Interdisciplinary before the disciplines: moral sentimentalism and the new science of man

Michael Frazer

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Abstract

This chapter argues that Enlightenment sentimentalism’s greatest potential contribution to scholarship today is not a matter for moral philosophy alone, but rather an agenda for fruitful collaboration between fields across the humanities and social sciences. This interdisciplinary program for both understanding an improving human nature is contrasted with alternative approaches, and defended against objections that it cannot produce a moral code categorically binding on any rational being as such. The chapter concludes with some sociological and psychological hypotheses that might help explain why the interdisciplinary and sentimentalist approach to ethics, for all its intellectual virtues, has not been adequately appreciated.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEthical Sentimentalism
Subtitle of host publicationNew Perspectives
EditorsRemy Debes, Karsten Stueber
PublisherCambridge University Press
Chapter1
Pages15-31
Number of pages17
ISBN (Print)9781107089617
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2017

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