David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1748) advanced the idea that Benevolence is at the core of ethics. While this is well known, he also claimed that empathetic emotions had in human affairs, the force that gravity played in the physical world. He also denied that self-love was a major motivator in ethics. This is contrasted with the views of Ayn Rand, with a suggestion that in the present time, when empathy is receiving new attention among scholars and philosophers, new attention to Hume’s theory is warranted.
