| As an important representative of moral sentimentalism,Michael Slote has made important contributions in many ethical fields such as virtue ethics and caring ethics.Empathy is the theme of Slote’s Sentimental theory and the key to understanding his moral theory.Applied psychology uses empathy as a psychological treatment method of “distracting attention”,but in Slote’s moral theory,empathy is an instinctive mechanism that projects the sentimental state of others to oneself,and contains the motivation to help others,which is the basis and source of morality.The study of Slote’s empathetic ethics can not only have important theoretical promotion value for many ethical theories such as emotional ethics,applied ethics,and care ethics,but also have important practical guiding value for the actions of moral actors and the realization of social justice.The first part explores the thought sources of Slote’s empathy ethics,including the moral sentimentalism of Hume and Hutcheson,Batson and Hoffman’s theory of empathy psychology and Gilligan’s theory of caring ethics.These theories have an important influence on Slote’s empathy ethics.David Hume and Francis Hutcheson pioneers of moral sentimentalism,so they believe that moral is based on human’s sensual factors rather than reason.Hume realized the importance of empathy for morality earlier and clarified it and Hutcheson established the moral judgment theory of Sentimentalism on the basis of moral sentiments,which had an important impact on Slot’s empathy ethics system.Batson and Hoffman,Slote developed whose concept of empathy and made a meta-ethical application of empathy,have made detailed explanation and demonstration of empathy.The modern variant of the theory of moral sentimentalism is caring ethics,so Slote also inherited and developed Gilligan and Nel Noddings’ caring ethics theory,and took empathy as an important factor to realize the application of caring ethics to social politics,so as to promote caring ethics to present modern moral theory in a path that normative ethics,which has also greatly promoted the development of moral sentimentalism.The second part analyzes how Slote establishes normative moral reasons from the empathy psychology of the moral actor.This part includes not only Slote’s unique understanding of empathy,but also the relationship between empathy and the moral obligations of the actor and the exploration of the normative recognition of empathy.Slote’s empathy thought is constructed on the basis of inheritance,but his emphasis and development on empathy instinct and passivity also makes empathy not only accept the close relationship between people in moral life,but also make empathy ethics have both universal applicability and ethical norms.Slote believes that all the facts of moral actions are derived from the inherent temperament,sentiments,desires and motivations of moral individuals,that is,empathy.Morality is based on empathy and the moral obligations are the inherent requirements of the empathy of moral actors.Both personal moral practice and social and political practice can be explained by human empathy.However,although sentimental ethics is relatively the ethical theory of rationalism,Slote’s empathy ethics does not establish a binary opposition between sentiment and reason.On the contrary,Slote believes that reason and sentiment are inseparable in morality.In order to better explain the relationship between sentiment and reason,Slote even introduced “Yin and Yang” of Chinese culture to explain it.Just as Yin and Yang are inseparable and interacting together,sentiment and reason are also In this way.The Yin in moral practice is sentiment,and Yang is the active rational control.Yin constitutes the foundation of Yang and Yang guides Yin to better realize the goal of human virtue.The unification of the two into moral individuals is an indispensable element of morality.Sentiment lays the foundation for the role of rationality because of its originality and acceptance,determining the direction of action and moral goals for rationality.In this way,Slote’s empathy ethics not only approve the fruition of the theory of rationalism ethics,but also absorbed the theoretical achievements of rationalism on the basis of empathy,forming a very inclusive sentimental theoretical system.The internal coercion and external constraints of empathy make moral actors always have a caring motivation,and empathy is also the reason for reflective recognition because of its characteristics,so the normative nature of Slote’s empathy ethics is also established.The third part specifically analyzes Slote’s empathetic interpretation of the content of moral practice,including his empathetic explanation of moral judgment,the behavior of moral actors and social politics.In Slote’s view,human actions are triggered by motivation,and the interpretation of behavior should also be determined according to their motivation.The moral actions of moral actors are directly related to empathy motives.Moral actors will have different internal states in the face of different groups.Empathy makes moral actors always maintain good intentions,and reason guides empathy to maintain balance and stability.For the interpretation of moral judgment,Slote believes that the basis of moral judgment is moral attitude.Moral judgment does not first have a standard of moral good and evil,and then evaluate the behavior of moral actors according to this standard.From the perspective of moral sentimentalism,this process should be that people have produced a moral approval or disproval,and then defines these attitudes as moral good and evil.On the other hand,empathy can also explain social justice issues,social laws,systems and customs are similar to the behavior of the whole society,so if the systems,laws,customs and social practices are just,then they should reflect the appropriate empathy and care motivation of their organizers and maintainers.Slote realized the normative application of emotional ethics from personal morality to social politics with empathy,and overcame the obstacles to the application of moral sentimentalism.Generally speaking,Slote’s empathy ethics has made great contributions to the development of modern moral philosophy.His development of sentimentalism not only makes up for the lack of sentiments in modern moral philosophy,but also responds to the sentimental demands of modern people.His construction of virtue ethics and caring ethics also provides different development paths for normative ethics.However,after all,Slate’s empathy ethics is a huge system,and there are many remaining problems in his theory.The instability of empathy as a moral motivation is also a theory that Slate will inevitably face in his future research,which needs to be overcome and solved.But we believe that the problem of Slote’s empathy ethics is flawed,and his ideas still have a broad space for application.In terms of moral dilemmas,cultural exchanges between China and the West,and the solution of applied ethical problems,Slote’s empathy theory can indeed provide us with new enlightenment and effective solutions.Therefore,Slote’s empathy ethics is worthy of our continuous exploration and research,and it will continue to give us new methods and inspiration to solve ethical problems. |
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