Slaughter Of Moral Emotion Research

Virtue ethicist Michael Slote, as one of the main representatives and a leader of sentimentalism, proposes a new theory--moral sentimentalism. Slote views natural emotion, empathy, as the basis of human nature and the foundation of morality. Slote’s sentimentalism contains two sections, normative ethics of sentimentalism and metaethics of sentimentalism. He tries to combine them with each other perfectly.This thesis has four parts in all. The first part mainly analyzes the central notion of moral sentimentalism--empathy, and clarifies the empathic moral properties are a kind of pure moral emotion. The second part puts emphasis on expounding Slote’s sentimentalism explanation of normative ethics. He analyzes the connections between empathy and moral obligation and comes up with his normative sentimentalism ethics that an act is required if and only if it expresses the agents’ maturely empathic concern or care for others. The third part discusses the Slote’s sentimentalism explanation of moral judgment semantics. Through the analyses of moral judgment semantics, Slote puts forward the sentimentalism metaethics. He thinks that moral judgment is the claim on agents’behavioral quality on the basis of moral attitudes (moral approval and disapproval) motivated by empathy and the judgment is a priori truth. The last part recounts that empathy provides a reference for the research of Chinese Confucian ethical thoughts. And empathy is very useful for moral education.