In a collaboration that has now spanned three decades, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson have been steadily publishing agenda-setting work on topics at the intersection of ethics and metaethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of emotion. Rational Sentimentalism (2023), their first monograph, weaves together well-tested arguments with plenty of new material to offer these philosophers’ highly anticipated, big-picture story about the nature of emotions and their relation to value. Although several notable themes and questions are addressed within the book, in this review I’ll focus on the monograph’s main argument concerning the provenance of a certain set of “sentimental” value-properties—a view that is officially designated by its authors with a moniker that also serves as the book’s title.
“Rational Sentimentalism,” say D’Arms and Jacobson, has three tenets. The first is its sentimentalist part: the claim that the sentimental values—a group that includes the disgusting; the amusing; the shameful; and the...
