Simpatia e sentimentos morais: uma análise do Tratado da Natureza Humana

Abstract

This dissertation aims to describe and analyze the principle of sympathy in Hume's moral philosophy. In the first chapter we will give a brief description of how sympathy works in the formation of personal identity and the emergence of passions; this analysis is necessary because of Hume's defense that morality is based on feelings, not on reason. Next, we present Humean moral theory itself and the relation between moral feelings and moral judgments, and we defend the thesis that, like any other judgment, moral judgment is liable to truth or falsehood, since it is formed by ideas, not impressions. Although this work is named an analysis of the Treatise on Human Nature, we have discussed how the substitution of some functions of the principle of sympathy by the sentiment of humanity in An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals was necessary, to save the objectivity of moral judgments. We end with sympathy in Adam Smith and in Michael Slote's Care Ethics.