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The Handbook of Virtue Ethics, edited by Stan van Hooft

Michael Slote’s recent work defends the importance and value of emotion. The thesis of this book is that all belief and action inherently involve an element of emotion. Slote begins with the belief half of his thesis: a defence of the view that the epistemic virtue of open-mindedness depends upon empathy. The argument turns on the idea that belief, scepticism, rejection, and other epistemic positions are sentimental. For example, to believe is to have a positive attitude of some sort toward a certain way of seeing the world. Then Slote turns to the action half of his thesis, adapting Davidsonian views about action to his epistemology, which he takes to be a natural fit. The chapter starts from the strong claim that the typical analytic philosopher has a sense that emotion cannot be central to the functioning of the mind. In Chapter Three, which I take to be the book’s core, Slote argues generally for the thesis that the self consists in a unity of emotion and intellect. The rest of the book describes implications that Slote takes this conception to have for human minds. Perhaps these views complement the general account of mind that precedes them. It seems to me that they are consistent with a range of positions on the relation between belief and emotion. Slote argues that human beings are capable of altruism and have a considerable range of unselfish motives; that the moral development of children depends upon empathetic mechanisms, among which gratitude and anger in response to others’ treatment of children are basic; and that the extent to which love affects human beliefs and actions makes some degree of epistemic irrationality inevitable.