The 'Ethics of Sympathy'

This chapter 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. The ethics of sympathy does not attribute moral value primarily to the being and attitudes of persons as such, in respect of their character, action, volition, etc. It would be quite wrong to suppose that an ethical judgement can only arise through the medium of fellow-feeling. There is, for one thing, the whole class of ethical judgements we pass upon ourselves. According to Adam Smith, a man unjustly condemned and universally considered to be guilty should also acknowledge his guilt himself. The ethics of sympathy is also found wanting in that it clashes from the outset with the self-evident law of preference, whereby all positively valuable 'spontaneous' acts are to be preferred to merely 're-active' ones.