Descriptive
The circle of sympathy
On the axis: Partiality · human sympathy
Our concern for others weakens as they grow distant from us, in space, in blood or in likeness: should morality build on this natural slope, or correct it like an inborn prejudice?
Philosophers' positions
inferable
+0.6
Concentric circles
Justification
Sympathy, the source of moral approval, is by nature unequal: we feel more keenly for those near us than for the distant. Hume acknowledges this limited sympathy as a primary fact of human nature; the rules of justice and institutions serve precisely to correct the effects of this partiality, without abolishing it. The leaning is thus partialist, tempered by an artificial corrective.
A Treatise of Human Nature, III, part II, sect. 1-2 (the origin of justice, limited sympathy)
Anchors: Hume · Singer
leads to: Moral circle