Teaching & Learning Guide for: Moral Rationalism Vs. Moral Sentimentalism: Is Morality More Like Math or Beauty?

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British philosophers began to advance the view that morality originated not in the external commands of God or sovereign nor in self-interest but in a non-selfish principle internal to human nature. These philosophers disagreed, however, about what that internal principle was. The rationalists (such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, and John Balguy) maintained that morality originated in rationality. The sentimentalists (such as the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume) maintained that morality originated in sentiment. In addition to many other kinds of arguments, each side of this debate deployed a central argument by analogy: the rationalists claimed that moral judgment was crucially analogous to mathematical judgment, while the sentimentalists claimed that moral judgment was crucially analogous to aesthetic judgment.