This paper argues that sympathy constitutes an epistemically necessary condition for adequate moral judgement in situations involving other persons. Drawing on Max Scheler's phenomenology while challenging his restrictive conclusions, I demonstrate that sympathetic perception provides irreplaceable access to morally relevant features of situations that rational deliberation alone cannot secure. The analysis extends to institutional contexts, showing that bureaucratic structures which systematically suspend sympathetic engagement exhibit epistemic deficiency regardless of procedural sophistication. Engaging recent phenomenological scholarship on empathy and intersubjectivity, the (...) paper advances a conception of moral perception wherein affective and cognitive dimensions are internally related rather than externally combined. (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 (or empathy) 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)

In this chapter the naturalist origins of sympathy are discussed, with sympathy first used to connote the relation between the human body and soul. The Stoics appear to have expanded this body-and-soul relationship, giving sympathy its broadest possible scope, making it into a feature of the natural world. According to the Stoics, it is because of the soul that pervades all matter that the world itself and everything in it are in a state of interconnectedness. Although the (...) modern sense of sympathy as common feeling is not explicitly made in this context, even here the Stoics can be said to have prefigured the modern sense: their view that human beings familiarize themselves with the world through circles of “sympathy” would prove to be a source of inspiration for later thinkers. (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 the early 1830s, Black abolitionist Maria Stewart reimagined core concepts of republicanism—domination and civic virtue—to articulate a republican politics suited to the political condition of Black Americans in the antebellum United States. Stewart argued that Black Americans, both enslaved and nominally free, were reduced by the white-dominated polity to a position of servitude: as fit to serve the good of the white Americans who dominated them and without any claim upon the polity’s common good themselves. Stewart also drew a (...) nuanced distinction between servitude and service that cast Black mothers as exemplars of republican virtue, engaged in social reproductive labour that supported the common good of Black Americans as a people, in which Black mothers themselves partook. Furthermore, Stewart emphasized the liberatory power of partial sympathy as a foundation for racialized civic virtue and solidarity, organized around the common good of Black Americans as a people. (shrink)

Sympathy became a central topic of post-Darwinian literature when Alfred Russel Wallace (1864) denied that “natural selection” applied to civilized humans. He suggested that humans are connected by sympathetic bonds and thus they do not allow those with lesser capacity to perish. The chapter discusses two public controversies. First, George Darwin’s 1874 proposal to begin a systematic policy of negative eugenics by prohibiting some marriages. Second, a letter from Darwin to Charles Bradlaugh puts the trade-off between happiness and natural (...) selection in sharp relief. Bradlaugh and Annie Besant stood trial in 1877 for distributing an “obscene” manual on contraception. Darwin declined to testify for them, calling attention to what he had written about the trade-off between the goals of individuals in avoiding misery for their children and the goal of racial perfection by means of “natural selection.”. (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)

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)

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.

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)

In a rare full-length volume, renowned feminist thinker Sandra Lee Bartky brings together eight essays in one volume, Sympathy and Solidarity. A philosophical work accessible to an educated general audience, the essays reflect the intersection of the author's eye, work, and sometimes her politics. Two motifs connect the works: first, all deal with feminist topics and themes; second, most deal with the reality of oppression, especially in the disguised and subtle ways it can be manifested.

ABSTRACT:This essay presents a critical examination and development of an exchange between Adam Smith and David Hume on the nature of sympathy. I identify four objections to Smith's account in a letter from Hume and then argue that Smith's system has the resources to reply to all of them. As such, this essay shows that Smith's system provides a more robust foundation for a sentiment-based system of ethics than has been traditionally recognized.

Ulrich liebt sich selbst nicht. Die Sympathie ist ihm fremd. Durch seine Liebe zu Agathe lernt er eine Art Selbstliebe kennen. Wie verhalten sich diese drei Eigenschaften Ulrichs zueinander? Wie verhalten sie sich zu Ulrichs Verhältnis zu Möglichkeiten und zu dem, was er sein und nicht sein soll ? Wie soll man solche Fragen beantworten?

Although the concept of sympathy is absent from the Wealth of Nations, this essay argues that it is the foundation that sustains the free market, gives it its moral limits, and enables its greater efficiency. Recognizing this function, which is not difficult to trace in the Wealth of Nations, allows us to understand why public policies that foster sympathetic relationships lead to greater wealth creation, while those that hinder such relationships impede exchange and reduce wealth. Similarly, when changes brought (...) about by progress or personal ambitions and interests inhibit or distort the free play of sympathetic interaction, the awareness that sympathy is the lifeblood of a free society allows us to adjust public policies and restore the framework of security and order that provides the conditions for prosperity, recognition, and happiness for all. (shrink)

In this essay the author explores the relation between sympathy and proximity in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. The essay proceeds in two parts. First, the author demonstrates that Smith’s description of our various attachments and affections, and the inevitable conflicts among them, draws us into the rich spatial texture of sympathetic response and stimulates further inquiry into a variety of spaces in which sympathetic activity takes place. In the second part, the author explores three such spaces—the physical, (...) the affective, and the historical/cultural—to critique the way that some contemporary moral and political theorists have appropriated Smith’s account of sympathy as a tool for cosmopolitan aspirations. To what extent can Smith’s sympathy model detach us from and get us beyond the partiality and particularity generated by our physical, affective, and cultural entanglements. (shrink)

The concept of sympathy plays an increasingly important role in philosophy over the course of the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the century, sympathy is an “occult power” treated mostly by thinkers on the periphery of philosophy. During the second half of the century, it becomes a central component of mainstream philosophical systems. This chapter discusses the Stoic and Platonist sources of seventeenth-century notions of sympathy, explores some of the most prominent debates about the concept in (...) the middle decades of the century, and then uses this material to display its significance in the metaphysical systems of G. W. Leibniz and Anne Conway. Both philosophers are committed to universal sympathy, according to which all creatures correspond sympathetically to all the others. Although this is primarily a metaphysical claim, it has moral implications. (shrink)

However, other leading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J.G. Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and political ...

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 chapter asserts that the well-known dispute between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer over sympathy (or compassion [_Mitleid_]) is less about its value than about its nature. Nietzsche argues that Schopenhauer misconceives both the proper object of sympathy—it is not directed at suffering as such—and the kind of attitude it is—it cannot coherently consist in the kind of selflessness in terms of which Schopenhauer defines it. The chapter suggests that the deep stakes of the dispute concern the normative significance of (...) the fact that a desire is one’s own. Schopenhauer discounts it and the egoism associated with it: all that matters to sympathy is that there is suffering, not its spatiotemporal location. Nietzsche argues that the resulting account of sympathy is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

In this article I examine an example of sympathy -- the actions of one woman who rescued Jews during their persecution in Nazi Europe. I argue that this woman''s account of her actions here suggests that sympathy is a primitive response to the suffering of another. By primitive here I mean: first, that these responses are immediate and unthinking; and second, that these responses are explanatorily basic, that they cannot be explained in terms of some more fundamental feature (...) of human nature -- such as some particular desire or sentiment that we possess. My conclusion is then that our sympathetic responses are themselves partially constitutive of our conception of what is to be a human being. (shrink)

Sympathy (empathic concern) is mainly understood as a feeling for another and is often contrasted with empathy—a feeling with another. However, it is not clear what feeling for another means and what emotions sympathy involves. Since empirical data suggests that sympathy plays an important role in our social lives and is more closely connected to helping behavior than empathy, we need a more detailed account. In this paper, I argue that sympathy is not a particular emotion (...) but a type of emotional experience: those that have another person as focus. I explain what this means and show that this sheds light on why sympathy, rather than empathy, directly motivates altruistic actions. (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)

Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de Condorcet, réinterprète la doctrine de la sympathie propre à la tradition moraliste écossaise dans le sens d’une réévaluation de ses origines physiologiques, ce qui affecte profondément ses dimensions morales et sociales. Dans le cadre d’un rousseauisme compassionnel, elle transforme Adam Smith en un républicain sentimentaliste modéré, précurseur des Idéologues. Elle s’emploie pour cela à montrer que la déférence envers le pouvoir établi, surtout la royauté, érigée par Adam Smith en servilité quasi fétichiste envers les puissants (...) et les rois, doit être réexaminée dans le cadre d’une économie affective post-révolutionnaire. Malgré le risque d’un mimétisme affectif enflammé par une rhétorique démagogique, Sophie de Grouchy mise sur la moralisation de l’identification avec la souffrance humaine, et sur sa régulation par des lois et institutions réformées pour tenir compte d’une nature humaine profondément sympathique. L’institutionnalisation de la sympathie morale est censée porter remède aux tragédies dues à la ségrégation sociale. En revanche, Adam Smith souligne à la fois la corruption morale due à l’adulation des puissants, et l’illusion socialement utile d’un imaginaire collectif cultivé par la tragédie classique et peuplé d’idéalisations du statut social. Adam Smith explore en outre d’une façon originale une dimension quasi psychanalytique de l’idéal social du moi qui anticipe la problématisation du culte du chef, là où la marquise se contente de critiquer le meneur de foule. (shrink)

I give an account of sensory presentation, an indispensable and irreducible element of perceptual experience, in terms of the principle of sympathy. Haptic touch, audition, and vision are compared.

Isaiah Berlin often declared his sympathy for the Enlightenment, but never expressed it without criticisms of the over-generalized kind typical of the Enlightenment’s avowed assailants. In contrast, he entered with empathy and the full force of his rhetoric into what he called the Counter-Enlightenment. Kant, for instance, scarcely figures as the enlightening force he was in every area of philosophy. He is left out entirely from an Enlightenment anthology, and is positively present only in a single favourite quotation (‘the (...) crooked timber of humanity’), which is then misrepresented. This disproportion, and the frequency with which it was embodied in essay after essay, left a negative view of the Enlightenment standing by default. Not only was this a highly dubious version of intellectual history, but the over-fastidious ‘taking for granted’ of the ideas with which Isaiah ultimately sided was a significant loss to the liberal cause. (shrink)

Sympathy (Sympathie, Mitgefühl, Mitleid, Mitfreude, Theilnehmung). Kant defines sympathy in his 1797 Metaphysics of Morals as follows: “Sympathetic joy [Mitfreude] and sympathetic sadness [Mitleid] (sympathia moralis) are sensible feelings of pleasure or displeasure (which are therefore to be called “aesthetic”) at another’s state of joy or pain (shared feeling, sympathetic feeling).” (MM, 6:456/CEPP:574-5).

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 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)

This chapter is about dignity not as an innate quality possessed equally by all persons but as a set of largely acquired qualities and virtues. Dignity in this sense commands a “bowing” gesture, and is, it is argued, the subject of Du Bois’s neglected essay “Of Alexander Crummell.” More specifically, the chapter argues that Du Bois’s biographical tale of Crummell covertly offers an account of the genesis and nature of the virtues and qualities that constituted Crummell’s dignity. The chapter concludes (...) that on Du Bois’s account, dignity is impossible without the sympathy of others; that it includes the conviction that one has a morally worthy purpose to pursue; that it is one’s duty to find that purpose and to pursue it; and that the virtues that constitute it follow from one’s unflagging struggles to fulfill those duties. (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)

This chapter talks about the trusted sense perceptions, sympathy, and the relation between sympathy and self-trust. Sympathy and trust connects people, and like love makes people vulnerable to others and their troubles. One example is a trainee nurse who has to be careful not to become too deeply identified with a patient's suffering, as it could impair the trainee's ability to care for the patient. But equally, lack of any sympathy can result in cruelty or distrust.

I have shown here the different roles that sympathy plays in the accounts of justice in the Treatise and Enquiry. In the former work, a redirected sympathy naturally extends our concern, and subsequently our moral approval or blame, to all those included within the scope of the rules of justice. In the Enquiry, we find this same progress of sentiments, but Hume’s introduction of the sentiment of humanity allows him to make a stronger case for the importance of (...) those virtues that are useful, particularly the virtues of justice. The command of our esteem and our moral approval of justice secure a place for justice at the heart of Hume’s ethics. This does not entail, however, that other useful virtues are not also essential. Benevolence and the care of children, friendship, and gratitude not only help to sustain sociability, but they are essential for living a properly human life. (shrink)

Focusing on recent community efforts to repair Lorado Taft’s Eternal Indian statue, this article reads the statue as a public thing. In doing so, I argue that sympathy active at the 1911 unveiling of Taft’s Indian statue and 2020 restoration capture what I call settler sympathy. Instead of granting the ability to see from the other’s perspective, I illustrate how settler sympathy relies on image and myth fundamental to sustaining the settler nation. I turn to the thought (...) of Oneida activist-intellectual Laura Cornelius Kellogg to locate settler sympathy as well as another sympathy, what I call fraternal sympathy. Where settler sympathy takes fiction to make things public for settler gain, I argue that fraternal sympathy finds in fiction a means to make alternative places where publics thrive through things that do not annihilate but rather affirm self-determination. (shrink)

Emotions, morals, practices -- Sympathy for a devil's chaplain -- Common compassion and the mad scientist -- Sympathy as callousness? physiology and vivisection -- Sympathy, liberty, and compulsion: vaccination -- Sympathetic selection: eugenics -- Scientism and practice.

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)

This chapter discusses two analogous 17th-century conceptions of natural causality: Cudworth’s hypothesis of the “Plastic Life of Nature” and More’s “Spirit of Nature.” Developed partly in reaction against Descartes’s mechanistic natural philosophy, and partly in accordance with their own Platonizing metaphysics of substance, these propose a teleological conception of natural causality, which features formative and vital powers, with the capacity to bring order and harmony to what would otherwise be a haphazard jumble of atoms. To formulate their respective hypotheses, Cudworth (...) and More turned to classical antiquity, in particular Plotinus, as a source for their ideas of the power of sympathy which they proposed as a vitalistic power capable of unifying nature and enabling the interaction of soul and body, immaterial powers and material things. By this means Cudworth and More sought to account for life and the orderly harmony of nature. (shrink)

The category of somatic sympathy by Ralph R. Acampora can constitute the basis for the dialogue between religious and secular reality. The space for implementing this dialogue may be the project of a post-secular society, outlined by Jürgen Habermas in 2001. For this purpose, the concept of the German philosopher is generally presented, which postulates the translation of religious content and messages into a language adequate for secular minds, mutual learning between believers and non-believers, assuming that religion can play (...) an inspiring role in the Western pluralistic society. The basis will be considerations of a phenomenological and existential nature in relation to the category of somatic sympathy by. Acampora as a possible bridge—an "earthly measure" in the dialogue between religion and secular reality in a pluralistic society. For this purpose, a definition of post-religious communication was presented and its positive dimension in a pluralistic society was indicated. (shrink)

Explores, at different levels, the social emotions of fellow-feeling, the sense of identity, love and hatred, and traces their relationship to one another and to the values with which they are associated. This book reviews the evaluations of love and sympathy in different historical periods and in different social and religious environments.

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.

When we try to describe pain, we say things like “it feels like someone is sticking a fork in the back of my eye”. We describe pain by describing its cause, not how it feels. We try to make Superman like us because we suffer from the sympathy problem as well. When Superman is made vulnerable to cuts and bruising through kryptonite, there is additional‐and different‐pain caused by exposure to the kryptonite itself. Admittedly, there are less fatal ways that (...) Superman could be made susceptible to pain, but they involve the same psychological complexities as the pain from kryptonite. Humans have always been vulnerable, whereas Superman has very little experience with pain and vulnerability. If Superman has never been frail and mortal, then it would be hard for him to really understand how other sentient beings on Earth feel. (shrink)

One of the more striking aspects of Adam Smith's moral theory is the degree to which it depends on and appeals to aesthetic norms. By considering what Smith says about judgments of propriety – the foundational type of judgment in his system – and by tying what he says in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to certain of his other writings, I argue that Smith ultimately defends an aesthetic morality. Among the challenges that any aesthetic morality faces is that it (...) seems to entail moral relativism. This problem is magnified by Smith's reliance on the judgments of the impartial spectator, which also seems to make his theory more vulnerable to a Euthyphro-type objection. I suggest that Smith can potentially get around these problems, given his presumption of aesthetic naturalism. While there is certainly some variation in our aesthetic judgments, Smith claims that we naturally find certain actions and sentiments odious, while others we find agreeable. The reason, he argues, is that any society that judged otherwise would not survive. (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)

The terms “empathy” and “sympathy” are often used interchangeably, and the terms “sympathy” and “compassion” are also often used interchangeably. In other words, empathy sympathy, and compassion seem to be one thing. I shall argue, to the contrary, that there are important differences between three. I shall distinguish empathy from sympathy and compassion on the ground that empathy is not an afective experience; I shall show how empathy underlies sympathy and compassion; and I shall clarify (...) the nature of the three kinds of experience. (shrink)

The eighteenth-century moral philosopher Archibald Campbell is now largely forgotten, even to specialists in the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet his work is worth recovering both as part of the immediate reception of Bernard Mandeville and Francis Hutcheson's rival moral philosophies, and for better understanding the state of Scottish moral philosophy a decade before David Hume published his Treatise of Human Nature. This paper offers a reading of Campbell as deploying a specifically Epicurean philosophy that resists both the Augustinianism of Mandeville, and (...) the Stoicism of Hutcheson. This leads him onto ground later claimed more conclusively by Hume, whilst helping us to better conceptualise the deployment and recovery of Hellenistic thought in the early modern period. (shrink)

According to the reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony, we come to believe what others tell us for the same kind of reason as we come to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow—both beliefs grounded in our experience of the respective regularities of testifiers and planetary motion. Hume's epistemology is explained in terms of one master mechanism—that is, causal or probabilistic inference, as this plays the role of an all‐purpose reliability detector. However, this way of thinking of Hume's epistemology (...) obscures an important distinction between two ways that we come to acquire beliefs. Such probabilistic assessment is only carried out against a background of testimonial beliefs that do not have their source in causal inference and that are acquired via sympathy. These beliefs are of various kinds, and they include beliefs about the virtues and vices others take us to have, what is seen as virtuous in the societies in which we live, and all the various beliefs we as children and adults uncritically imbibe from those around us and from the testimony of history. In fact, sympathy has a good claim to the title of the master mechanism in that it integrates our capacity for causal reasoning with our evolving socially constructed selves and wider social and moral lives. (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 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.