A Study On Shaftesbury’s Emotionalism Ethics

Emotivist ethical thought in the 18 th century shows a modern character of concern for human beings,a character that owes its origin to the intellectual trends of the Age of Enlightenment on the one hand and reflects a borrowing from modern empiricism on the other.It takes human emotions as the object of study and searches for the roots of morality through emotions,opening up a new path for moral research.Shaftesbury,as the pioneer of the modern British emotivist school of ethics,not only reflected his ethical thought as a distinct reflection of the background of his time,but also reflected the inheritance of the classical tradition.His subsequent moral emotionists,Hutchison and Hume,have also created new schools of ethics along this path.Taking Shaftesbury’s emotivist ethical thought as the object of study,the formation of his ideas has its specific background and theoretical sources.In terms of the background of the times,the Renaissance and the Scottish Enlightenment as well as the development of modern natural sciences prompted a shift in philosophical research and provided epistemological and methodological foundations for the formation of emotionalism;in terms of theoretical sources,the continuation and collusion of ethics on emotional issues from ancient Greece to early modern times provided a fertile ground for the germination of emotionalism.Shaftesbury formed his emotionalist ethical thought on the basis of his refutation of Hobbes’ selfishness of human nature and his opposition to Locke’s utilitarian position.The literature research method is used to analyze Shaftesbury’s emotionalist ethical thought in three aspects: its theoretical presuppositions,its main contents,and the expansion of ethics.Theoretical presuppositions,i.e.,the morality of sociality linked by the public interest,and the cosmology of orderly operation.On the basis of the two presuppositions,Shaftesbury argues that the defense of the public interest and the respect for the order of the universe can produce virtuous behavior;the analysis of its main contents includes three aspects,namely,goodness born of emotion,moral sense born of reflection,and the search for the realization of happiness by three moral motives.Firstly,the theoretical presupposition of good behavior leads to a rationalization of the concepts of good and evil,a brief explanation of private good and species benefit,and the conclusion that evil is relative and good is born of emotion,which leads to the elaboration of Shaftesbury’s emotion-related contents,including emotional good and evil,and the object of emotion,and the conclusion that the distinction between emotional good and evil relies on the moral sense that comes from reflection.The moral sense,in turn,is directly related to the motivation of behavior,which leads to the elaboration of the three emotional motivations and the exploration of the concept of happiness from the analysis of the three motivations;the expansion of ethics,i.e.,the clarification of the separation and connection between religion and morality,as well as the sorting out of the mutual solubility of the moral sense and the sense of beauty.Finally,using theoretical and practical research methods,the paper reviews the development of emotivist ethical thought after Shaftesbury,and evaluates Shaftesbury’s emotivist ethical thought in terms of social characteristics,emotional motives,and the relationship between the good and the beautiful.This paper finds that Shaftesbury’s emotionalist ethical thought not only has a rich philosophical connotation and is of great philosophical significance in the history of ethics in general and the development of the emotionalist school of ethics in particular,but also has important practical value for solving moral dilemmas in modern society.