ABSTRACT
Westermarck stresses in various contexts his debt to the eighteenth-century British moral thought. In his view, Shaftesbury initiated the sentimentalist position on moral evaluation by arguing that our moral judgements are based on an emotional faculty called the moral sense. Shaftesbury also contributed to the secularisation of ethics by grounding the nature of virtue in the study of human nature. Hutcheson developed moral sentimentalism forward by emphasising the connection between the moral sense and the feelings of approval and disapproval. Together with his arguments against moral rationalism, Hutcheson also inspired and influenced David Hume and Adam Smith. However, following Hume and Smith, Westermarck argues that the origin of moral sentiments or emotions can be analysed and explained without the postulate of the special moral sense. Westermarck positioned himself as a successor of Hume’s naturalistic and empirical moral psychology. From Westermarck’s perspective, one of Hume’s greatest achievements was to ground our sentiments of moral approval and disapproval in sympathy. In addition, Westermarck’s moral subjectivism and his treatment of objectification are indebted to Hume. At the same time, for Westermarck, Hume’s moral psychology contains two major flaws. Like Smith, Westermarck criticised Hume for overemphasising the role of social utility in how people make moral judgements. The second shortcoming concerns Hume’s inadequate analysis of the nature of the moral sentiments on which our moral judgements are based. However, Westermarck’s critique of Hume’s theory of the moral sentiments does not do full justice to Hume’s position.
