Sorry to drop the conversation. Life intruded.

(Btw, just read an interesting interview with Kahneman which I think might be relevant here. https://www.edge.org/adversarial-collaboration-daniel-kahneman :-)

So, I’m not convinced.

1. neighbor-as-yourself Christianity
2. all-sentient-beings Buddhism
3. universal-moral-agents Kant

We’ve got theist, agnostic, and (oh, for the sake of argument) secular recognition of the Thou-ness (using Buber) of other humans. I don’t see that Kant stands out qualitatively.

(Apples to apples we can’t compare post-Justinian Christians to Kant himself.)

I’ll admit I haven’t read Kant in 40 years…though it’s not really possible to avoid reading about Kant on a regular basis…and that I’m using essentially the Cliff Notes to ‘Idea for a Universal History…’.

Given that, I note, that Kant calls out European nation-states as superior to the rest of the ‘faith based’ world at a time that they had been wreaking havoc in most of the planet for a few centuries and that they justified that with a mix of Christian and Enlightenment arrogance.

Looping back to where we started, I’m on the side of moral sentiments rather than categorical imperatives, if it had to be one of the other (which, of course, it doesn’t.) My perspective is that if we can’t leverage up the empathy and compassion that’s our genetic birthright, we’re screwed…doomed as a case of the least favorable solution to Fermi’s Paradox. Is it brain or heart that has the best chance of providing a way out?

Here’s my LP version of the idea: https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/good-tribe-bad-tribe-5d6a1798f67f

I think we’ve pushed this to a good point, though, and thanks for the comments and challenges!

Hoping you’ll add a final summary.