On the Generation and Extent of Sympathy : An Approach to Organizing Hume's Aesthetics

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Other Title
  • 共感の生起と射程について : デイヴィド・ヒューム美学構成への一視点
  • キョウカン ノ セイキ ト シャテイ ニ ツイテ デイヴィド ヒューム ビガク

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Abstract

According to Hume, sympathy is a very powerful principle in human nature by which man enters into the sentiments of others and partakes of their pleasure and uneasiness. Nevertheless man more easily sympathizes with his relation and acquaintance owing to his propensity to be affected by the contiguous objects rather than by the remote. But if man surveys himself as he appears to others or considers others as they feel themselves, he is obliged to overlook his own interest, and consequently his naturally selfish sentiments and opinions come to be corrected. Such an extensive sympathy with the interest of society makes man form some general standard in moral judgement. In that sense sympathy is the dynamic force by which the social feeling is constructed out of the individual feeling. Sympathy also plays a significant role in Hume's utilitalian views of beauty. When an object is useful, that is, when it has a tendency to produce pleasure in the possessor, it is sure to please the spectator because by sympathy he shares satisfaction with the possessor, and on that occasion the object is esteemed beautiful. In the final analysis, the idea of utility brings about the sentiment of beauty through the very force of sympathy which is inseparably correlated to imagination.

Journal

  • Aesthetics

    Aesthetics 33 (1), 53-63, 1982

    The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

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