ABSTRACT
This book focuses on sympathy, compassion, and human concern, considered primarily as emotions but also as character traits, and on friendship as a context in which these emotions play a fundamental role. Contemporary moral philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition has paid little attention to these morally significant phenomena. In fact the ‘altruistic emotions’ (as I will call them) have not played a significant role in moral philosophy within this tradition since the empiricist moral philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Adam Smith and David Hume. Partially accounting for this neglect within moral philosophy and moral psychology are powerful traditions of thought and philosophic orientation which militate against according sympathy, compassion, concern, and friendship a substantial role in the moral life. A major task of this work will be to articulate and to come to terms with some of these major lines of thought. Doing so will point the way toward an adequate account of friendship and altruistic emotions, and of their moral significance.
