Emotional Origins of Morality ‐‐ A Sketch

Abstract This paper traces the origins of the development of our capacity to make critical moral judgements. It is suggested that such a capacity develops out of unlearnt tendencies to sympathy and resentment. In the first section, a cognitive view of the nature of emotion is presented ?? a view which stresses that, far from being irrational disturbances, emotions involve judgements as well as urges to act, and that these judgements are frequently correct assessments of a situation. Section II discusses one central feature of morality ?? the susceptibility of moral beings to remorse. Section III explores the nature of two particular emotions, sympathy and resentment, and suggests that remorse could develop out of primitive forms of these emotions, to which human beings are naturally subject. In the final section, a brief sketch is offered of the kind of process moral development must be if remorse does indeed develop from these primitive emotions