136 - Moral sentiments

Summary

Sentiments are ordered families of governing dispositions to feel and act in particular ways in response to particular circumstances. A person’s sentiments constitute an essential part of her enduring character. Sentiments may be natural or moral. The key difference is that to understand and explain the latter, but not the former, one must appeal to moral concepts, principles, or ideals. So, for example, a person who has a sense of justice necessarily has a moral sentiment, whereas a person who has a deep and abiding love for her child might have only a natural sentiment. Of course, many sentiments are complex, comprised of both natural and moral elements. Indeed, the love of others is often such a complex sentiment.

Like sentiments, attitudes are also structured dispositions to feel and act in particular ways that may be natural or moral and simple or complex. But attitudes are not as regulative, enduring, or profound within a person’s character as sentiments. Feelings, which again may be natural or moral and simple or complex, are what a person’s sentiments or attitudes lead her to experience on particular occasions and in particular circumstances. Unlike attitudes and sentiments, they are episodic. Feelings, which are identical with neither the sensations nor the behaviors that often accompany and serve as indicators of them, express the underlying sentiments or attitudes that give rise to them.