Sentimentalism in Ethics is the claim that moral judgements (or concepts or properties) are intimately related to moral feelings (think of the German term ”Gefühlsethik”) or moral sentiments. The term ”intimately related” is pretty vague, but attempts to achieve more focus will be part of our topic. At the end of this course, you should know and understand the basic features of the sentimentalist approach to ethics. You should be able to articulate the major pros and cons both of the approach as such and of competing options within the approach; you should be able to see the relation of prominent contributions from the 18th century to current thoughts in philosophical ethics.
We will make parts of the journey on our own, thinking without texts, but central passages of various texts, old and new, will also be processed. Hume’s moral philosophy in its earliest form, as set out by him in his Treatise, will play a significant role, especially, from Book 3 (”Of Morals”) of the Treatise: part 1, sec. 2, and part 3, sec. 1.
Typically, the task from one session to the next will be to read and condense a portion of text and prepare answers to questions; the sessions themselves will typically be centred around your summaries and answers. This is a course for students who are willing to prepare answers to questions from each session to the next and to present, in every session, their answers in class. That’s how this course works.
This course is also an introduction to the techniques of philosophizing. We’ll try to shed some light not just on sentimentalism, but also on philosophical thinking and writing in general.
There will be a written exam on one of the Mondays towards the end of the term. The questions will be in English; you can reply in English or German, as you like.
The course will take place in double sessions (with a 15-minute break) from 16:00 to 19:15 on selected Mondays; the choice of Mondays for the sessions and of the Monday for the written exam will be announced in March.
This text about the course has been written in January 2020. It will be up-dated in Moodle. Versions of this text that you do not read in Moodle may well be out of date.
Here is a list of some works on our topic.
Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions, Oxford 1998.
C. D. Broad, ”Some Reflections on Moral-Sense Theories in Ethics”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 45 (1944–45).
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40), ed. by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, Oxford 2000 (in the series Oxford Philosophical Texts: The Complete Editions for Students); not to be confused with (volume 1 or both volumes of) the same two people’s (!) edition of the same work (!), the Treatise, for another series, the Clarendon Hume Edition Series.
David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), ed. by Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford 1998 (in the series Oxford Philosophical Texts: The Complete Editions for Students).
Franics Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (first ed. in 1725), third ed., London 1729.
–––, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense, London 1728.
J. L. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory, Routledge, London 1980.
Elijah Millgram, ”Moral Values and Secondary Qualities”, American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1999).
David Yates, ”Response-Dependence”, Philosophical Books 49 (2008).
Due to the Covid-19 crisis we will conduct this course in writing. For details, please visit the course page in Moodle.
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