For Shaftesbury, all things are interconnected, including humans, and this underlies our ability to respond sympathetically to one another. That response, in turn, is the seed from which we can cultivate a fully developed moral life. Crucially, this moral cultivation does not require any particular belief system, since it emerges from our nature. We need only improve our ethical good taste, much as we can develop good taste in the arts. The process relies on pleasure more than anything else: when we do something nice for others, they like and approve of us—and that is a pleasurable feeling, so
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