Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
In Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume discuss the relationship between sympathy, natural virtue, artificial virtue, and human nature. How (if at all) do they function in Hume's account of society?
Our moral evaluation of a person comes through our sentiments -- through that which gives us pleasure or repugnance and through which we see as beneficial for the well-ordering of society. So a negative characteristic such as theft, for instance, called by us a vice is called so since it disrupts the harmony of society, whereas, a 'virtue' such as charity is commended for its constructiveness. It is in this way too that the so-called vice accords repugnance whilst the so-called virtue gives pleasure. In fact, we distinguish between virtue and vice by means of the sentiments that we feel towards these attributes. All of the virtues, moreover, have societal value in that they are either agreeable or pragmatic to self and/or others. Vices have the reverse characteristics.
Sympathy is based on our own experiences and identification with a person. Seeing certain...
Furthermore, context also expands the feelings of sympathy such as when seeing someone undergo surgery. The vivacity of our perception is instinctively and unconsciously transferred to another so that we interpret context and expressions of the other as though they happen to ourselves.
Furthermore, the greater the contiguity and resemblance to the other person, the more this empathy will be reinforced. This prompts altruism.
There are also artificial virtues which are contrivances of society, such as justice with respect to property, allegiance to government, and dispositions to obey the laws of nations and the rules of modesty and good manners ). We approve of these even when they threaten our own self-interest since they benefit societal order. We find their character traits agreeable since they are useful, and they therefore give us the feeling of sympathy and hence pleasure when we find them actualized or represented by someone or by some group.
Rousseau: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen This is a paper that argues and proves how Rousseau would have reacted to the Declaration of Rights in the light of the French Revolutionaries. It has 3 sources. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen produced by the French Revolutionaries is considered as one of the founding documents of the human rights tradition. This paper argues that the document
Rousseau believed that a sovereign should rule the people, yet the State should be directed by the general will of the people and if some did not wish to go along with the rest they should be forced to do so by everyone else and "be forced to be free." Rousseau was a not really a Communist at heart, and believed that man should have a sovereign to act upon
Thus, it becomes necessary for society to compel this individual to act in accordance to the general will in order to stall a descent into arbitrary standards and meaningless identifications, and because acting in accordance with the general will means exercising reason and the freedom of thought and expression, this compelling takes the form of forcing someone to be free. The individual is ultimately compelled by society to utilize
Rousseau on Corruption: Its Causes and Elimination Proprietary Ownership as the Underlying Problem in Human Society According to Rousseau, elements of human societies promote conflict in and of themselves. Specifically, Rousseau explains in his Discourse on Inequality (1754) that the very concept of proprietary ownership, especially of real property (i.e. land ownership), is unnatural and necessarily leads to respective comparisons, competition, and envy. He argues that those who come to own large
- these actions are not punished by the law because, while immoral according to many, they do not cause injury to the rights of others. Adam Smith further emphasizes the centrality of property rights. For Smith, the ownership and acquisition of private property is an essential right that contributes to and maintains individual well-being. Individuals who do not own property are individuals with no real say in their own affairs,
Locke and Rousseau on the Question of Inequality John Locke's Second Treatise of Government argues that "men are naturally free" (55). In other words, Locke believed that humans, in their natural state, and prior to the creation of civil society, would have been a kind of sovereign entity, possessing a set of natural rights prescribed by God and nature, and those rights would have afforded individuals the opportunity to protect themselves