ABSTRACT
The concept of kindness, the belief in charity or compassion, enfolds the feeling but a person can believe in kindness as an obligation or value without a desire to be kind. In common with other feelings of the same type, kindness entails selflessness or other-centered values. Other-centered feeling that leads to kindness, irrespective of a lack of self-interest, determines its moral value. A quality of feeling that is intrinsic to love, namely, concern for the welfare of the other, is the basis for viewing kindness as a form of loving. Kindness and love share a concern for the well-being of the other, but an overlap in one attribute is a contact only with respect to that attribute, not a family resemblance. The transition from kindness to fondness to love, and the fact that kindness is ingredient in love, obscure the fact that modes of giving differ from true loving in other and more fundamental ways.
