The Study Of Slote’s Empathy Ethics

Michael Slote is the main representative of contemporary sentimental virtue ethics.He inherited Hume’s theory of compassion and absorbed the theory of moral psychologist Hoffman’s empathy,turned from the initial Neo-Aristotelianism to the Sentimentalism.Slote thinks that empathy is an innate emotional reaction of human beings,and regards empathy as the foundation of morality,and regards the inner quality of human being as the source of morality.His moral sentimentalism involves not only meta-ethics but also normative ethics.At the level of meta-ethics,a moral judgment based on the “cold and warm”feeling produced by “second-order empathy”is proposed as the psychological basis.The moral judgment produced by the feeling of“cold and warm”has inherent objectivity,and he hopes to pass this.Apriority provides an objective necessity for the emotional judgment of emotionalism that has been criticized for its obvious relativism.On the level of normative ethics,his empathy ethics can be understood as an emotionalist normative ethics.He hopes to incorporate virtue into the theory system by empathetic interpretation of the deontology.The position of ethics in normative ethics.This is two pioneering initiatives of Slote’s empathy ethics,which provides a new path for the integration of sentimentalism and virtue ethics.This article is divided into three parts:The first part is the theoretical source of empathy and its connotation.First,through the introduction of Hume’s “sympathy theory”,Hoffman’s empathy moral theory,and Batson’s“empathy-altruism” hypothesis,which have an important influence on Slote’s empathy ethics,confirms the theoretical basis of Slote’s empathy ethics.Secondly,by clarifying the relationship between “sympathy” and “empathy” to determine the basic position of“ empathy ” in Slote’s theory,and by analyzing the different choice of conception of“ empathy ” by Slote and Adam Smith.The difference and its reasons define Slote’s theoretical focus on “contagion empathy” rather than “projective empathy”.The second part discusses the content of Slote’s empathy ethics from two levels.The first is to demonstrate at the level of meta-ethics that moral judgments with objective inevitability can be obtained through empathy,and that the basis of such objective necessity comes fromempathy itself without resorting to rationality.On the level of meta-ethics,it guarantees the purity and authority of sentimentalism.Secondly,it proves that moral obligation can be derived through empathy on the level of normative ethics,focusing on the analysis of the corresponding relationship between empathy response and moral obligation of different strengths.To show that moral obligation comes from our empathy to others,that is,an act is moral or morally obligatory,if and only if it is out of the actor’s full empathy concern.In addition,it also demonstrates the “justification theory” based on the concept of “empathy”advocated by Slote.The third part gives an overall evaluation of Slote’s empathy ethics.First,Slote takes apriority into moral sentimentalism through empathy.This apriority help emotionalism in reserving objectivity and normativeness.Secondly,Slote provides an emotional path different from Aristotle’s for virtue ethics.The path of doctrine,this kind of sentimentalism provides a normative explanation for virtue ethics,and enhances the theoretical position of virtue ethics at the level of normative ethics.