Cet article consiste en une analyse critique de la notion de sympathie dansles deuxièmes et troisièmes tomes du *Traité de la Nature Humaine* de DavidHume. Il s’agit plus particulièrement de l’étude du passage de la sympathierestreinte à la sympathie étendue comme concept clé dans la philosophiepolitique de Hume. La lecture deleuzienne de Hume, telle qu’elle se donnedans *Empirisme et Subjectivité* est particulièrement mobilisée pour montreren quoi ce passage est représentatif des difficultés d’une philosophiepolitique qui, se voulant demeurer *empiriste*, doit passer (...) par une théoriede la croyance et des fictions. C’est-à-dire que l’effort théorique de Hume,consistant à ne pas sortir du donné, doit donner droit de cité àl’imaginaire dans ce donné. La philosophie politique de Hume est ainsicomprise comme une des premières de l’histoire de la philosophie à ne pasinvoquer la raison comme gestionnaire du passionnel. Au contraire, ellefonde l’institution politique sur une *extension* du mode même decirculation des passions : une extension de la sympathie. La sympathie estdonc à comprendre non seulement comme le mécanisme d’échange des passions, àla fois interne au sujet et intersubjectif, mais comme principed’universalisation de la croyance en un vivre-ensemble. L’institutionpolitique est donc une fiction, qui doit être l’objet de croyance pour êtreeffective, et ainsi recevoir l’investissement affectif de la multitude de lamême manière que s’il s’agissait d’une sympathie de proximité naturelle. Lesmoyens d’une extension de la sympathie communément restreinte àl’environnement immédiat, vers l’institution politique représentantl’intérêt commun, constituent ainsi la trame de l’étude. (shrink)

Sympathy for animals is regarded by many thinkers as theoretically disreputable. Against this I argue that sympathy appropriately underlies moral concern for animals. I offer an account of sympathy that distinguishes sympathy with from sympathy for fellow creatures, and I argue that both can be placed on an objective basis, if we differentiate enlightened from folk sympathy. Moreover, I suggest that sympathy for animals is not, as some have claimed, incompatible with environmentalism; on (...) the contrary, it can ground environmental concern. Finally, I show that the traditional concept of anthropomorphism has no coherent basis, and I argue that the attempt to prove that animals lack thoughts is both unsuccessful and irrelevant to sympathy for languageless creatures. (shrink)

Thinkers from the Chinese and Greco-Roman traditions posit that disparate objects throughout the cosmos have mutual affinities. In the Stoic tradition, such affinities are explained through “sympathy.” In the Chinese tradition, the explanatory principle is often called ganying 感應 (resonance). In addition, both traditions use similar philosophical strategies when discussing these concepts. Thinkers cite natural correspondences, placing them in parallel lists as evidence for philosophical truths. On the surface, the analogous concepts and strategies hint that these thinkers share similar (...) philosophical goals. However, analysis of the role natural correspondences play in argumentation discovers fundamental differences between the two traditions. The focus on particular arguments instead of broader cosmological trends offers a different perspective for comparative research, and the conclusions raise questions concerning how scholarship should analyze philosophical trends in early China. (shrink)

This article analyses Adam Smith's and Sophie de Grouchy's accounts of sympathy to show how they arrive at strikingly different views on whether inequality is a threat to, or precondition of, social order. Where many scholars have recently sought to recover Smith's egalitarianism, I instead focus on how his account of sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments naturalises socioeconomic inequalities, while also highlighting the wider inegalitarian implications of his analysis. I demonstrate that Grouchy was alert to these (...) implications and reveal how her own account of sympathy challenges the moral psychology underlying Smith's position on inequality. By reconstructing Grouchy's response to Smith, I illustrate how retrieving the insights of long‐overlooked thinkers can reorient the way we understand key debates in the history of philosophy, since Grouchy was far more concerned than Smith with exposing how economic inequality imperils the prospects of relating to one another as equals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 2, November 2003, pp. 305-325 Hume, Sympathy, and the Theater BRIAN KIRBY Every movement of the theater, by a skillful poet, is communicated, as it were by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama. (EPM 5.2.26; SBN 221-2) Much has been written recently about (...) the role of sympathy in Hume's moral theory. That may indeed be its most important use. But it seems from a number of illustrations he uses that it has broader applications, in particular, application to a spectator's appreciation of drama. The problem some see with this broader application is that it conflicts with the basic definition of sympathy as a process by means of which impressions are shared. The actors on the stage would not seem to have the same passions which "inflame" the spectators. Worse, the spectators do not believe in their hearts that the passions which inflame them have real correlates. At first blush, "sympathy" might mean any one of several things. In "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn," for example, Jonathan Bennett says, "As for 'sympathy': I use this term to cover every sort of fellow-feeling, as when one feels pity over someone's loneliness, or horrified compassion over his pain, and when one feels a shrinking reluctance to act in a way which will bring misfortune to someone else."1 However, fellow-feeling is not a sharing of feelings in Hume's sense. Alvin I. Goldman comes closer to Hume's meaning in a narrow description of empathy: "To empathize with someone, in its Brian Kirby, Associate Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at St. Lawrence University, is at 172 Miner Street Road, Canton, NY 13617, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 306 Brian Kirby most frequent sense, is to sympathize or commiserate, which involves shared attitudes, sentiments, or emotions."2 Still, Hume's sympathy is not the commiseration but rather what is involved in the commiseration, the shared attitudes, sentiments, and emotions. "No quality of human nature," says Hume, "is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own" (T 2.1.11.2; SBN 316). The principle of sympathy as he describes it in his technical sense is as follows: When any affection is infus'd by sympathy, it is at first known only by its effects, and by those external signs in the countenance and conversation, which convey an idea of it. This idea is presently converted into an impression, and acquires such a degree of force and vivacity, as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection. However instantaneous this change of the idea into an impression may be, it proceeds from certain views and reflections, which will not escape the strict scrutiny of a philosopher, tho' they may the person himself, who makes them. (T 2.1.11.3; SBN 317) If sympathy has to do with the sharing of impressions, what can one say about possible broader applications in which the correlate impression is absent? One tack to take is to dismiss the illustrative examples as aberrations or at least minor inconsistencies on Hume's part. A second is to argue that the broader applications follow reasonably, given Hume's description of the mechanism of sympathy. I propose, in this paper, to take the second tack. The above description characterizes what one might call sympathy in its normal social context in which the feelings of another are identifiable from his verbal and bodily behavior. Of course, the identification is not infallible. The other person may intend to deceive by lying or mimicking the behavior associated with a feeling. But such occasions are parasitic on normal contexts. But beyond the normal social context, there are other occasions which elicit sympathy, situations in which passions are aroused in the sympathizers for good cause, but which have no correspondent in the objects of sympathy. The case... (shrink)

According to "the argument from discernment", sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation--because the only morally non-arbitrary one--involves treating an action's rightness as your reason for performing it. This paper (...) attacks the argument from discernment and argues against its conclusion. (shrink)

According to “the argument from discernment”, sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation–because the only morally non‐arbitrary one–involves treating an action's lightness as your reason for performing it. This paper (...) attacks the argument from discernment and argues against its conclusion. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Can a Serial Killer Ever Be Good? Dexter on Trial Four Ethical Tests Dexter Dreams Darkly: An Overview of Showtime's Dexter Morgan Killing to Maximize Happiness Kant's Dark Champion A Virtuous Devil or a Moral Monster? Hypothetical Consent: Would You Want Dexter in Your Neighborhood? Closing Arguments.

German phenomenologist and sociologist Max Scheler accorded sympathy a central role in his philosophy, arguing that sympathy enables not only ethical behaviour, but also knowledge of animate and inanimate others. Influenced by Catholicism and especially St Francis, Scheler envisioned a broad, cosmic sympathy forming the hidden basis for all human values, with the “higher” religious, artistic, philosophic and other cultural values enabled by a more basic regard for non-human nature and insights gained from the human situation within (...) the non-human world. Sympathy for the non-human is thus both integral and fundamental to the cultivation of other values in the development of both the human person and humanity in general. Scheler’s concept of sympathy is valuable for contemporary animal ethics because it insists on acknowledgement of and respect for difference as constitutive for the experience of sympathy. By thus allowing for sympathy to occur in the absence of complete knowledge of other subjectivities, Scheler’s phenomenology of sympathy eliminates the need for complete understanding of the consciousness of other animals as a prerequisite for interspecies sympathy. Despite their inability to completely inhabit non-human perspectives, humans can thus sympathize with other creatures. While Scheler is a foundational thinker and, to a large degree, maintains hierarchical structures contested by many contemporary animal theorists, he remains a valuable source for contemporary theory insofar as he acknowledges a “fundamental basis of connection” between species and affirms that all animal bodies are communicative. The occasioning of sympathy by gestural signification opens a path of insight that can increase human openness to non-human others. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Hume’s account of sympathy is substantially unchanged from the Treatise to the second Enquiry. I show that Hume uses the term ‘sympathy’ to refer to three different mental phenomena (a psychological mechanism or principle, a sentiment, and a conversion process) and that he consistently refers to sympathy as a cause of benevolent motivation. I attempt to resolve an apparent difficulty regarding sympathy and humanity by explaining how each is an ‘original (...) principle’ in Hume’s sense. I conclude by suggesting how my interpretation might make a contemporary evaluation of Hume’s account of benevolent motivation possible. (shrink)

Proponents of care ethics tend to reject the ideals of historical republicanism and the enlightenment because they do not take into account the centrality of the roles played by carers or caregivers in society. Furthermore this is irremediable because of enlightenment’s prizing of reason over and above emotions and of independence over relationships. In this paper I argue that such a wholesale rejection is misguided because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the ideals of enlightenment and republicanism which (...) did value both the emotions and relationships. I focus on the example of one feminist republican writer of the eighteenth century, Sophie de Grouchy, and argue that her response to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Letters on Sympathy provide a model for a feminist republican social reform. I discuss de Grouchy’s arguments on the relationship between sympathy and morality, and on the kind of social and political reforms which are needed in order to ensure that sympathy can operate freely as a regulator of human interactions. I also show how her claim that sympathy originates in the first human relationships, namely between a child and the woman who feeds them means that in this republican account, mothering is identified as central to the well-functioning of human society. (shrink)

Bioethics has begun to see the revaluation of affects in medical practice, but not all of them, and not necessarily in the sense of affects as we know them. Empathy has been accepted as important for good medical practice, but only in a way that strips it of its affectivity and thus prevents other affects, like sympathy, from being accepted. As part of a larger project that aims at revaluing the importance of affectivity in medical practice, the purpose of (...) this paper is to develop a clinical sympathy that can serve as a trainable skill for medical professionals. While everyday sympathy may be problematic as a professional skill for physicians, this does not imply that sympathy should be entirely rejected. As a natural part of our moral psychology, sympathy is an intersubjective affect that aids in our interactions with others and our decision-making abilities. I present here a theory of clinical sympathy as an affective response to patients, in which physicians are both attuned to their affective response and understand how their affects are influencing their beliefs and judgments. In this way, clinical sympathy serves as a trainable skill that can aid physicians in their interactions with their patients. (shrink)

For the first time, in Hume and Smith, ‘sympathy’ occupies a central position as the principle of moral judgment. The key to solving the relationship between sympathy and economic thought lies in the theory of justice. Hume and Smith inherited Hutcheson’s criticism of the Hobbesian selfish system and considered humans selfish and social. For both, the relationship between selfishness and sympathy is neither a contradiction nor a subordinate structure in which selfishness ultimately dominates sympathy. In this (...) joint project, Hume’s institutional utilitarianism could justify Smith’s economic theories and provide Smith’s theory of government with a proper philosophical foundation. I argue that this is particularly significant because Smith himself failed to provide the foundation in areas where the idea of public utility plays a vital role, such as in the critical case of national defence and the decline of martial spirit. (shrink)

This paper starts from the premise that Spinoza and Hume share a realisticnaturalistic approach to human nature. Human beings are finite parts of nature, and as such strongly interdependent creatures. This interdependence is reflected in the central social-psychological principles that Hume and Spinoza employ, respectively sympathy and affectuum imitatio. Both principles show the immediacy of the communication of passions, and the strong influence that other people’s passions exert over our own affective lives. Central to this paper are an analysis (...) and comparison of the working of sympathy and imitation of affects. As it turns out, both philosophers consider humans to be limitedly social beings. Social, because we tend to be moved by the pains and pleasures of our fellows. Limitedly social, because our egoistic side limits the scope of our fellow-feeling, and may turn the other’s pain into our pleasure and vice versa. This puts a pressure on groups; their living together can never be truly harmonious without external interference. Spinoza and Hume, therefore, regard a further stabilisation and harmonisation of collective affective life as a key political concern. As will finally be argued, the precise way in which this concern is fleshed out in their political theories makes them occupy a shared, distinctive position in early modern political thought. (shrink)

In "Monkeys, Men, and Moral Responsibility: A Neo-Aristotelian Case for a Qualitative Distinction," Paul Carron (2017) uses the tragic case of Travis the chimpanzee to test Frans de Waal's gradualism. If Travis is not to blame for anything simply because he's a chimp, then gradualism cannot be total: There must be a qualitative difference between chimps and humans that makes humans morally responsible and chimps not. As I understand it, Carron's neo-Aristotelian thesis is that chimps cannot emotionally regulate: The emotional (...) states from which primates act are given to them and "lack rational content," whereas the emotional states from which humans act can be self-consciously developed in the cultivation of character. Carron takes this thesis to be a friendly amendment because it arises "from within the sentimentalist tradition itself broadly construed." In this comment I question just how friendly Carron's amendment turns out to be. (shrink)

This article spells out a forgotten debate in Confucian ethics that concerns the finer points of empathy, sympathy, and perspective-taking (sometimes called ‘role-taking’). The debate’s central question is whether sympathy is more virtuous when it is automatic and other-focused – that is, when we engage in perspective-taking without conscious effort and sympathize without significant reference to our selves or our own feelings.