Doubts about Michael Slote’s Ethics of Empathy and its Responses

Abstract

Throughout the history of western ethics, there has been a ceaseless debate between rationalism and sentimentalism. The two normative movements which born from the debate have caught our attention. The first one happened in the late 19^th century, as represented by Kantian deontology and utilitarianism. Meanwhile, the other one is the revival movement of virtue ethics initiated by Hursthouse, MacIntyre, Michael Slote (Slote), and others, discussing the normativity and rationality of virtue ethics. During the second normative movement of virtue ethics, Slote proposed moral sentimentalism based on the ethics of empathy, which made him the focus on the academic attention. The doubts about the Ethics of Empathy constructed by Slote falls under three aspects, which are the concept of empathy, the process of empathy argumentation, and the reliability of using empathy ethics to answer Hume’s problem. Meticulous research on these doubts and Slote’s responses to them can help us to understand better on the construction of his ethical thoughts, their contributions, and limitations, which the author believes, is essential for the current development of moral sentimentalism.