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Books on the topic 'Moral Sentimentalism'
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Sentimental Twain: Samuel Clemens in the maze of moral philosophy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
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Civilized creatures: Urban animals, sentimental culture, and American literature, 1850-1900. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
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Slote, Michael. Moral Sentimentalism and Moral Psychology. Oxford University Press, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195325911.003.0009.
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Driver, Julia. Moral Sense and Sentimentalism. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199545971.013.0017.
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Kristjánsson, Kristján. Emotions and Moral Value. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809678.003.0002.
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Chapter 2 explores questions about the relationship between emotion and moral value. For an emotion to be virtuous, it must be getting moral value right, but what exactly does ‘getting moral value right’ mean? The debate about the moral epistemology of emotions is waged between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism. Rationalists believe that moral facts exist independently of our emotions, and that those facts can be tracked by human reason. Sentimentalists believe either that no moral facts exist at all or, alternatively, that moral facts are created by our emotions and exist in our minds. It is helpful to distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of both moral rationalism and sentimentalism. This chapter argues that Aristotelianism is best understood as a form of ‘soft rationalism’—and that it can offer it as an antidote to currently fashionable forms of ‘hard sentimentalism’.
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Graham, Gordon. Was Reid a Moral Realist? Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198783909.003.0003.
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This chapter argues that, contrary to a very widely held view, Reid’s express disagreement with Hume on the matter of morality cannot satisfactorily be pressed into the “realism versus sentimentalism” dichotomy. Hume is certainly a sentimentalist, but there is good reason to interpret Reid’s use of the analogy between moral sense and sense perception in a way that does not imply the existence of “real” moral properties. Reid makes judgment central to the analogy, and this gives the exercise of an intellectual “power” primacy over passive sensual experience. The analogy thus allows him to apply the concepts “true” and “false” to moral judgments, without any quasi-realist appeal to moral facts.
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Forster, Michael N. Moral Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199588367.003.0008.
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Herder develops a number of very important principles both in meta-ethics and in first-order morality. In meta-ethics he argues for a form of sentimentalism, but a form of it that acknowledges a role for cognition in the sentiments involved and which emphasizes their radical variability between periods and cultures. He also invents a “genetic” or “genealogical” method predicated on such variability and applies it to moral values in particular in order to make them better understood. And finally, he develops an ambitious theory and practice of moral pedagogy that rests on his sentimentalism and which accordingly focuses on causal influences on moral character formation, such as role models and literature. In first-order morality he invents an important pluralistic form of cosmopolitanism to replace the more usual but problematic homogenizing cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment; an influential ideal of individual Bildung, or self-formation; and a distinctive ideal of humanity.
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Slote, Michael. Sentimentalist Virtue Ethics. Edited by Nancy E. Snow. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199385195.013.47.
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Unlike Aristotelian and Platonic virtue ethics, sentimentalist virtue ethics bases morality in feeling rather than in reason/rationality. Historically, we find instances of such virtue ethics in eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century British moral sentimentalism, in Augustine’s agapic ethics, and in both Buddhism and Confucianism. But a reviving sentimentalist virtue ethics needs to deal with philosophical problems that have emerged over the past two centuries and to find a way to plausibly articulate its own conceptions of central present-day philosophical notions. Arguably, sentimentalism can give us accounts of respect, justice, autonomy, and deontology that are both more intuitive in themselves and more adequate to particular cases than what neo-Kantian deontology and neo-Aristotelian virtue tell us about these notions. And sentimentalism can more fully explain the meaning of “right” and “wrong” than anything we find in these other traditions.
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Leiter, Brian. Moral Psychology with Nietzsche. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199696505.001.0001.
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This book offers both a reading and defense of Nietzsche’s moral psychology, drawing on both empirical psychological results and contemporary philosophical positions and arguments. Among the views explained and defended are: anti-realism about all value, including epistemic value; a kind of sentimentalism about evaluative judgment; epiphenomenalism about certain conscious mental states, including those involved in the conscious experience of willing; and radical skepticism about free will and moral responsibility. Psychological research, from Daniel Wegner’s work on the experience of willing to the famed Minnesota Twin studies, is marshalled in support of the Nietzschean picture of moral psychology. Nietzschean views are brought into dialogue with contemporary philosophical views defended by, among many others, Harry Frankfurt, T.M. Scanlon, Gary Watson, and Derk Pereboom. Nietzsche emerges not simply as a museum piece from the history of ideas, but as a philosopher and psychologist who exceeds David Hume for insight into human nature and the human mind, one who repeatedly anticipates later developments in empirical psychology, and continues to offer sophisticated and unsettling challenges to much conventional wisdom in philosophy.
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Deigh, John. Is Empathy Required for Making Moral Judgments? Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190878597.003.0007.
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This essay is a study of the nature of moral judgment. Its main thesis is that moral judgment is a type of judgment defined by its content and not its psychological profile. The essay arrives at this thesis through a critical examination of Hume’s sentimentalism and the role of empathy in its account of moral judgment. The main objection to Hume’s account is its exclusion of people whom one can describe as making moral judgments though they have no motivation to act on them. Consideration of such people, particularly those with a psychopathic personality, argues for a distinction between different types of moral judgment in keeping with the essay’s main thesis. Additional support for the main thesis is then drawn from Piaget’s theory of moral judgment in children.
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Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. Morality and Motivation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199573295.003.0006.
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Hume’s argument against moral rationalism says that because morals produce or prevent actions, and reason alone does not, morals cannot be derived from reason alone. The premise concerning morality is perplexing. This premise is best understood as claiming that the moral sentiments by which we judge virtue and vice produce motives when we find ourselves deficient of a morally-approved trait, or when we anticipate the pleasure of self-approval for exhibiting virtues. These motives are produced by self-approbation and self-disapprobation in the same way that motives are typically generated in Hume’s theory: a person retains an idea of a source of pleasure or displeasure and reacts to it with an impression of reflection. Hume’s sentimentalism is a way of explaining how normative concepts originate in impressions rather than in ideas; although internalist, it is consistent with cognitivism, since motives come from the discernment of morality, not from the ideas themselves.
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May, Joshua. The Limits of Emotion. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198811572.003.0002.
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Empirical research apparently suggests that emotions play an integral role in moral judgment. The evidence for sentimentalism is diverse, but it is rather weak and has generally been overblown. There is no evidence that our moral concepts themselves are partly composed of or necessarily dependent on emotions. While the moral/conventional distinction may partly characterize the essence of moral judgment, moral norms needn’t be backed by affect in order to transcend convention. Priming people with incidental emotions like disgust doesn’t make them moralize actions. Finally, moral judgment can only be somewhat impaired by damage to areas of the brain that are generally associated with emotional processing (as in acquired sociopathy and frontotemporal dementia). While psychopaths exhibit both emotional and rational deficits, the latter alone can explain any minor defects in moral cognition.
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May, Joshua. Empirical Pessimism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198811572.003.0001.
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Scientifically informed theories of ordinary moral thought and action are on the rise but trend toward pessimism. Many theorists argue that ordinary moral judgment involves little reasoning or not enough to yield justified belief, while others argue that we rarely act for the right reasons. This chapter describes such sources of empirical pessimism (sentimentalism, debunking, egoism, Humeanism, and situationism). It then outlines the remaining chapters that defend the alternative, optimistic rationalism, which allows for more virtue by according reason a central role in moral psychology. While the science doesn’t suggest that moral knowledge and virtuous motivation come easily, there is no reason to reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed. This chapter also discusses some preliminaries, such as the reason/emotion dichotomy, non-cognitivism, and how to draw on empirical research.
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Prinz, Jesse. Hume and Cognitive Science. Edited by Paul Russell. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199742844.013.19.
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This contribution is concerned with the relevance of Hume’s empirical approach to the study of the mind for contemporary cognitive science. It is argued that Hume’s views, empirically founded as they were on observation and introspection and concerning ideas and concepts, passion and sympathy, and moral sentimentalism, find considerable support in the findings of contemporary research. To this extent, Hume may well be considered a precursor to many of today’s cognitive scientists, even though they do not generally draw directly from his work. The fundamental significance of Hume’s own work is that it shows that philosophy has always had an empirical dimension.
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Forster, Michael N. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199588367.003.0001.
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This introduction discusses Herder’s intellectual biography, his philosophical style, and his general program in philosophy. His philosophical style comprises a number of features that have tended to be misunderstood, thereby leading to depreciation of his thought, including a seriously motivated assimilation of his writing to speech; a principled opposition to systematizing; and a skeptically inspired method of arguing on opposing sides of issues. His general philosophical program, inspired by the pre-critical Kant and driven by a concern to make philosophy useful, includes a skeptical rejection of metaphysics in favor of empirical inquiry (into human society and nature) and a rejection of cognitivism in ethics in favor of sentimentalism together with a closely related project of moral pedagogy.
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May, Joshua. The Limits of Emotion in Moral Judgment. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198797074.003.0014.
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This chapter argues that our best science supports the rationalist idea that, independent of reasoning, emotions are not integral to moral judgment. There is ample evidence that ordinary moral cognition often involves conscious and unconscious reasoning about an action’s outcomes and the agent’s role in bringing them about. Emotions can aid in moral reasoning by, for example, drawing one’s attention to such information. However, there is no compelling evidence for the decidedly sentimentalist claim that mere feelings are causally necessary or sufficient for making a moral judgment or for treating norms as distinctively moral. The chapter concludes that, even if moral cognition is largely driven by automatic intuitions, these should not be mistaken for emotions or their non-cognitive components. Non-cognitive elements in our psychology may be required for normal moral development and motivation but not necessarily for mature moral judgment.
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Swanton, Christine. Hume and Virtue Ethics. Edited by Paul Russell. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199742844.013.5.
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This chapter shows how Hume’s “sentimentalist” moral theory can be a version of virtue ethics and elaborates the kind of virtue ethics that best describes Hume’s moral philosophy. To accomplish this task, we need a definition of virtue ethics, an account of types of virtue ethical theory, and to place Hume’s ethics within this taxonomy. Three types of virtue ethics, are outlined. Hume is located within a pluralistic virtue ethics where virtue notions are central and a variety of features make traits “naturally fitted” to be approved as virtues. Hume’s virtue ethics is understood as response-dependent, being grounded in an emotional kind of “moral sense” as suitably objective and as conforming to his basic empiricism.
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Irwin, Terence. Ethics Through History. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199603701.001.0001.
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This book is a selective discussion of the tradition in moral philosophy that runs from Socrates to the present. The main themes: (1) Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics take different positions in debates the relation between morality (including right action and the character of virtuous agents) and the human good. Aquinas’ version of an Aristotelian view identifies the human good with the fulfilment of human nature and capacities in a just society. These facts about the human good can be discovered by rational reflexion on human nature and human needs. (2) These views both about the content of ethics and about the sources of ethical knowledge are questioned by Scotus and later writers on natural law. Voluntarists take the principles of natural law and moral right to be the products of will; naturalists take them to be discovered by reason. (3) The dispute about will and reason is the source of the long dispute between sentimentalists (Hutcheson, Hume) and rationalists (Butler, Price, Reid) about whether moral judgment has a non-rational or a rational basis. Kant tries to resolve this dispute. (4) These arguments lead to further discussion about what makes morally right actions right. Sentimentalists, followed by Mill and Sidgwick and by later utilitarians, argue that actions are right in so far as they maximize pleasure. Others, including the rationalists, Kant, Ross, and Rawls, argue that moral principles are not subordinate to utility.
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Robertson, Simon. Nietzsche and Contemporary Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198722212.001.0001.
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Nietzsche is one of the most subversive ethical thinkers of the Western canon. This book offers a critical assessment of his ethical thought and its significance for contemporary moral philosophy. It develops a charitable but critical reading of his thought, pushing some claims and arguments as far as seems fruitful while rejecting others. But it also uses Nietzsche in dialogue with, so to contribute to, a range of long-standing issues within normative ethics, metaethics, value theory, practical reason, and moral psychology. The book is divided into three principal parts. Part I examines Nietzsche’s critique of morality, arguing that it raises well-motivated challenges to morality’s normative authority and value: his error theory about morality’s categoricity is in a better position than many contemporary versions; and his critique of moral values has bite even against undemanding moral theories, with significant implications not just for rarefied excellent types but also us. Part II turns to moral psychology, attributing to Nietzsche and defending a sentimentalist explanation of action and motivation. Part III considers his non-moral perfectionism, developing models of value and practical normativity that avoid difficulties facing many contemporary accounts and that may therefore be of wider interest. The discussion concludes by considering Nietzsche’s broader significance: as well as calling into question many of moral philosophy’s deepest assumptions, he challenges our usual views of what ethics itself is—and what it, and we, should be doing.
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Rondel, David. Richard Rorty on Equality and Cultural Politics. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190680688.003.0009.
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This chapter provides a sympathetic sketch of Rorty’s “ethnocentric” liberalism and defends it against several critics. It also highlights the importance of “redescription” in Rorty’s thought and illustrate how what Rorty calls “cultural politics” together with his (anti-Kantian) “sentimentalist” conception of moral progress provides a useful lens through which to grasp the “cultural-valuational” register of egalitarian theorizing. Rorty’s political theory has been chastised for its apparent conservatism. But this chapter argues that Rorty’s endorsement of the Sellarsian thesis that “all awareness is a linguistic affair” coupled with his controversial claim that “anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed” opens up a potentially unlimited space for goods to be pursued and bads to be rejected. This makes Rortyan “cultural politics” as radical or conservative as spinners of new descriptions are apt to make it.