How we judge Relative to Our Ego

When can we make moral judgements on others?

³⁰ We may make moral judgments on 2 occasions.

1. When the cause of such feelings are unrelated to us or the other person

³¹ In this case, we ascribe goodness to the other person if his feelings correspond to ours.

The following are unrelated to the ourselves nor to the other person:

• the beauty of a plain
• the greatness of a mountain

• the conduct of a third person
• all the subjects of science and taste

He and I both look at them from the same point of view. We have no occasion for sympathy for these.

We may feel differently for such objects because of the different levels of attention which we give to those objects.

This difference of levels is from:

• the difference of our habits, and
• the different levels of natural acuteness of our minds

We Admire Those Who Lead Our Feelings

³² Admiration is approval heightened by wonder and surprise. Applause is the natural expression of admiration.

We think that a man deserves no admiration if his feelings merely coincide with ours.

But he appears deserving of much admiration when his feelings both coincide with our own, and lead our own feelings.

This is especially true when:

• he attends to many things which we had overlooked, and
• shows uncommon acuteness and comprehensiveness.

Everyone will approve of a man who thinks that:

• beauty is preferable ugliness, or
• 2 x 2 = 4

But he will not be much admired.

Our admiration is deserved by:

• the acute and delicate discernment of someone who can distinguish the minute differences of beauty and ugliness,
• the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced mathematician who easily unravels the most perplexed proportions, and
• the great leader in science who directs our own feelings.
  • His wide and superior talents astonish us.

The praise for the intellectual virtues is based on this admiration.

³³ The utility of those qualities first recommends those people to us.

Then it gives those people a new value.

Originally, however, we approve of another man’s judgment, not as something useful, but as something right and agreeable to truth and reality.

• We approve of another person only because they agree with our own.

In the same way, taste is originally approved of, not as useful, but as being suitable to its object.

• Its utility comes afterwards as an afterthought.

2. When the cause of such feelings affect us

³⁴ In this case, it is more difficult to preserve this harmony and correspondence.

My friend does not naturally look on my misfortune in the same way I do.

• My misfortunes affect me much more.

We do not view them from the same station, as we do a picture, poem, or a system of philosophy.

This is why we are affected by them very differently.

But I can much more easily overlook his lack of correspondence with my sentiments about such indifferent objects which concern neither of us, than with objects which interest me so much.

You might hate the poem or belief that I admire.

But we do not quarrel about it as we both are not much interested in them.

But it is otherwise with objects which affect you or me directly and your judgments are opposite to mine.

If I can control my temper, we might be able to talk about it.

But if you have no fellow-feeling for my misfortunes, injuries, resentment, or my grief, then we cannot talk about these subjects and we become intolerable to one another.

³⁵ In all such cases, there might be some correspondence of feelings between the observer and the observee.

First of all, the observer must put himself in the observee’s situation. He must:

• feel the observee’s distress
• imagine his suffering