"'One of the things that’s really interesting with Hume’s Treatise is that he introduces the term "sympathy" to explain why we have esteem for the rich and the powerful'..."

"... says Neil Charles Saccamano, associate professor of English at Cornell University. 'Hume talks about how the notion of property enters into why we esteem them – that they own things like houses and gardens.' The beauty of those objects, Saccamano says, is designed to produce pleasure in the owner of the object. 'And we others, who do not own this property, and are not rich and powerful, and who are of a lower class, we simply "sympathise" with the pleasure we anticipate that the owner of the property will receive from the objects,' he says. So, when we watch Meryl Streep and Steve Martin making late-night chocolate croissants at her bakery in It’s Complicated, the sense of pleasure and anticipation we take from the scene is as much about 'sympathising' with the luxuriousness of it all: the softly lit kitchen, the pastry against the cool marble counter, the exquisite indulgence of owning a bakery at all, let alone breaking in after hours for a little erotically charged patisserie-making.... 'And in [Hume]’s analysis, part of the pleasure of the owner is knowing that others envy them – or sympathise with their pleasure,' says Saccamano...."

From "Lights, camera, comfy furnishings: why the ‘beige chic’ of Nancy Meyers is having a revival/In her hit romcoms, the director’s sets were as popular as the films. Now trending on social media more than a decade after her last movie, her coveted look is back" (The Guardian).

"I struggle as a philosopher to reconcile my image of my body with its task in the world of being the emissary of my mind...."

"Often, I cannot bear the idea of sending out my 'soft animal' of a body, in the words of the poet Mary Oliver, to fight for feminist views that are edgy and controversial and to represent a discipline that prides itself on sharpness, clarity and precision. I feel betrayed by my soft borders. This false binary exists partly in my own head, yes, but also very much in others’: I was recently apprised of a caption on a portrait of David Hume, the 18th-century philosopher, in an introductory philosophy textbook: 'The lightness and quickness of his mind was entirely hidden by the lumpishness of his appearance.' Thus have other fat philosophers been warned that our bodies may similarly mask our intellects. The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker isn’t a philosopher, but his latest book, 'Rationality,' handily demonstrates the worldview that equates thinness with reason.... [H]e chides the irrational doofus who prefers the 'small pleasur' of chowing down on lasagna now over the supposedly 'large pleasure of a slim body' in perpetuity. They 'succumb' to 'myopic discounting' of future rewards — an (ableist) term for short-term thinking, illustrated with a fatphobic example."

From "Diet Culture Is Unhealthy. It’s Also Immoral" by philosophy professor Kate Manne (NYT).