Sympathy: A Philosophical Analysis

165 Pages·2002·1.241 MB·English

by  Craig Taylor (auth.)

Swansea Studies in Philosophy
General Editor: D. Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees Research Professor, University College
of Wales, Swansea and Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Claremont
Graduate University
Philosophy is the struggle for clarity about the contexts of human discourse we
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COMMONALITY AND PARTICULARITY IN ETHICS
Christopher Cordner
ETHICAL ENCOUNTER
The Depth of Moral Meaning
David Cockburn
OTHER HUMAN BEINGS
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IlhamDilman
WITTGENSTEIN'S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
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John Edelman
AN AUDIENCE FOR MORAL PHILOSOPHY?
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GOOD AND EVIL
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D. Z. Phillips
WITTGENSTEIN AND RELIGION
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Craig Taylor
SYMPATHY
A Philosophical Analysis
Swansea Studies in Philosophy
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Sympathy

A Philosophical Analysis

Craig Taylor
Q Craig Taylor 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-333-98794-0
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Taylor, Craig, 1963-
Sympathy : a philosophical analysis/Craig Taylor.
p. cm.Ð(Swansea studies in philosophy)

Includ es bibliographic
al references and index.

1. Sympathy. 2. Ethics. I. Title. II. Swansea studies in philosophy

(Palgrave (Firm))

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2001059846
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For Tania and Alex
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Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 Sympathy 7

1. Hume on benevolence 10

2. Schopenhauer on compassion 11

3. Primitive responses 15

2 Rational Altruism 22

1. Nagel's Intuitive Argument 24

2. Practical solipsism 26
3. Further intuitions 31

4. Sympathy again 35

5. Conclusion 39

3 Character 41

1. Regret 43

2. Tragedy 48

3. Moral necessity and impossibility 50

4. Two cognitivist replies 53

5. Conclusion 58

4 Moral Incapacity 59

1. Moral and psychological incapacity 60

2. Internal reasons 61

3. Huckleberry Finn 63

4. Some objections 64

5. A pattern of response 69

5 An Attitude Towards a Soul 76

1. An attitude of belief 76

2. `His attitude is a proof of his attitude' 81

3. An attitude towards a soul 84

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4. The limits of doubt 89

5. Conclusions 91

6 Sympathy and Other Primitive Responses 96

1. Taking sympathy for granted 97

2. Sympathy and violence 100

3. The varieties of sympathy 103

4. Limited sympathies 106

5. Conclusion 111

7 Sympathy and Understanding 113

1. Expressions of suffering 114

2. Sympathy 121

3. Justice 123

4. Understanding another and being understood 127

5. Conclusion 132

Appendix A Utilitarian Theory? 135

Notes 138

Bibliography 149

Index 153
Acknowledgments

There are several people I wish to thank for their help with respect to the
writing of this book. First, I should like to thank Raimond Gaita. Anyone
familiar with his philosophical work will recognise immediately on
reading the following pages the profound intellectual debt I owe to
him. Second, I wish to thank Antony Duff, both for his thoughtful
and extensive comments on every chapter and for the encouragement
he has offered me in relation to my philosophical work more generally.
Third, I wish to thank M. M. McCabe for her patient supervision of the
PhD thesis out of which this book has grown. I also wish to thank
especially Sandra Marshall for her constructive comments and for her
support more generally. Further, I wish to thank, along with Antony
Duff and Sandra Marshall, the other members of the Philosophy Depart-
ment at The University of Stirling for their comments on numerous draft
chapters. Similarly, I am grateful to members of the Department of Phil-
osophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University for their com-
ments on Chapter 1. I should also like to thank D. Z. Phillips, Alan
Thomas, Justin Oakley, Stephen Buckle, John Quilter and an anonymous
reader who have all offered very useful comments on different chapters.
On a more personal level, I should like to thank my wife Tania and my son
Alex for supporting me in ways that I could never adequately acknow-
ledge.
Some of the material in this book has been published in one form or
another elsewhere. I am grateful to the relevant editors and publishers
for permission to use material from the following of my previous publi-
cations: `Moral Incapacity', Philosophy, 70 (1995), 273±85; `Sympathy',
The Journal of Ethics, 3 (1999), 73±87; `Moral Incapacity and Huckleberry
Finn', Ratio, 14 (2001), 56±67.
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