Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

decrease
of empathy is necessarily conducive to moral outcomes. I am also not 
claiming that it is senseless to talk about prudentially or morally appropriate levels 
of empathy. Rather, I argue for a more qualified claim that empathetic ability is like 

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50 
any other cognitive and affective capacity: it is multi-purpose, its effects are context 
dependant and, in this context, more is not always better.
Rifkin (2010a) was wrong when he contrasted Maslows’ (1969) ‘new’ insight about 
the importance of empathy with ‘emotionally incapable’ Enlightenment philosophy. 
Hutcheson’s affective psychology and phenomenology developed in 
Inquiry into 
the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue
(1725), 
Essay on the Nature and 
Conduct of the Passions and Affectations 
(1728a),
 
and
Illustrations on the Moral 
Sense
(1728b) built on Shaftesbury’s notion of an inborn moral sense. Hutcheson 
understood, and held that, a crucial feature of our moral evaluation is that we 
approve affections that are irreducibly benevolent and other-directed, at the same 
time condemning inappropriately selfish ones while looking at how agent’s actions 
flow from benevolent affect towards other sensitive beings. In turn, Hume and 
Smith built on Hutcheson’s ideas.
Hume locates all our motivations in the passions. Perhaps for this reason, he treats 
the will in his discussion of the direct passions, identifying it as ‘the internal 
impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new 
motion of our body, or new perception of our mind’ (
Treatise of Human Nature
1739-40, II.3.1 399, see also: 
Dissertation on the Passions
in 
Four Dissertations
1757, 
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
, 1751). Hume evokes the 
importance of sympathy in his justification for the motivating character of what he 
called ’artificial virtues:’ such as justice and promise keeping. The sentiment he 
talks about, however, is ‘an extensive sympathy,’ redirected through general rules 
and the social convention toward society as a whole. This sympathy in turn requires 
correction, so that our sympathy is not directed only towards our kin. We have to 
direct our passions beyond their natural bounds, so that it allows us to approve of 
the justice or honesty of all sorts of people in all sorts of situations, regardless of 
their connection to us.
According to Hume, the general point of view does not provide a standard of 
rationality but it does provide a standard of appropriateness – and this standard 
allows us to shape, cultivate and constrain our sentiments in ways that provide the 
sort of stability and reliability that will form the basis of shared judgment. In 

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51 
Theory of Moral Sentiments 
Smith
 
responds, modifies and extends Hume’s account. 
Although Smith discusses different ‘spectator positions’ one can adapt, the basic 
idea that the ability to adopt the stance of spectator of our actions and sentiments 
means that we can evaluate and modify our emotional reaction.
Perhaps’ the sympathy of the ideal observer in Hume and Smith is too ‘passive’ for 
Rifkin’s taste. Or perhaps it is too ‘active’ in its involvement of reflection. In 
contrast to Rifkin (2010a) and Baron-Cohen (2011), Scottish Enlightenment 
sentimentalists understood the importance of reflection and reason in morality, even 
when, as for Hume, reason was only useful in establishing the ends.
9
Even 
Hutcheson argued that although moral judgments ultimately rest in specific kinds of 
emotions, the exercise of the benevolent moral sense calls for additional reflection 
beyond
a certain element of reflections present in all our affections. Even this 
minimal role of reason – well understood by the fathers of sentimentalism – seems 
to escape the radical proponents of achieving moral and planetary bliss through a 
radical increase in empathy.