Politics of Affect in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This paper analyzes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in terms of Coleridge’s imaginative plea for a modification of consciousness about racial slavery prevalent in the then British society. What lends muscle to the plea is the use of gothic supernaturalism, which helps bring about a transformation in the Mariner. The gothic-actuated transformation, this paper claims, derives from Coleridge’s own ambiguous attitude to English imperialism—an ambivalence which results into systematic portrayal of the violator as the rightful beneficiary of the reader’s sympathy. The paper concludes that the poem’s turn to the affect of moral sentimentalism intends to make the reader of Coleridge’s time acquiesce in accepting colonial guilt as the spiritual politics of quietism, thereby averting the possibility of a violent reaction both from the hapless victims and some conscientious victimizers. There was not much thrust on an economic and political upgrading of the status of the slaves; instead, the affects of outrage, disgust, horror, and shame were evoked in the white anti-slavery texts so that the ugliness of imperialism and the concomitant slavery were criticized without really writing them off.

Contextualization of the Classic Moral Sentimentalism

Moral sentimentalism can be defined as the philosophical theory according to which emotions are the source of our value judgements, in general, and of our moral judgements, in particular. It follows that, from a historical and conceptual point of view, moral sentimentalism has emerged and developed in opposition to moral rationalism, according to which reason allows us to formulate and understand value judgments from a psychological point of view and is also the source of our axiological knowledge from an epistemic point of view. In this article we present the theoretical issues related to the sentimentalist approach to morality and evaluative judgments, starting from the diverse theories of the classical representatives of sentimentalism, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Smith, and especially the three theses they defended: psychological perspective, the theory of moral sense and the theory of moral feelings. I also argue that the first moral sentimentalism emerged from the confrontation of three distinct aporia: the first aporia refers to the conceptualization of emotions and emotional states; the second deals with the possibility of axiological knowledge; and the third refers to the nature and existence of values. Finally, we are interested in the birth of sentimentalism in order to highlight a series of difficulties inherent in this theoretical approach and which we find today in contemporary moral sentimentalism. The aim is to highlight the conceptual and argumentative tensions that were at the heart of sentimentalism at its emergence.

Impartiality through ‘Moral Optics’: Why Adam Smith revised David Hume's Moral Sentimentalism

We read Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as a critical response to David Hume's moral theory. While both share a commitment to moral sentimentalism, they propose different ways of meeting its main challenge, that is, explaining how judgments informed by (partial) sentiments can nevertheless have a justified claim to general authority. This difference is particularly manifest in their respective accounts of ‘moral optics’, or the way they rely on the analogy between perceptual and moral judgments. According to Hume, making perceptual and moral judgments requires focusing on frequently co-occurring impressions (perceptions of objects or reactive sentiments) for tracking an existing object with its perceptual properties or an agent's character traits. Smith uses visual perception for the purpose of illustrating one source of the partiality of the sentiments people feel in response to actions. Before making a moral judgment, people have to disregard this partiality and accept that they are all equally important. Smith and Hume's different ways of relying on the same analogy reveals the still-overlooked and yet profound differences between their moral theories.

The Phenomenological Claims of Gratitude as a Religious Experience and Its Moral Worth

Contemporary thinking regarding the phenomenon of gratitude portrays it as a fundamental attribute of every human being as well as a commendable and beneficial human quality capable of enhancing human flourishing in society. This study demonstrates that although a variety of life experiences can elicit feelings of gratitude, there is evidence that the moral human society considers gratitude as a force capable of encouraging acts of beneficence. Apparently though, in the lens of ethics, gratitude is a purely person-to-person phenomenon, while ingratitude is seen as a profound moral failure. This research addresses issues of why moralists generally see gratitude as an obligation and stressed its dutiful aspects rather than its emotional quality. Findings show that until the advent of moral sentimentalism, gratitude interventions had always produced positive outcomes and benefits which in the heart of ethics is a duty and social obligation towards human benefactors and God.