Among our natural, benevolent affections are affections directed at the happiness of others.
Again for this reason, exercising our benevolent affections seems a sound strategy.
He follows Hutcheson in thinking that the issue is whether the various benevolent affections are genuine or arise from self-interest.
And the moral sense seems internally consistent: just as we approve of benevolent affections in those we judge, so too can our judgments withstand our own scrutiny.
So, whatever we can do to achieve the ends of our benevolent affections will, in fact, increase our own chances for happiness.
Under this category, Reid places the so-called benevolent affections, such as the affection felt between kin, gratitude to benefactors, pity and compassion, friendship, public spirit, and the like (see EAP III.iii.iv).iv
In the absence of something like Shaftesbury's natural teleology, Hutcheson can offer no guarantee that exercising our benevolent affections, the ones that generate our moral approbation, will likewise produce happiness.
On Hume's reading of Hobbes, while we approve of kindness, friendship, and other benevolent affections, any desire to benefit others really derives from self-interest, although we may not always be conscious of its influence on those desires.
Hutcheson argues frequently and forcefully that we are capable of irreducibly benevolent affections and passions, against the view he associates with Hobbes and Mandeville that all passions are, in the final analysis, forms of self-interest.
Our 'natural benevolent affections' guide us to do good toward some small sector of humankind (a small sector composed of our friends, promisees, colleagues, family, etc)., and stifling such natural tendencies would leave only "a very feeble counterpoise to self-love" and thus little from which to develop a more extended and generalized benevolence (434).
