A Study Of Slot 's Empathy

Against the backdrop of revival of Virtue Ethics, this paper studies ideas of Michael Slote about Virtue Ethics, and tries to provide positive ideological resources for practices of Marxist humanism in the contemporary era.This paper consists of five parts. Part 1 mainly introduces how Sloth put forward his ideas about Virtue Ethics and moral emotionalism based on empathy ideas against the background of revival of Virtue Ethics. The summary of the backdrop of revival of Virtue Ethics, on the one hand, enriches sources of Sloth’s empathy ideas; on the other hand, provides evidences for development of moral emotionalism. Part 2 focuses on expounding on the concept of "empathy" in terms of its sources and development. Based on the origin of the concept of "empathy," the moral sympathy principle of David Hume is introduced for an in-depth comparison between "empathy" and "sympathy." During the development of the concept of "empathy," Slote was deeply influenced by Smith’s theory of emotional resonance, Batson’s empathy—altruism hypothesis and Hoffman’s theory of empathy. Part 3 illustrates the relationship between Sloth’s ideas of empathy and moral judgment. He regards empathy as a basis for moral agreement or disagreement. Moral agreement or disagreement goes before moral judgement, and constitutes the basis for moral judgment to preset a clear or universal moral judgment. Evolving from the basis for moral judgement, the predicate referent of moral judgement to the inborn nature of moral judgement, empathy, Sloth firmly believed, is the basis of moral judgement. Evidences provided by him show the intrinsic characteristics of empathy or advocate authentic moral judgement. In this paper, the author proceeds from relevant texts by Sloth so as to further deepen the relationship between empathy and moral judgement. Part 4 analyzes the relationship between Slote’s empathy and normative emotionalism. He thought that moral emotionalism based on "empathy" can also be realized through normative emotionalism, and proposed the theory of justice for Care Ethics. Sloth specially pointed out that empathy is another interpretation of normative emotionalism. In view of that, he expounded on the corresponding relationship between empathy and moral obligations, how to overcome sympathy fatigue and the theory of justice for Care Ethics. Part 5 summarizes enlightenments for Marxist humanism. According to Marxist humanism, humans’existence and freedom, honor and happiness of the public are always under care. All these cannot be separated from the cultivation of the empathy ability of every social individual. Adherence to "empathy" ideas is of vital significance to enrich understanding of Marxist humanism and promote socialist moral and justice system construction.