This special kind of affection is a second-order affection, an affection that has as its object another affection.
We humans experience these second-order affections because we, unlike non-human animals, are conscious of our own passions.
Nevertheless, Shaftesbury did think that the moral sense (whether one faculty or several working in tandem) is that which produces in us feelings of "like" or "dislike" for our own (first-order) affections.
Shaftesbury called this capacity to feel second-order affections the "sense of right and wrong" or the "moral sense" (C 179 80), although the term is not one he emphasized much or explained in detail (see Rivers 124).
He dispenses orders and affection, nurses the younger ones when they are sick, comforts them when they miss their parents, spanks them when they are naughty, coaches them with their schoolwork, begs food from neighbors, fixes the thatch roof when it leaks, and rules the household with tenderness and efficiency.
Second, I would be wary of inverting the natural order of affections.
Admiration for his technical proficiency came with a side order of helpless affection.
They'll groom this person over time until they become compliant and have sex in order to receive affection.
Do we really need to sell ourselves on the auction block in order to gain affection?
But he was also very distant, and I had to work very hard in order to gain his affection.
Well into the nineteen-fifties, psychologists were encouraging parents to give children less attention and affection, in order to encourage independence.
