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6. The role of emotions in the process of decision making has been expanded by hypotheses elaborated in the field of neurosciences. In particular, Antonio Damasio with the hypothesis of the “somatic markers” has argued that the agent in front of complex and conflicting choices is guided by emotions that play a central role in the cognition process. On the moral role of emotions, see also De Sousa, “Self-Deceptive Emotions,” 684–697, and “Moral Emotions,” 109–126; Solomon, “On Emotions as Judgments,” 684–697, and “Some Notes on Emotion,” 171–202; Bockover, “The Concept of Emotion Revisited,” 161–180; and Oakley, Morality and the Emotions.

7. On the importance of emotion in Confucian ethics, confirmed by the interest of contemporary moral philosophers of different approaches, see David Wong “Cultivating the Self in Concert with Others,” 178–180.

8. Rawls, A Theory of Justice. In fact, there are various theories concerning “moral sentiments.” For example, Damasio identifies “primary emotions” (anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise), the “secondary/social emotions” (embarrassment, guilt, pride, shame, admiration, gratitude, contempt, jealousy, envy,), and “background feelings”—responses provoked by internal conditions generated by diverse physiological processes (fatigue-energy, wellness-sickness; tension-relaxation) (The Feeling of What Happens, 52–53). He separates three stages of processing along a continuum: a state of emotion, which can be triggered and executed nonconsciously; a state of feeling, which can be represented nonconsciously; and a state of feeling made conscious; that is, known to the organism having both emotion and feeling” (The Feeling of What Happens, 3). Strictly speaking, we should distinguish the direct reactions of drives from emotive reactions—which imply motivations and cognitive consciousness—and from good sentiments produced by ethical socialization. Ethical good sentiments are learned through the socialization process and are continuously reconstructed through experiences and negotiations. This explains why this process is not a passive trend and why old and new ideas as well as old and new moralities are learned and re-elaborated in the course of education (family, school, literary reading). For recent scholarship on the distinctions between categories of affect-related phenomena, such as emotions, moods, sentiments, character traits, and temperaments, see Deonna and Teroni, “Affective Explanations to Heart,” 359–377, and Cochrane, “Eight Dimensions for the Emotions,” 379–420. See also Ogarkova and Borgeaud, “(Un)common Denominators in Research on